Bangalore: The world’s favorite online destination, a life-book for many, Facebook turns nine today. With over a billion users and without the presence of any potential rivals in a decade since its inception, the story of this social network is quite enchanting.

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What began as ‘Facemash’ in a Harvard University dorm by Mark Zuckerberg, later took its original form as TheFacebook.com’ with the help of his four friends Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum and Chris Hughes. The social network, which became successful within the first few months, later changed its name to Facebook and set out to rule the world.

Many big players, including Google and Microsoft had reportedly offered huge sums to buy the social network in its nascent stage. But overcoming the temptations, Zuckerberg lead Facebook to a historic IPO in May 2012, which gave it a valuation of over $100 billion.

Eventhough the social network had a rocky path after its public appearance, inviting criticism for its inability to generate revenue from the mobile platform through which more than half of its users access the site, Zuckerberg and his team has been coming up with pertinent updates, which reflected in the company’s last earnings report, beating the analyst expectations by reaping $1.58 billion in revenue in Q4.

Also Read: Reasons Why Facebook Failed In The IPO

At its 9th birthday, the future looks bright for Facebook. Zuckerberg had already declared that “Facebook is a mobile company,” and had introduced a new feature “graph search,” couple of days back, which with all its weapons has the potential to rival even the search giant Google.