The 40 Most Important News Stories About Facebook Since Its IPO

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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.