Happy 20, Facebook: If You Invested $1,000 In Mark Zuckerberg’s Social Network When It Went Public 12 Years Ago, Here’s How Much You’d Have

Meta Platforms Inc.’s (NASDAQ:META) flagship product, Facebook, is now 20 years old. While it is still a year away from hitting the minimum legal drinking age in the U.S., Facebook has had a huge impact on how information is consumed and connections with friends, family and other users online.

Facebook also changed the fortunes of its co-founders forever, and in particular, Mark Zuckerberg. The Meta CEO is now amongst the top five richest people in the world, with a fortune of $170 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, increasing by over $42 billion since the beginning of 2024.

Facebook currently has 3.07 billion monthly active users. It is by far the world’s largest social network, which is especially notable because it is 20 years old now.

The Facebook of today wasn’t how it started out. Here’s a brief walk down the memory lane.

See Also: If You Invested $1000 In Apple When Steve Jobs Returned To Apple 28 Years Ago, Here’s How Much You’d Have

The Harvard Social Network

Facebook, founded as “Thefacebook” in 2004, was initially a project designed to connect Harvard University students. It was subsequently expanded to other Ivy League schools and subsequently to other academic institutions in the U.S. and Canada.

Given its exploding success, though, Zuckerberg and his fellow co-founders, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes eventually opened up the platform for everyone.

Facebook’s snappy and intuitive interface, for its time, quickly gained traction since users could quickly share photos, updates and more with their friends and family.

The company eventually dropped “The” from its name and rechristened itself as just “Facebook” after acquiring the facebook.com domain name for $200,000 in 2005.

Some of Facebook’s initial investors include Peter Thiel and LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman.

Facebook went public in 2012, eight years after its launch.

Let’s look at how Meta stock has fared since its IPO 12 years ago.

Meta stock price from May 18, 2012, to today

Meta launched its IPO at $38.

Its stock price today is $474.99, which is an increase of 1,150% during this period.

Value of a $1,000 investment in Meta stock, and the Nasdaq and S&P 500 indices, respectively, from May 18, 2012, to today

If you had invested $1,000 in Meta stock on May 18, 2012,…