---
title: "Which came first, email or Facebook?"
description: "email vs Facebook: email came first, by 33 years — 1971 against 2004. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-facebook/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, email or Facebook?

**Which came first, email or Facebook?: email**

1971 — 33 years before Facebook

email came first, by 33 years. Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign.

## Side by side

|  | email | Facebook |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1971 | 2004 |
| Date | — | 2004-02-04 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign. | TheFacebook launched for Harvard students only. |

## email

Messages had been left for other users of the same machine since the mid-1960s. What Tomlinson did in 1971 was send one between two different computers on ARPANET, and pick @ to separate the user from the host because it was the only preposition on the keyboard that could not appear in a name. He did not record the first message and later said it was probably "QWERTYUIOP" or similar. Email is eighteen years older than the Web.

## Facebook

Facebook launched on 4 February 2004 restricted to Harvard email addresses, opened to other universities through 2004 and 2005, and to anyone over 13 with an email address in September 2006. It is six years younger than Google and a year older than YouTube. Its predecessor Facemash, which compared students' photographs, was shut down by the university within days in 2003.

## Common questions

### Which came first, email or Facebook?

email, by 33 years — 1971 against 2004.

### When did email start?

1971. Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign.

### When did Facebook start?

2004. TheFacebook launched for Harvard students only.

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## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]