There are a lot more millionaires in the world today as Facebook raised $16 billion on Thursday in an IPO that put the company's valuation at more than $100 billion. And climbing.

In 2010, Jose Antonio Vargas wrote the definitive profile of the social network. "Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in his college dorm room six years ago. Five hundred million people have joined since, and eight hundred and seventy-nine of them are his friends," he reported. "The site is a directory of the world’s people, and a place for private citizens to create public identities. You sign up and start posting information about yourself: photographs, employment history, why you are peeved right now with the gummy-bear selection at Rite Aid or bullish about prospects for peace in the Middle East. Some of the information can be seen only by your friends; some is available to friends of friends; some is available to anyone."

Mark Harris summed up the Hollywood film the company inspired. "Making a movie about Facebook isn’t like making a movie about Yahoo or Google. It’s a charged word—a symbol of groupthink, giantism, toxic oversharing, and the destruction of privacy to those who hate it and an absolutely essential mode of self-presentation to its adherents," Harris wrote. "Either way, it’s not a subject that breeds indifference."

Fred Vogelsteinexplained the company's bid for global domination. "Today, the Google-Facebook rivalry isn't just going strong, it has evolved into a full-blown battle over the future of the Internet—its structure, design, and utility. For the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google's algorithms—rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world," he writes. "Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. In Zuckerberg's vision, users will query this "social graph" to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire—rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where Google is now."

Vanessa Grigoriadis described the situation at the company in 2009. "This is a crucial moment for Facebook, and a delicate one, because We, the users, are what Facebook is selling. 'Facebook is walking a fine line of keeping the trust of its members, and wanting to exploit them for profit,' says Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch. 'It’s having a tough time balancing the two.' In 2007, the company was valued at $15 billion, after Microsoft bought a 1.6 percent stake for $240 million, but profit has been elusive," Grigoriadis wrote. "If they can solve this problem, come up with a viable business model—one might note that if they charged $1 a month for the service and even half its users stuck around, it would take in $100 million each month—it could go public and even become the first big IPO to reinvigorate the market; if Facebook doesn’t, Zuckerberg & Co. will struggle to resist a takeover by a very rich tech company (well, Microsoft) for a fire-sale price of a billion or two."

And Matt Labash mounted a brave resistance. "I hate Facebook and everyone on it, including my friends, who I like. My wife just joined it, and I dearly love her. But scratch that. I hate her too. After all, right is right. Sometimes, we courageous few must make a stand," he writes. "Collecting Facebook friends is the equivalent of being a catlady, collecting numerous Himalayans, which you have neither the time nor the inclination to feed."