Facebook hires former Google staffer Sheryl Sandberg as its chief operating officer. "There are people who are really good managers, people who can manage a big organisation," Zuckerberg told The New Yorker, at the time. He saw her as one of those people.
Sandberg worked extensively at monetizing Facebook, which had been losing money up until that point. Her efforts made the company "cash flow positive" by 2009.
Four years later, she went on to become the first lady to serve on Facebook's board of directors.
April 2008 - Chatter box
Facebook introduces Chat, an instant messaging service that allows users to share private messages with their friends.
July 2008 - Mobile apps
The company keeps its mobile site, but also releases the first Facebook app on the iPhone.
August 2009 Feeding the news
Zuckerberg acquires FriendFeed, a startup news aggregator that collects information from different social networks.
31 May 2010 - Quit Facebook Day
Growing concerns about how Facebook manages users' data prompted calls for people to deactivate their accounts and quit the social networking site for good. Although, it was difficult to tell how many (if any) went through with it.
July 2010 - And the users just keep coming
Despite calls for people to ditch the social networking site months before, Facebook celebrated signing up its 500 millionth user in July. At the time, around 26 million of them were based in the UK.
9 August, 2011 - Facebook Messenger on the Small Screen
Facebook releases a messaging app for iOS, Android, and Blackberry. It enjoys popularity as an alternative texting app.
December 2011 - Timeline
Facebook redesigns users' wall pages with a Timeline view that categorises all the content they've shared on the site by date. The move receives a mixed response from users, with some users claiming the move has resulted in previously private messages being made public on their timelines.
This claim is later contested by Facebook, who explained the messages were merely older wall posts that had always been visible on people's profiles.
1 February, 2012 - Going Public
Facebook files its initial public offering (IPO) to put its plan to become a a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ stock exchange in motion.
12 April, 2012 - Instagram
Facebook acquires Instagram for $1 billion. The price stuns the tech world.
18 May, 2012 - Makes stock market debut
Facebook finally makes its stock market debut on Friday 18 May, with shares valued at $38 each, making it one of the biggest IPOs in the history of the technology industry.
The stock slumps on the first day, though it recovers most of its expected value by the end of the week.
23 August, 2012 - Better apps
The company finally redesigns its mobile apps from less efficient HTML5 to native code to improve performance.
4 October 2012 - One billion users
After eight years of toil, and who knows how many redesigns, Facebook confirms it now has one billion active users.
"Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life. I am committed to working every day to make Facebook better for you, and hopefully together one day we will be able to connect the rest of the world too," said Zuckerberg, at the time.
