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Which came first, Facebook or the World Wide Web?

Which came first, Facebook or the World Wide Web?
the World Wide Web
1989 — 15 years before Facebook

the World Wide Web came first, by 15 years. Tim Berners-Lee wrote the proposal at CERN.

Side by side

Facebook the World Wide Web
Year 2004 1989
Date 2004-02-04
Category technology technology
What happened TheFacebook launched for Harvard students only. Tim Berners-Lee wrote the proposal at CERN.

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.

the World Wide Web

Berners-Lee circulated his proposal in March 1989, built the first browser and server by the end of 1990, and CERN put the software into the public domain in 1993. The Web is twenty years younger than the internet: the internet is the network, the Web is one service running on it, and email and file transfer both predate the Web by decades. The first website went live in December 1990 and is still online.

Common questions

Which came first, Facebook or the World Wide Web?
the World Wide Web, by 15 years — 1989 against 2004.
When did Facebook start?
2004. TheFacebook launched for Harvard students only.
When did the World Wide Web start?
1989. Tim Berners-Lee wrote the proposal at CERN.

Related pages

Sources

  1. Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)

How these figures are compiled and checked