And though the Administrative Board declined to send Zuckerberg home for the breaches, the young programmer had forged a reputation.

“We all knew Zuckerberg for getting in trouble with the Ad Board for Facemash,” remembered Zong in an interview last week. “Facemash was such a big hit.”

If facemash was short lived, it highlighted anew the need for a campus-wide social directory. Cameron S.H. Winklevoss ‘04, Tyler O.H. Winklevoss ‘04, and Divya K. Narendra ‘04 saw a similar need and approached Zuckerberg for help in going a step further and establishing a social network along the lines of Myspace or Friendster, but exclusively for Harvard students.

Zuckerberg’s work with the Winklevoss group would eventually result in a lawsuit, but by the first week in February, shopping week at the College, Zuckerberg was ready to launch his own site. thefacebook.com went live on a Wednesday.

Overnight, the site took off. Within 24 hours, thefacebook had 650 registered users; within two weeks, 4,300 had created accounts. The first invitations, sent out by Zuckerberg and friends over a few campus email lists, had spread like wildfire.

“I remember getting an email from a close friend of mine...with an invitation saying ‘so and so has invited you to join thefacebook.com,’” Samuel L. Sanker ‘05 remembered. “I logged in and it was so early...it was just a very, very bare bones user interface, and from the day that I signed up, I just thought that it was the greatest thing in the world.”

Brandon M. Terry ’05 recalled being taken immediately by the clean aesthetics and intimate community the site offered.

“This site was only your friends...from college,” he said. “It was strange how you could lose so much time on this site.”

Zuckerberg, for his part, was unapologetically proud of his accomplishment and the speed with which he had pulled it off.

“Everyone’s been talking a lot about a universal face book within Harvard,” he told The Crimson on Feb. 9, 2004. “I think it’s kind of silly that it would take the University a couple of years to get around to it. I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week.”

A NEW SOCIAL NETWORK

Within weeks of thefacebook’s launch, the site began to develop its own unique profile, supplanting competitors and integrating itself into undergraduate life. Only Harvard undergrads could sign up, making the online community far more intimate—and seemingly secure—than those offered by MySpace and Friendster, early users say.

“You had to have a harvard.edu address, which made it a lot less sketchy,” Zong said. “With MySpace, you could get spammed really easily by people in the area, and I think a lot of people felt uncomfortable.”

One feature on the initial site, Coursematch, allowed users to see which classes their friends were taking.

“You could enter the courses that you were taking that semester, and for people that were interested in forming study groups it was the perfect thing,” Sanker said.