Contents
Who Was the First Face on Facebook?
When Facebook first launched, the question was, “Who was the face?” The answer is an interesting one. Mark Zuckerberg’s classmate Andrew McCollum designed the Facebook logo, which features the face of Al Pacino. Although he did not personally use the photo, he published it online and covered it with digital media. Today, Facebook has over a billion active users. Andrew McCollum is considered the first face of Facebook.
Andrew McCollum
Andrew McCollum is an American entrepreneur, angel investor, and co-founder of several companies. He attended Harvard University beginning in 2004 and completed his degree in computer science. While there, he met Mark Zuckerberg and discussed the project. During this time, he asked Andrew to design graphics for the prototype. Even though McCollum was not a skilled graphic designer, he produced original icons and logos for Facebook.
Before joining Facebook in 2004, Andrew McCollum worked for job-hunting company JobSpice. It was backed by Y Combinator and served over 600,000 college students in the U.S., before shutting down in September 2011. Later that year, McCollum founded Philo, a live-streaming television service aimed at college students. The two continue to meet with investors and entertainment partners to improve services.
Al Pacino
The name Facebook has a funny ring to it. It is not surprising, then, that the first face of the social network is a famous actor. The actor, who was Facebook’s first mascot, was none other than Al Pacino. The face, which is a modified image of Pacino, greeted Facebook users at the top of the page. The actor’s face was changed in 2006, after Facebook deleted the original image from the upper left-hand corner of its homepage. Zuckerberg’s classmate, David Kirkpatrick, revealed that a friend of his had drawn the sketch.
Andrew Callum, Mark Zuckerberg’s classmate, created the Facebook logo. He used a pixelated image of a male face covered in one-hundred-and-zero-equivalent data to represent Facebook. The face was placed in the top-right corner of the home page. The face that appeared in the Facebook logo caused much debate, but Andrew McCollum finally decided to go with Al Pacino and change the image.
Dustin Moskovitz
Facebook founder Dustin Moskovitz was one of the earliest faces of the company, having dropped out of Harvard and moved to Silicon Valley at the age of 23. At the time, he was just one year younger than Zuckerberg and the hotshot Max Rosenstein. Despite being the first face of the social network, Moskovitz kept to the background, letting Rosenstein take the spotlight. He was also a teacher, preferring to stay out of the public eye.
Despite his enormous wealth, Dustin Moskovitz remains philanthropic. In 2010, he signed the Bill Gates Giving Pledge, pledging to give away half of his wealth over the course of his lifetime. He also has a philanthropic firm called Good Ventures, which invests in startups that help humanity. Dustin Moskovitz was also a major investor in Facebook’s initial public offering, which made his net worth approximately $23.9 billion. He attributed the majority of his wealth to a 1% stake in Meta Platforms, the company he founded.
Chris Hughes
A multimillionaire philanthropist named Chris Hughes has jumped onto Facebook, where he’s become one of the most popular figures. He’s also known as a philanthropist and has organized numerous fundraiser shows in support of various worthy causes. But he hasn’t stopped behaving like a multimillionaire. Read on to find out why. This article was written by Dylan Matthews, a senior correspondent for Vox, and Annie Tritt, an editorial photographer in New York City.
The article features pictures of Hughes and Zuckerberg. As an undergraduate, Hughes was at Harvard with a hairstyle that was too short for him, an ill-fitting prep-school outfit, and an outmoded laptop. He was still young when Facebook started, so he struggled with figuring out what people would want. After the company expanded its membership, Hughes helped make product suggestions and became an official explainer. At Harvard, he was part anthropologist, part customer service representative, and media spokesperson.
Mark Zuckerberg
Originally, an image of a man’s face obscured by binary code represented the first “face” of Facebook. However, this soon changed when Al Pacino joined. Today, Facebook has more than a billion users and a more recognizable face, Florence Detlor, a former Occidental College graduate, has joined the platform. She’s been a member since August 19, 2009, and says she enjoys connecting with people.
When Zuckerberg was a Harvard University sophomore, he developed CourseMatch, a website that let people choose classes based on other students’ choices. He also developed Facemash, which allowed users to rate two people’s attractiveness, a feature which was quickly shut down by school administrators. Three upperclassmen then approached Zuckerberg about a social network that would let them connect with friends and classmates.
