10 Screenshots of the Old Facebook Designs

Happy Facebook IPO Day! 10 Screenshots of the Old Facebook Designs Janet Aronica • Blogging Inspiration • May 18, 2012

Color me old, but I have no shame at all in shaking my cane at the internet in this post and reflecting on the outstanding accomplishments, features and things experienced on a little social network I joined seven years ago, back then called TheFacebook.com. Similar to the story of many users, I joined just before I left for college in August 2005 when I snagged my .edu email address. My prom picture was my first profile picture. My very first Facebook friends included my best friend Amanda (you’re internet famous now!), whom I was listed as “it’s complicated with” for like two years because that was the thing to do as well as a bunch of people who lived in my college dorm freshman year. But of course if you were one of my 700ish Facebook friends, you’d know all this now (plus a whole lot more that I’m too lazy to delete), thanks to Timeline.

Facebook generated more than $1 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2012 and boasts more than 900 million users, and today it’s officially a public company. Raising $16 billion for the company, Facebook is the largest tech IPO in history with shares priced at $38 a share. Along the journey to becoming a full-fledged public company, Facebook has had good features and bad. Um… Farmville? Beacon sorta sucked. Remember sheep-throwing? That got real weird. Now there’s this latest organ donation thing… now that’s my style.

Facebook is like the Lady Gaga of websites: It’s always reinventing itself, and it will be fascinating to see how they leverage the IPO for innovation and participate in that evolution as a user.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at some of Facebook’s awesome – and a few of my not so favorite – Facebook redesigns over the years.