Furthermore, you may remember that Facebook’s (often disputed) $15 billion valuation was forged back then in 2008. Now that their user base has doubled, is the valuation still unreasonably high? Or, perhaps, unreasonably low? Despite the economic recession and the press raving about Facebook being unable to turn a profit, while they’re growing at this rate, I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg’s hair will turn gray any time soon.

To celebrate, Facebook has started a charity campaign. Users can go here and share their stories about “how Facebook has helped them give back to their communities, effect change or connect with a distant relative.” They’re working together with 16 charitable and advocacy organizations that have created gifts, available in Facebook’s gift shop. Buy a gift, and 90 to 95 percent of the cost goes back to the organization represented by that gift; Facebook won’t keep any of the money for themselves.

The move comes just a few days after an embarrassing climbdown, after changes to the site’s terms of use led to outrage among many of the site’s 175m users. The concerns, over a shift in wording that appeared to give Facebook perpetual ownership to every piece of data on the site, eventually led to Zuckerberg making a drastic U-turn.

Although executives at the site said they did not intend to offend or annoy users with the earlier changes, they recognised that data ownership was a sensitive issue for many people.

Facebook’s vice president of communications and public policy, Eliot Schrage, said it was ironic that many of the blogs which criticised Facebook’s recent changes had even more.

“Because of the nature of the information our users share, we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard,” he added.

Facebook has suffered from backlashes after before – when implementing its news feed or its controversial Beacon advertising system, for example. But this latest change effectively hopes to stem future controversies in the bud by putting part of the company’s up for public approval (although Facebook will, of course, still control which issues are up for public discussion and vote)

Zuckerberg, who seemed stuck for words on a few occasions, said that although the announcement was precipitated by last week’s farce, the changes had been discussed for a “long time”.