Mark Zuckerberg
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"Zuckerberg" redirects here. For other people with the surname, see
Zuckerberg (name).
(born May 14, 1984) is an American
computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. He is the chairman, chief
executive officer, and co-founder of
Facebook.
[4][5] His net worth is estimated to be US $53.6 billion as of 2017, ranking him the
5th richest person in the world.
[3][6]
Together with his college roommates and fellow
Harvard University students
Eduardo Saverin,
Andrew McCollum,
Dustin Moskovitz, and
Chris Hughes, he launched Facebook from Harvard's dormitory rooms on February 4, 2004.
[7] The group then introduced Facebook to other college campuses.
Facebook expanded rapidly, reaching one billion users by 2012.
Meanwhile, 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.
In December 2012, Zuckerberg and his wife
Priscilla Chan
announced they would give the majority of their wealth over the course
of their lives to "advancing human potential and promoting equality" in
the spirit of
The Giving Pledge.
[8]
On December 1, 2015, they announced they would eventually give 99% of
their Facebook shares (worth about $45 billion at the time) to the
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
[9][10]
Since 2010,
Time magazine has named Zuckerberg among the 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world as a part of its
Person of the Year distinction.
[11][12][13] In December 2016, Zuckerberg was ranked 10th on
Forbes list of The World's Most Powerful People.
[14]
Early life
Zuckerberg was born in 1984 in
White Plains, New York.
[15] He is the son of dentist Edward Zuckerberg and psychiatrist Karen Kempner.
[16] His grandparents came from Germany, Austria and Poland.
[17] He and his three sisters,
Randi, Donna, and Arielle,
[18] were brought up in
Dobbs Ferry, New York, a small
Westchester County village about 21 miles north of
Midtown Manhattan.
[18] Zuckerberg was raised Jewish and had his
bar mitzvah when he turned 13.
[19]
At
Ardsley High School, Zuckerberg excelled in classes. He transferred to the exclusive private school
Phillips Exeter Academy,
in New Hampshire, in his junior year, where he won prizes in science
(math, 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.
[20][21][22]
Software developer
Early years
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 "tough 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
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 dental office to communicate with
each other. It is considered a "primitive" version of
AOL's
Instant Messenger, which came out the following year.
[23][24]
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
Virgil, during a Facebook product conference.
[18]
During Zuckerberg's high school years, under the company name
Intelligent Media Group, he built a music player called the Synapse
Media Player that used
machine learning to learn the user's listening habits, which was posted to
Slashdot[25] and received a rating of 3 out of 5 from
PC Magazine.
[26]
College years
By the time he began classes at Harvard, Zuckerberg had already
achieved a "reputation as a programming prodigy", notes Vargas. He
studied
psychology and
computer science as well as belonging to
Alpha Epsilon Pi and
Kirkland House.
[11][18][27] 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 let students select the best looking person from a choice of
photos. According to Zuckerberg's roommate at the time, Arie Hasit, "he
built the site for fun". Hasit explains:
We had books called Face Books, 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 there would be a ranking.[28]
The site went up over a weekend; but by Monday morning, the college
shut it down because its popularity had overwhelmed one of Harvard's
network switches
and prevented students from accessing the Internet. In addition, many
students complained that their photos were being used without
permission. Zuckerberg apologized publicly, and the student paper ran
articles stating that his site was "completely improper."
[28]
The following semester, in January 2004, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website.
[29] On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.
[30]
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
HarvardConnection.com, while he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product.
[31] The three complained to
The Harvard Crimson, and the newspaper began an investigation in response.
[citation needed]
Following the official launch of the Facebook social media platform,
the three filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg that resulted in a
settlement.
[32] The agreed settlement was for 1.2 million Facebook shares that were worth US$300 million at Facebook's IPO.
[33]
Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard in his sophomore year to complete his project.
[34] 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 that 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.[35]
US $53.6 billion (2017 estimate)
