Mark Zuckerberg founded "The Facebook", originally located at thefacebook.com, in February 2004 while attending Harvard University as a sophomore. The company dropped The from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000. Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College, and within the first month, more than half the undergraduate population at Harvard were registered on the service. Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes soon joined Zuckerberg to help promote the website. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale. This expansion continued when it opened to all Ivy League schools and gradually most universities in Canada and the United States. In June, Facebook moved its base of operations to Palo Alto, California.
Facebook launched a high school version in September 2005; Zuckerberg called it the next logical step. High school networks required an invitation to join. Facebook later expanded membership eligibility to employees of several companies including Apple Inc. and Microsoft. Facebook was then opened to everyone with a valid e-mail address, aside from people under the age of 13, on September 26, 2006.
BusinessWeek has confirmed that Facebook, beginning this fall, will allow its employees to sell stock at no more than a $3.75 billion valuation.