The 40 Most Important News Stories About Facebook Since Its IPO

From acquisitions to product changes, employee departures to new revenue generators, Facebook moves faster than just about any company in tech. In just three months since its IPO, it’s produced a staggering amount on news.

To lend context to Facebook’s Q2 earnings and user growth stats it just released, here’s a recap of this quarter’s biggest headlines about Facebook along with one line of analysis on each…

5/18: Facebook’s Acquisition of Karma Brings Mobile Commerce, App Monetization Prowess – Karma could help Facebook suggest real-world gifts to buy for your friends

5/19: Day After IPO, Mark Zuckerberg Marries Longtime Girlfriend Priscilla Chan – As Facebook’s CEO grows up and starts a family, he may mature into thinking more about Facebook as a business.

5/24: Facebook Acq-Hires Part Of Design Firm Bolt | Peters To Beef Up User Research Team – This could improve Facebook’s design and keep it from shocking users with hated product changes.

5/24: FB Launches Facebook Camera – An Instagram-Style Photo Filtering, Sharing, Viewing iOS App – The standalone could drive uploads of photos, one of Facebook’s biggest engagement drivers.

5/29: Facebook Faces Extended US Review of Instagram Deal [Reuters] – The deal is still pending review, though that doesn’t mean the acquisition is less likely to go through.

5/30: Facebook Rolls Out ‘Promoted Posts” Feature [Inside Facebook] – Promoted Posts is designed to make it easy for small businesses to pay for more impressions in the news feed.

5/31: Facebook Finally Cracks Down On Auto-Sharing Spam With “10-Second Rule” – A wise move that preserved the user experience but could hurt some social app growth.

6/1: Facebook Forced By Privacy Activist To Put Policy Changes Up For Worldwide Vote – This shows Facebook still has thorns in its side, though an inclusive vote allowed Facebook to implement changes.

6/4: Facebook Explores Giving Kids Access [WSJ] – Opening access to kids under age 13 could boost user counts and attract a new class of advertisers.

6/4: Salesforce Lines Up Against Oracle On Social Push; Buys Buddy Media For $689M – Even if soggy IPOs will discourage social tech companies to go public, there are still big exits to be had.

6/5: App Devs, Grab Your Credit Cards: You Can Now Buy Mobile-Only Ads On Facebook – Facebook courts advertisers by letting them choose to show ads only on mobile.

6/7: Facebook’s New App Center Is Here: The Details – Facebook launches its own social version of the App Store for helping users discover web and mobile apps.

6/7: Facebook’s Mobile Power: 83M People And 134M Clicks To iOS Apps In May, Plus Top Leaderboard Spots: This proves Facebook is a powerful ally for both iOS and Android.

6/11: Apple Gives Facebook Deep Integration Into iOS 6  and OS X Mountain Lion With Siri, Sharing, App Store, API – This shows signs of a growing Facebook – Apple alliance.

6/11: Facebook Picks Up The Mobile Development Team From Pieceable – Pieceable allowed users to preview mobile apps from the desktop and could bolster Facebook’s App Center

6/13: Facebook Exchange: A New Way For Advertisers To Target Specific Users With Real-Time Bid Ads – Retargeted ads on Facebook could bring in loads of direct advertising spend.

6/15: Facebook CTO Bret Taylor Leaving To Do His Own Thing – Though some considered Taylor to be a figurehead, it shows some talent may be slipping away to startup land.

6/18: Facebook Scoops Up Face.com For $55-60M To Bolster Its Facial Recognition Tech – This could bring facial recognition to Facebook mobile, and power a facial recognition API

6/18: Here’s How A Facebook Hyper-Local Mobile Ad Product Would Target You – An unconfirmed rumor, but this could pull in huge spend by helping local businesses target people in sight.

6/18: Report: Over 24% Of The Web’s Top 10,000 Sites Now Use Facebook’s Official Widgets – The social network has conquered a quarter of the web, which could seed a rollout of an ad network.

6/19: They Work! Facebook Mobile Ads Are Clicked 13X More, Earn 11X More Money Than Its Desktop Ads – Proof Facebook may have a bright future in mobile advertising and monetization after all.

6/21: Problems For Monetization: Lawsuit Forces Facebook To Let You Opt Out Of Sponsored Story Ads – You’ll only be able to opt out of being used in ads one story at a time, though, so not crippling.

6/22: Facebook Ads and Sponsored Stories Are Now Running On Zynga.com, Previewing A FB Ad Network – If expanded to more sites, the ad network could become a huge money maker.

6/23: Why Facebook Is Folding On Credits And Doubling Down On Payments – Facebook abandons its own virtual currency, switching to local currencies for payments and adding subscriptions.

6/25: Facebook Hides Your Personal Email Addresses, Leaving Only @Facebook.com Visible On Profile – Facebook promotes its email/messaging system, and hides Gmail addresses in a blow to Google.

6/25: Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s Long-Time COO, Becomes First Woman On Its Board Of Directors – This demonstrates how Facebook prefers promoting leaders from within.

6/27: Facebook Plans To Speed Up Its iPhone App [NYTimes] – Facebook is planning a major back-end update to quicken its notoriously slow iPhone app.

6/27: Facebook Now Lets You “Like” and “Follow” Someone In Any App, Get Their Updates In News Feed – All part of Facebook’s plan to become the only news feed you need, and monetize attention with ads.

7/6: Yahoo and Facebook Confirm Deal To Cross-License Their Patent Portfolios, Sell Ads Together – With Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson gone, the two bury the hatchet and embark on big partnership.

7/11: Facebook Groups Start Showing Exactly Who Saw Each Post – If this moves to the news feed, it could make Facebook communication more lifelike, but some users could find it creepy.

7/11: Facebook Finally Redesigns Events, Adds Calendar and List Views – It’s one of Facebook’s most unique and powerful features, but hadn’t gotten a big update in years.

7/12: The Facebook Tweak That Killed A Billion-Dollar Industry [CNN Money] – The switch to the Timeline design for Pages reduced traffic to some Page apps by up to 90%.

7/16: Facebook’s Latest Acqui-Hire: Spool, The “Instapaper On Steroids” – Along with its acquihire of Acrylic, Spool could help Facebook build an internal “read it later” service.

7/18: Facebook Earns 58% More Per Ad Than Last Year – Demand for Facebook ads keeps rising, allowing it to make more money without adding more users.

7/19: Facebook Begins Testing Sponsored Results, Its First Search Typeahead Ads – A new ad format that could compete with Google Sponsored Search Results.

7/20: Facebook Acqui-Hires Mac and iOS Developer Acrylic Software – Acrylic was the one-man team who built personalized content saving apps  Pulp and Wallet

7/20: Nasdaq to Release Compensation Plan for Investors Hurt by Facebook IPO Mess [Fox Business] – The IPO was a mess and NASDAQ was partly to blame.

7/24: Facebook Open Graph Leader Director Of Product Management Carl Sjogreen Leaves – This signals some Facebook leaders are exiting after the IPI. Sjogreen’s planning to launch a new startup.

7/24: Facebook Opens First International Engineering Office In London – The office will let it grab top engineering talent from Europe without introducing a language barrier between teams.

7/25: Zynga Explains “Challenging” Q2: Facebook Platform Changes – Facebook aiding discovery of new apps over the most popular ones led to revenue decreases, causing its stock price to plummet.