Facebook began as a dorm hot-or-not game built from photos its founder scraped.
In October 2003, Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg built Facemash, pulling classmates’ ID photos from Harvard’s online house directories to rank who was hotter. It drew three disciplinary charges within days. Four months later he launched thefacebook.com, named after the very directories he had raided to build the prank — the ones students called face books.
Facebook on Brandseum