In February 2012, Facebook announced that it was filing for an IPO. The company, launched out of a college student’s dorm room just 8 years before then, is now estimated to be worth somewhere between $75 billion and $100 billion.

Despite the large impact it has on so many of our lives, it’s important to remember how new social media really is. How did it become a multibillion dollar industry so fast? Scroll through the timeline to learn the short of a very big idea.