With wishing him Happy Birthday lets know more about “Facebook” CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White
Plains, New York—and raised in Dobbs Ferry, New York—into a comfortable,
well-educated family. His father, Edward Zuckerberg, ran a dental practice
attached to the family's home. His mother, Karen, worked as a psychiatrist
before the birth of the couple's four children—Mark, Randi, Donna and Arielle.
Zuckerberg developed an interest in computers at an early
age; when he was about 12, he used Atari BASIC to create a messaging program he
named "Zucknet." His father used the program in his dental
office, so that the receptionist could inform him of a new patient without
yelling across the room. The family also used Zucknet to communicate within the
house. Together with his friends, he also created computer games just for fun.
"I had a bunch of friends who were artists," he said. "They'd
come over, draw stuff, and I'd build a game out of it."
To keep up with Mark's burgeoning interest in computers, his
parents hired private computer tutor David Newman to come to the house once a
week and work with Mark. Newman later told reporters that it was hard to stay
ahead of the prodigy, who began taking graduate courses at nearby Mercy College
around this same time.
Zuckerberg later studied at Phillips Exeter Academy, an
exclusive preparatory school in New Hampshire. There he showed talent in
fencing, becoming the captain of the school's team. He also excelled in
literature, earning a diploma in classics. Yet Zuckerberg remained fascinated
by computers, and continued to work on developing new programs. While still in high school, he
created an early version of the music software Pandora, which he called
Synapse. Several companies—including AOL and Microsoft—expressed an
interest in buying the software, and hiring the teenager before graduation. He
declined the offers.
Time at Harvard
After graduating from Exeter in 2002, Zuckerberg enrolled at
Harvard University. By his sophomore year at the iv y league institution, he
had developed a reputation as the go-to software developer on campus. It was at
that time that he built a program called CourseMatch, which helped
students choose their classes based on the course selections of other users. He
also invented Facemash, which compared the pictures of two students on
campus and allowed users to vote on which one was more attractive. The program
became wildly popular, but was later shut down by the school administration
after it was deemed inappropriate.
Based on the buzz of his previous projects, three of his
fellow students—Divya Narendra, and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss—sought
him out to work on an idea for a social networking site they called Harvard
Connection.
This site was designed to use information from Harvard's
student networks in order to create a dating site for the Harvard elite.
Zuckerberg agreed to help with the project, but soon dropped out to work on his
own social networking site with friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and
Eduardo Saverin.
Zuckerberg and his friends created a site that allowed users
to create their own profiles, upload photos,and communicate with other users.
The group ran the site—first called The Facebook—out of a dorm room at Harvard
until June 2004. After his sophomore year, Zuckerberg dropped out of college to
devote himself to Facebook full time, moving the company to Palo Alto,
California. By the end of 2004, Facebook had 1 million users.
The Rise of Facebook
In 2005, Zuckerberg's enterprise received a huge boost from
the venture capital firm Accel Partners. Accel invested $12.7 million into the
network, which at the time was open only to ivy league students. Zuckerberg's
company then granted access to other colleges, high school and international
schools, pushing the site's membership to more than 5.5 million users by
December 2005. The site then began attracting the interest of other companies,
who wanted to advertize with the popular social hub. Not wanting to sell out,
Zuckerberg turned down offers from companies such as Yahoo! and MTV Networks.
Instead, he focused on expanding the site, opening up his project to outside
developers and adding more features.
Zuckerberg seemed to be going nowhere but up, however in
2006, the business mogul faced his first big hurdle. The creators of Harvard
Connection claimed that Zuckerberg stole their idea, and insisted the
software developer needed to pay for their business losses. Zuckerberg
maintained that the ideas were based on two very different types of social
networks but, after lawyers searched Zuckerberg's records, incriminating Instant
Messages revealed that Zuckerberg may have intentionally stolen the
intellectual property of Harvard Connection and offered Facebook users' private
information to his friends.
Zuckerberg later apologized for the incriminating messages,
saying he regretted them. "If you're going to go on to build a service
that is influential and that a lot of people rely on, then you need to be
mature, right?" he said in an interview with The New Yorker. "I think
I've grown and learned a lot."
Although an initial settlement of $65 million was reached
between the two parties, the legal dispute over the matter continued well into
2011, after Narendra and the Winklevosses claimed they were misled in regards
to the value of their stock.
Zuckerberg faced yet another personal challenge when the
2009 book The Accidental Billionaires, by writer Ben Mezrich, hit stores.
Mezrich was heavily criticized for his re-telling of Zuckerberg's story, which
used invented scenes, re-imagined dialogue and fictional characters. Regardless
of how true-to-life the story was, Mezrich managed to sell the rights of the
tale to screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, and the critically acclaimed film The Social
Network received eight Academy Award nominations.
Zuckerberg objected strongly to the film's narrative, and
later told a reporter at The New Yorker that many of the details in the film
were inaccurate. For example, Zuckerberg has been dating longtime girlfriend
Priscilla Chan, a Chinese-American medical student he met at Harvard, since
2003.
He also said he never had interest in joining any of the final clubs.
"It's interesting what stuff they focused on getting right; like, every
single shirt and fleece that I had in that movie is actually a shirt or fleece
that I own," Zuckerberg told a reporter at a start-up conference in 2010.
"So there's all this stuff that they got wrong and a bunch of random
details that they got right."
Yet Zuckerberg and Facebook continued to succeed, in spite
of the criticism. Time magazine named him Person of the Year in 2010, and
Vanity Fair placed him at the top of their New Establishment list. Forbes also
ranked Zuckerberg at No. 35—beating out Apple CEO Steve Jobs—on its "400"
list, estimating his net worth to be $6.9 billion.
Philanthropic Causes
Since amassing his sizeable fortune, Zuckerberg has used his
millions to fund a variety of philanthropic causes. The most notable examples
came in 2010. In September of that year, he donated $100 million to save the
failing Newark Public Schools system in New Jersey. Then, in December 2010,
Zuckerberg signed the "Giving Pledge", promising to donate at least
50 percent of his wealth to charity over the course of his lifetime. Other
Giving Pledge members include Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and George Lucas.
After his donation, Zuckerberg called on other young, wealthy entrepreneurs to
follow suit. "With a generation of younger folks who have thrived on the
success of their companies, there is a big opportunity for many of us to give
back earlier in our lifetime and see the impact of our philanthropic
efforts," he said.
Going Public
Zuckerberg made two major life changes in May 2012. Facebook
had its initial public offering, which raised $16 billion, making it the
biggest internet IPO in history. How Zuckerberg's company will handle this
influx of cash remains to be seen. But Zuckerberg may be looking at more
acquisitions. He personally negotiated the company deal to buy Instragram the
previous month.
After the initial success of the IPO, the Facebook stock
price dropped somewhat in the early days of trading. But Zuckerberg is expected
to weather any ups and downs in his company's market performance. He holds more
than a quarter of its stock and retains 57 percent control of the voting
shares.
On May 19, 2012—a day after the IPO—Zuckerberg wed his
longtime girlfriend, Priscilla Chan. About 100 people gathered at the couple's
Palo Alto, California home. The guests thought they were there to celebrate
Chan's graduation from medical school, but instead they witnessed Zuckerberg
and Chan exchange vows.
In May 2013, Facebook made the Fortune 500 list for the
first time—making Zuckerberg, at the age of 28, the youngest CEO on the list.
Litmus Test: To become a "Face" do something which is not in to a "Book".
-Diptesh
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