(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 website
facebook. Zuckerberg is the chairman and executive of facebook, inc. His
personal wealth as of july 2015, is estimated to be $38.6 billion.
Zuckerberg receives a one- dollar salary as CEO of
facebook. Together with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University
students Eduardo saverin, Adrew Mccollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes,
He launched facebook from Harvard University’s dormitory rooms. The group then
introduced facebook onto other campuses
nationwide and moved to Palo Alto, California shortly afterwards. In 2007, at
the age of 23, Zuckerberg became a billionaire as a result of facebook’s success. The number of facebook users world
wide reached a total of one billion in 2012. Zuckerberg was involved in various
legal disputes that were initiated by others in the group, who claimed a share
of the company based upon their involvement during the development phase of
facebook.
Since
2010, Time magazine has named zuckerberg among the 100 wealthiest and most
influential people in the world as a part its person of the year distinction.
In 2011, zuckerberg ranked first on the list of the ‘’Most influential Jews in
the world’’ by the Jerusalem post. Zuckerberg was played by actor jesse
Eisenberg in the 2010 film. The social network, in which the rise of facebook
is portrayed.
EARLY LIFE
Zuckerberg
was born in 1984, in white plains, New York. He is the son of dentist Edward
Zuckerberg and psychiatrist Karen Kempner. He and his three sisters were, Randi,
Donna, and Arielle were brought up in Dobbs ferry, New York, a small Westchester
county village about 10 miles (16 km) north of New York city. Zuckerberg was
raised a Jewish and had his Bar mitzvah when he turned thirteen. Afterward, he
became an atheist. At Ardsley High school, Zuckerberg excelled in classics. He
transferred to Phillips Exeter Accademy in New Hampshire in his junior year,
where he won prizes in science (maths, astronomy, and physics) and classical
studies. On his college application, Zuckerberg claimed that he could read and write
French, Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek. He was captain of the fencing team.
In college, he was known for reciting lines
from epic poems such as The Iliad.
SOFTWARE DEVELOPER
Zuckerberg began using computers and
writing software
in middle school. His father taught
him Atari BASIC programming in the 1990s, and later hired software developer
David Newman to tutor him privately. Newman calls him a ‘’prodigy’’ adding that
it was ‘’taugh to stay ahead of him’’. Zuckerberg took a graduate course in the
subject at Mercy college near his home while still in high school. He enjoyed
developing computer programs, especially communication tools and games. In one
such program, since his father’s dental practice was operated from their home,
he built a software program he called ‘’ZuckNet’’ that allowed all the
computers between the house and the dental office to communicate with each
other. It is considered a ‘’primitive’’ version of of AOL’s Instant Messenger,
which came out the following year. According to writer Jose Antonio Vargas,
‘’some kids played computer games. Mark created them. ‘’Zuckerberg himself
recalls this period. ‘’I had a bunch of friends who were artists. They’d come
over, draw stuff, and I’d build a game out of it. ‘’However, notes vargas,
zuckerberg was not a typical ‘’geek-klutz’’, as he later became captain of his
prep school fencing team and earned a classics diploma. Napster, co-founder
sean parker, a close friend, notes that Zuckerberg was ’’really into Greek odysseys
and all that stuff’’, recalling how he once quoted lines from the roman epic
poem Aeneid, by vigil, during a facebook product conference .
During
Zuckerberg’s high school years, under the company name intelligent Media Group, he built a music player called
snapse Media Player that used machine learning to learn the user’s listening
habits, which was posted to Slashdot and received a rating of 3 out of 5 pc
magazine.
COLLEGE YEARS
By the time he began classes in Harvard, Zuckerberg has already
achieved a ’’ reputation as a programming prodigy’’, notes Vargas. He study
psychology and computer science as well as belonging to Alpha Epsilon Pi a
Jewish fraternity, and Kirkland House. In his sophomore year, he wrote a
program he called CourseMatch,
which allowed users to make class selection decisions based on the choices of
other students and also to help them form study groups. A short time later, he
created a different program he initially called facemash that lets students
select the best looking person from a choice of photos. According to Zuckerberg’s
roommate at that time, Aire Hasit ‘’he built the site for fun’’. Hasit
explains:
We
had books called facebooks, which included the names and pictures of everyone
who lived in the student dorms. At first, he built a site and placed two
pictures, or pictures of two males and two females. Visitors to the site had to
choose who was ‘’hotter’’ and according to the votes that would be a ranking.
This
site went up over a weekend, but by Monday morning, the college shut it down because of its
popularity has overwhelmed one of Harvard network switches and prevented
students from accessing the internet. In addition, many students complained
that their pictures were being used without permission. Zuckerberg apologized
publicly, and the student paper ran article stating that his site was
‘’completely improper’’. The following
semester, in January 2004, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website. On
February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched ‘’
the facebook’’, originally located at facebook.com Six days after the site
launched, three Harvard seniors, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and
Divya Narendra, accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into
believing he would help them build a
social network called Harvard connection.com, while he was instead using their
ideas to build a competing product. The three complained to the Harvard crimson
and the newspaper began an investigation in response. Following the official launch of the
facebook social media platform, the three filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg
that resulted in a settlement. The agreed settlement was for 1.2 million
facebook shares that worth US$300 million at facebook’s IPO. Zuckerberg dropped
out of Harvard in his sophomore year to complete his project. In January 2014,
Zuckerberg recalled:
I
remember really vividly, you know, having pizza with my friends a day or two
after_ I opened up the first version of facebook at the time I thought, ’’you
know, someone needs to build a service like this for the world’’ But I just
never thought we’d be the ones to help do it. And I think a lot of what it
comes down to is we just cared more.
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