Facebook turns five years old tomorrow. That’s practically middle-aged in Silicon Valley. To celebrate, Facebook has put up this slideshow that highlights Facebook’s evolving Web design over that time period. We’ve reproduced the slides below. (Yeah, we wish they were bigger too).
Founder Mark Zuckerberg also hints at a surprise virtual gift that will that will appear tomorrow in the the Facebook Gift Shop. Oh, what could it be?
thats pretty cool. happy birthday Facebook!!
Wish facebook many happy returns of the day!
bigger images possible?
I concur with this – lets get some bigger images up in this post.
I agree.
The images are too small to convey the subtle evolutions that Facebook has gone through.
“Subtle” is indeed the word.
I remember the first Facebook design.
It is cool to see that from start they had the right direction and that clean interface has set the standard how we all design our websites.
Good work Facebook team on adding more without it really looking like it. Conrgats, and I am sure Zuck will be speaking to us all in 10 years at F8 from a video display.
Totally disagree with this – FB Is *not* the standard for how sites are designed. Even in its sparseness (which gets boring after a while) It has serious UI issues and findability problems. Even now, I still have to stop and think back to where I found something and still all too frequently have problems finding things easily. It mixes styles from windows desktop apps, macintosh, and web2.0 sites in a jumble that is not at first intuitive.
Ive been doing this since way before facebook existed and I agree – Facebook IS NOT the standard of how sites are designed and it shouldn’t be.
Facebook is absolutely not a benchmark for quality design, nor can you say that they had the right direction from the beginning based on these screenshots. What, because they stuck with blue? Or they (mostly) kept the logo in the upper left corner?
It might be that the complexity of the facebook site, and the difficulty many experience in finding things is part of the facebook DNA – but that does not mean everyone else should aspire to build sites that are hard to use.
“boring” could also be used as a synonym of “subtle” to describe the change, but functionality rules so kudos on the birthday.
Facebook is definitely better looking than it was five years ago. They’ve done a very good job of holding fast to a brand framework – the style has evolved and changed significantly, but each iteration is more an evolution of its predecessor than a redesign.
Facebook is exactly 6 years younger than my son. Nice.
What does it matter? Mark Suckerberg still can’t laid.
Great to see the history of Facebook. I remember signing up freshmen year of college. It’s crazy how far it’s come since then.
And yes, bigger pictures would be nice.
I still miss the Facebook stalker guy.
would be smart to allow the image to be enlarge but that be smart wouldnt it.
FB has always been ugly and very un-stylish. HBD.
That’s quite an evolution imho.
I didn’t realize it was that old. Myspace must be going on two decades fairly soon. The organized interface and user friendliness were the keys. The only issues I see with facebook are growing privacy issues. Both personal info/pictures extracted out by facebook and from outside subversion. I check this site for current personal data/security information.
Happy BirthDay, Facebook =)
where’s 2004? i remember using it in 2004…
i can’t believe some people just started using it in 2008 and have more friends than me. dam.
Facebook first appeared on 8th August, 2005
http://web.arch...//facebook.com/
Before that it was home of “AboutFace – Your source for Web & intranet directory software”
http://web.arch...w.facebook.com/
I thought AboutFace might be Mark’s company, but it’s not, it was owned by some Adam Grossman.
anyways
Actually, Facebook first appeared in August, 2005, (or specifically 8 August 2005 as the archive.org suggests here:)
http://web.arch...//facebook.com/
Before that it was home of “AboutFace – Your source for Web & intranet directory software”, This company owned by Adam Grossman later moved to their new domain:
http://www.aboutface.com/
-Salman
So people might call FB’s layout boring but I would rather have their style any day over MySpace. At least it doesn’t look like a child put it together.
happy b’day facebook
Happy Birthday FB.
Facebook’s login page images (including 2005 login page) can be seen here:
http://blog.skd...thday-facebook/
@taige:
Facebook first appeared on 8th August, 2005
http://web.arch...//facebook.com/
Before that it was home of “AboutFace – Your source for Web & intranet directory software”
http://web.arch...w.facebook.com/
I thought AboutFace might be Mark’s company, but it’s not. It was/is owned by some Adam Grossman ;d (gross man
)
happy bday FB!
Uh, no. Let me help you guys out. 2/12/2004.
http://web.arch...hefacebook.com/
Also, TechCrunch: comment posting broken. comment_text.trim.
I miss the dude on the top-left corner. Bring the dude back! Haha
Also, looking back at the last big interface change, I’m glad they decided to push thru with it, even with groups such as “1m against the new layout”, etc.
@salman
i might not be part of facebook 5000 (i think that’s a group for first 5000 ppl on it) but i definitely started using it in 2004. man i even had to wait for them to expand to my school.
“thefacebook.com” that was the site before they moved it to “facebook.com”
http://web.arch...hefacebook.com/
i kind of miss the old ui.
Happy Birthday Facebook
Amazing changes! Great!
Thanks for the thumbnails, but how am I supposed to see anything without larger images?