Facebook was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg as a social networking site for Harvard students. It quickly expanded to other universities and later to high schools and the general public. By 2006 it had over 7.5 million users but faced competition from MySpace which had over 55 million users. Facebook introduced new features like News Feed that caused a user revolt but the issues were addressed. It continued expanding by opening to more schools and countries. Major acquisitions and events included Instagram in 2012, WhatsApp in 2014, and the Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal in 2018. By 2017 Facebook had over 2 billion monthly active users, cementing its position as one of the largest and most popular social media platforms in the world.