Mark Elliot Zuckerberg

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) is an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. He is best known as one of five co-founders of the social networking site Facebook. Zuckerberg is the chairman and chief executive of Facebook, Inc.

Born and raised in New York state, he took up writing software programs as a hobby in middle school, beginning with BASIC, with help from his father and a tutor (who called him a "prodigy"). In high school, he excelled in classic literature and fencing while studying at Phillips Exeter Academy.

Early Life

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York, into a comfortable, well-educated family, and raised in the nearby village of Dobbs Ferry. 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 ivy 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.

FaceMash – A Fun Site for Voting

In 2003, once summer evening when Mark Zuckerberg suffered from insomnia in the Harvard dormitory room, he got an idea to create a site called FaceMash. Mark decided to hack the database of Harvard, where the students uploaded their profile pictures. He quickly wrote a program that randomly selected two pictures of two random female students and put them next to each other, asking “Who is hotter?”, giving the option for voting.

The process was in full swing and site was visited by most of the students in Harvard. When the number of visitors exceeded the limit, the server crashed due to overload. Mark appeared before the committee on computer hacking. Of course nobody told Mark Zuckerberg ‘Well done!’ and he received a disciplinary action, and had noticed that such kind of things cause stormy interest in society. By the way, Harvard has refused to comment on the incident up till now.

The Rising of Facebook

Divya Narendra, Co-founded HarvardConnection

About ten months before the Zuckerberg’s FaceMash epic, one of the students of Harvard – Divya Narendra – had already spoken with the idea of creating a social network exclusively for Harvard students, many of whom were suffering from emotional stiffness. And not have ‘aliens’ engaged into the network, Narendra suggested using Harvard email address as the main username.

Divya Narendra’s partners were twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. The father of the Winklevoss twins, Howard Winklevoss, is a successful financial consultant and put in his sons a lot of efforts and money – so the problem with the initial capital for the future network could be solved easily.

In conversation with Mark Narendra said that the project would be called Harvard Connection (later renamed to ConnectU), and its members will be posted to the Internet their photos, personal information and useful links. The tasks of Mark Zuckerberg included programming of the site and creating a special source code, which would allow the system to work as quickly as possible.

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 atThe 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 Fairplaced 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.

How Facebook Makes Money

In 2013, the turnover of Facebook, Inc. reached $7.87 billion and net income – $1.5 billion. The growth rates are also impressive: three years turnover has increased six-fold.

Basis earnings of Facebook come from contextual ads on the pages of social network. Growing number of users and the time they spend on the site is converted into advertising revenues. 85% percent of cash-flow that went through the company last year was earned through contextual advertising.

Most of the rest 15% are deductions from purchases made through the Facebook payment system. These are mostly not real, but virtual goods. For example seeds, fruits and vegetables, purchased by fans of the popular game Farmville developed by Zynga.

FarmVille – popular game on Facebook developed by Zynga

Despite the apparent frivolity, virtual goods is a serious business, and the Facebook report confirms that. The company estimates that in 2010 the global market turnover for virtual goods reached $7 billion, and by 2014 it rose to $15 billion.

At the beginning of January 2013, Facebook Inc. started testing the service of paid private messaging. Facebook charges $1.00 for a private message that you can send to the users who are not in your friend list. And the message goes directly to their Inbox folder, instead of Other one. But Facebook went further and realized that some users are worth more than a $1. If you want to send a message to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and get into his inbox, you might have to pay $100 for this exclusive option. This is another very simple way to generate additional revenue.

Acquisition of Instagram, Oculus Rift and WhatsApp

Co-founders of Instagram Mike Krieger (left) and Kevin Systrom (right)

Mark Zuckerberg is a great strategist and he keeps acquiring companies that continue their operation as independent entities under Facebook’s umbrella.

In April 2012, acquired mobile photo sharing app Instagram for $1 billion in cash and stock. Initially, it was an iOS application developed by Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom. Now Instagram application is available on Android OS as well.

Palmer Freeman Luckey, founder of Oculus VR

In March 2014, Facebook closed acquisition of Oculus Rift for $2 billion. Oculus Rift is a virtual reality hardware engineered by Oculus VR Company headed by Palmer Freeman Luckey. Facebook paid $400 million in cash plus 23.1m Facebook shares, with a further $300 million in incentives if it hits certain milestones in the future.

In October 2014, Mark Zuckerberg completed purchase of WhatsApp for $22 billion. Facebook paid $4.59 billion in cash and 177,760,669 shares in the company. WhatsApp is an instant messaging application founded by Jan Koum and Brian Acton in 2009.

WhatsApp Co-Founders Brian Acton (left) and Jan Koum (right)

Mark Zuckerberg: TIME’s 2010 Person of the Year

In January 2010, TIME magazine named Facebook founder, CEO and 26-year old billionaire Mark Zuckerberg the Person of the Year 2010.

Lady Gaga, James Cameron and founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, were struggling for this title that year. However, TIME magazine chose his hero. ‘The social network created by Mark connected almost every tenth person on the planet’, – Richard Stengel, TIME editor-in-chief explained their choice. According to him, ‘Today, Facebook is the third largest country in the world that knows about its citizens as much as no government on planet does.’

Mark Zuckerberg named TIMES’s person of the year 2010

According to TIME, in the past year no one else had such great impact on the world than the current winner. Mark’s popularity is so high that in 2010 David Fincher shot a movie ‘The Social Network’ in which the main role of Facebook founder was brilliantly played by Jesse Eisenberg. Previously, TIME’s ‘persons of the year’ became the United States presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

In 2010, Forbes magazine admitted Mark Zuckerberg as the youngest billionaire in its list to the state of $4 billion.

In the rating of the 400 richest people in the United States, published by Forbes magazine in 2014, Zuckerberg took 11th place with a net worth of $34 billion.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Lifestyle

Currently Zuckerberg lives in the Palo Alto in a $7 million estate that features 5 bedrooms a saltwater pool, and over 5,000 square feet of property.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Wife Priscilla Chan

On May 19, 2012 Mark Zuckerberg married his longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan in Palo Alto, California and finally they happy live together.

We hope you have enjoyed reading Mark Zuckerberg biography and breathtaking success story of Facebook and it has inspired you to new discoveries.