Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, Chairman and Chief Executive of Facebook. Born Atheist on May 14, 1984, lives in Palo Alto, California, U.S.A

He is an American Computer Programmer and Internet Entrepreneur. He is the World’s 2nd youngest self-made billionaire worth USD 10.2 Billion.

Mark was born in Dobbs Ferry, New York to well-educated family of a Dentist father, and Psychiatrist mother.

At the age of 12 Mark Zuckerberg started developing interest in computers and 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 did not need to yell to give him a message. The family also used Zucknet to communicate within the house. Together with his friends, he also created computer games for fun.

His parents hired a private computer tutor, David Newman who came to the house once every week to work with Mark. According to Newman who called Mark a prodigy, he said it was hard to stay ahead of him because of his excellence in the subject.

Mark later studied at Phillips Exeter Academy where he excelled in literature and obtained a diploma in Classics.

Pictures of Mark Zuckerberg

While in High School he created an early version of the music software Pandora, which he named Synapse. Companies like AOL and Microsoft tried buying the software and hiring the teenager but he declined the offers.

Mark Zuckerberg enrolled into Harvard University in 2002 where he majored in Computer Science and Sociology.

In Harvard he built a program called CourseMatch which helped students choose their classes based on the course selections of other users. He also invented FaceMash as a “Fun” project, letting students on the college’s network vote on other student’s photo attractiveness.

Facemash is the template used for Facebook program he started in his dormitory with the help of his friends, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Sawin on February 4 2004.

They later took Facebook to other campuses nationwide and soon after moved to Palo Alto, California where they leased a small house that served as an office.

Over the summer, Zuckerberg met Peter Thiel who invested in the company. They got their first office in mid-2004. Mark and his friends turned down offers by major corporations to buy out Facebook.

On July 21 2010, Zuckerberg announced to the world that Facebook reached 500 million user mark.

Mark is married to Priscilla Chan his fellow student he began dating in 2003. Chan is the child of a Chinese- Vietnamese refugee, who arrived in the U.S after the Fall of Saigon. She graduated from Quincy High School in 2003. In September 2010 she moved in with Zuckerberg in his rented Palo Alto house.

On May 19, 2012, Zuckerberg and Chan married in Zuckerberg’s backyard in a celebration that also marked her graduation from medical school. Chan has a medical degree.

Awards

• No. 1 Top Most Important People of the Information Age, 2010 by Vanity Fair Magazine
• TIME Person of the Year 2010

News About Zuckerberg

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Category: Inventors & Innovators