---
title: "Which came first, Facebook or Wikipedia?"
description: "Facebook vs Wikipedia: Wikipedia came first, by 3 years — 2001 against 2004. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/facebook-vs-wikipedia/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Facebook or Wikipedia?

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

2001 — 3 years before Facebook

Wikipedia came first, by 3 years. Wikipedia launched as a side project to feed a different encyclopedia.

## Side by side

|  | Facebook | Wikipedia |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 2004 | 2001 |
| Date | 2004-02-04 | 2001-01-15 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | TheFacebook launched for Harvard students only. | Wikipedia launched as a side project to feed a different encyclopedia. |

## 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.

## Wikipedia

Wikipedia launched in January 2001 as a scratchpad for Nupedia, a peer-reviewed encyclopedia project started in 2000 that had produced about two dozen articles in a year. The wiki produced more than that in its first month and Nupedia was abandoned in 2003. Wikipedia is older than Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the iPhone.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Facebook or Wikipedia?

Wikipedia, by 3 years — 2001 against 2004.

### When did Facebook start?

2004. TheFacebook launched for Harvard students only.

### When did Wikipedia start?

2001. Wikipedia launched as a side project to feed a different encyclopedia.

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## Sources

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