Glossary
Thirty terms — the products, deals, doctrines, and disputes you need to read the rest of this site.
Thefacebook
The original name of the site launched 4 February 2004, restricted to Harvard students with .edu addresses. The “the” was dropped in 2005 after the purchase of facebook.com.
Facemash
Zuckerberg’s October 2003 Harvard site comparing student photos; shut down within days, leading to disciplinary proceedings. A youthful misstep by his own later account — and the most mythologized episode of his college years.
HarvardConnection / ConnectU
The Winklevoss brothers’ and Divya Narendra’s Harvard social-network project. Zuckerberg agreed to help with programming in late 2003; the subsequent dispute over what happened next was settled in 2008.
News Feed
The 2006 algorithmic stream of friends’ activity that replaced profile-browsing — the interface pattern that defined social media.
The Wall
Facebook’s original profile message board, where friends could post public messages. Largely superseded by the Timeline and the Feed.
Poke
Facebook’s deliberately ambiguous lightweight interaction — a nudge with no defined meaning. A small feature that taught the company the power of low-friction social gestures.
Facebook Platform
The 2007 opening of Facebook to third-party developers, enabling apps (notably Zynga’s games) inside the site.
Beacon
The 2007–2009 advertising product that broadcast users’ off-site purchases into friends’ feeds; shut down after backlash. The era’s signature privacy misstep.
Open Graph
The 2010 protocol (with the famous “Like” button for the wider web) that extended Facebook’s social graph across the internet.
Social graph
The concept — people and the connections between them, modeled as data — that underlies Facebook’s design. Zuckerberg’s 2007–2010 speeches made it the company’s central metaphor.
The Hacker Way
Facebook’s early management philosophy, published with the 2012 IPO: “Move fast and break things,” continuous iteration, “code wins arguments,” meritocracy of ideas.
Move fast and break things
The internal motto of the Facebook era, later revised to “move fast with stable infrastructure.” Frequently quoted, frequently misunderstood — see sayings.
S-1
The SEC registration statement filed February 2012 ahead of the IPO — the document that first revealed Facebook’s financials to the public.
IPO
The 18 May 2012 initial public offering: priced at $38, valued at $104 billion, debut marred by NASDAQ glitches and a falling share price.
Photo-sharing app acquired April 2012 for ~$1 billion with 13 employees; became one of the most valuable consumer products ever built.
Messaging app acquired February 2014 for ~$19 billion; passed 2 billion users and became the backbone of Meta’s messaging strategy.
Oculus
VR headset startup acquired March 2014 for ~$2 billion; the seed of Reality Labs and the metaverse bet.
Internet.org / Free Basics
Zuckerberg’s 2013 initiative to bring basic internet access to developing countries — praised as connectivity philanthropy, criticized (notably in India, where regulators banned it in 2016) as a walled garden.
Cambridge Analytica
The 2018 scandal in which a political consultancy harvested data from millions of Facebook users via a third-party app; triggered congressional testimony and the FTC’s record $5 billion fine in 2019.
Pivot to privacy
Zuckerberg’s March 2019 strategic shift toward private, encrypted, ephemeral messaging as the company’s future direction.
Meta Platforms, Inc.
The October 2021 renaming of Facebook, Inc. — the parent company took the Meta name while the Facebook app kept its own.
Metaverse
Zuckerberg’s term for persistent, embodied virtual worlds — the strategic bet behind the 2021 rebrand.
Reality Labs
Meta’s VR/AR division, home to Quest headsets and metaverse R&D; has posted tens of billions in operating losses since 2021.
Horizon Worlds
Meta’s social VR platform — the flagship metaverse product, a long-term project rather than a mass hit as of 2026.
Llama
Meta’s family of large language models, released open-source from 2023 — the centerpiece of the company’s AI strategy and of Zuckerberg’s argument that open models will win.
Year of efficiency
Zuckerberg’s 2023 framing for ~21,000 layoffs and cost discipline after the 2022 downturn.
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI)
The philanthropic LLC founded December 2015 by Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, pledging 99% of their Meta shares to science, education, and justice reform.
Threads
Meta’s 2023 text-based app, positioned as a rival to X/Twitter; grew rapidly at launch.
Dual-class stock
Meta’s share structure, which gives Zuckerberg majority voting control despite owning a minority of the equity — the mechanism behind his unchallengeable position.
The Social Network
David Fincher’s 2010 film about Facebook’s founding — acclaimed, Oscar-winning, and a dramatization, not a documentary. See myth vs. record.
Source notes
- Product and deal definitions follow company announcements and SEC filings.
- Interpretive glosses (e.g., on the Hacker Way) are the author’s synthesis, labeled as such where evaluative.