Facebook Turns 10: How Turning Down $1 Billion Defined the Social Media Giant

In the latter half of 2006, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg turned down a $1 billion acquisition offer from Yahoo and now, 10 years into its existence, the social network has not looked back.

Zuckerberg was 22 when Yahoo made the offer and many Facebook employees were around the same age. Yahoo would have made a bunch of 20-somethings multimillionaires and Facebook was reportedly ready to accept.

"I think most people were in favor of accepting the Yahoo offer, and I think Facebook was prepared to," Ezra Callahan, an early Facebook employee, told Mashable. "And then Yahoo more or less rescinded or lowered the initial offer, which made it easier to say 'no' after that."

Marc Andreessen, an early Facebook investor and a member of the company's board of directors, said Yahoo lowered its offer by $200 million and that influenced Zuckerberg and Facebook to turn it down.

Eight years later, Facebook is the largest social media website on the planet and has done something most others have not, last. Zuckerberg has set the model for an Internet startup in the age of Internet startups. The decision to turn down a lucrative offer before the company became profitable may have been gutsy, but it was also an example of why you should never sell too early.

What once started as a cool little website for a handful of college campuses has now gone public and hosts more than a billion users worldwide. According to USA Today, the company's May 2012 IPO was a flop, but they have rebounded to report a 55 percent increase in revenues in 2013.

"Over the coming months and years, you'll see us continue focusing on many of the same themes but now with greater scale, ambition and resources," Zuckerberg told reporters on the company's earnings conference call.

Becoming the industry standard has not quelled that ambition for Facebook and Zuckerberg still wants to go higher. The launch of Paper, a new mobile app for a different way to browse Facebook, shows the company will focus more on the social network's mobile aspect.

"One of Mark's greatest strengths is that when he sees change happening, he embraces it rather than trying to avoid it," former chief technical officer Bret Taylor told the San Francisco Chronicle. "So for me, I believe it will exist in 10 years for that reason. But I don't know what it will be in 10 years."