Facebook prepares to celebrate its 10th birthday

There’s something a little ironic about publicly wishing happy birthday to the company that pretty much ruined birthdays by making them so public. But in a few days, about 1.23 billion users will help blow out the candles on Facebook‘s tenth birthday cake. Aside from an IPO marred by the equivalent of a kale-filled Piñata and a deflated bouncy house, most of Facebook’s childhood years have been remarkably good.

Facebook will celebrate its 10th birthday on Tuesday, an occasion likely to spur an outpouring of reflection on its past and speculation about its future. Mark Zuckerberg launched “Thefacebook” from his dorm room at Harvard University on Feb. 4, 2004. The site was conceived as a way to connect students, and let them build an online identity for themselves. It has since expanded to cover a large swath of the planet, with more than 1.2 billion people — one-seventh of the world’s population — using its site on a monthly basis, according to the company’s own recent figures.