Did facebook do any marketing at the beginning?

Did the owner of facebook do any sort of marketing when he started the site or even afer he started it? According to Wikipedia Facebook lost $3.63 million in 2005, was that mostly put into advertisements and stuff like that? I doubt now they do any sort of advertising.
Thanks, SP360

 

I believe that facebook just spread via word of mouth.

 

As for me, facebook is still one of the best social network site.

 

facebook was publicized through yahoo. We don't know if advertising was free or not..

 

Advertised through ads, groups, chat ?
You got any idea what it was advertised throug? I've never seen any facebook ads on Yahoo before

 

If I'm not mistaken, FaceBook gets popular mainly due to word-of-mouth ... which's created by opening the website for coder/programmer to build plugin (games!) for it.

 

I know they appear on BBC before it was launched, and theres also big publicity about one of the friends who were not included on the project and threatened to sue on the ground that Facebook was his ideas.

I don't know if those are paid though

 

they appeared on BBC before they were launched? WOW, but why would BBC put em on TV if the site is not even launched?

 

I think they advertised in the start, but they have no need to anymore

 

I was under the impression that facebook started by targeting colleges/universities in the US, it then became popular and they opened registrations up to everybody. I've never heard of any paid advertising, but I am probably wrong.

 

nonsense - its a viral killer app. Its spreads by word of mouth and nothing more. the monster called google went the same way, applications such as these all underpinned by the people that use them and they do the free marketing themselves. The guy above is ^^^^ is correct in that the only marketing was really a college focus group and then it spread like wildfire

 

Facebook did one of the smartest things it could have done - and something not many sites have the courage to attempt. It only allowed a very tiny portion of their target market to use the site. Facebook came out amongst a few of the Ivy League schools and Stanford University my senior year of high school. I remember very vividly as the incoming freshmen for those schools received their facebook invitations, were able to sign up, and started checking out their future classmates. I checked the site almost daily waiting for them to add my college and when they finally did, right before the school year started, I was so excited and joined right away. Over time, they did similar things with releasing new features. For a while, groups, gifts, events and more were only available to a select group of users.

This selectivity of the site is really what jump-started the company. They created an aura of value and desirability that made the product in high demand before it was even released.

 

well, before they went big anyway

 

Wow, some nice info you guys got. Thanks to all of those who replied with useful info and keep the info coming if you got any
Thanks, SP360

 

Yes, at the beginning Facebook was exclusive to certain college students creating massive hype for it. I remember not too many years ago in high school when people were desperate for Facebook invites from the upper classmen.

 

I remember seeing a add for it on newgrounds.com a few years back

 

oh yah? What kind of ad was it? adsense type of it, just a regular banner?

 

I think I saw an ad tacked to a telephone pole not too long ago.

 

meaghannf - yeah, I remember that as well, freshman year of college our school was added over christmas break and it practically exploded. It was a great resource for clubs / organizations to communicate and to explain what they could provide. I loved it then, now with all these apps allowed, its just messy, like myspace...

 

Yes they done a lot of advertisement