Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14th, 1984 in White Plains, New York. His family was well eduacated and well-off--his dad, Edward, a dentist, and his mom, Karen, a psychiatrist. Growing up, Zuckerberg had three other siblings, Randi, Donna, and Ariel.
When Zuckerberg was 12 years old, he had already shown an extreme knack for computers and designing computer programs. He used Atari BASIC to create a messaging program called. "Zucknet", which was used in his dad's in-home dental office. This came in handy whenever Edward Zuckerberg had a new patient, because his receptionist could notify him from other rooms without yelling. Zucknet was also used in the Zuckerberg home, enabling the family to page each other and page Edward from the office. Mark Zuckerberg also created simple video games with his friends. Many of his friends were artists, who would make drawings that Zuckerberg would create into games.
Early in his life, Mark Zuckerberg was recognized as a prodegy. His parents hired a private computer tutor for him by the name of David Newman who would comeonce a week. Zuckerberg became so advanced that even Newman struggled to stay at his pace. During this time Zuckerberg also studied at Mercy College.
After Mercy College, Zuckerberg enrolled at an exclusive preporatory school in New Hampshire called The Phillips Exeter Academy. He excelled in fencing, becoming the team captain, and enjoyed literature. He also created a program he called, "Synapse", which was basically an early version of Pandora. AOL and Microsoft--as well as other companies--expressed a strong interest in Synapse, and offered to buy the software and even hire Zuckerberg (even before he graduated!). Zuckerberg declined.
Once he graduated The Phillips Exeter Academy, Zuckerberg enrolled at Harvard University. During his sophomore year, he created "Coursematch", a program which helped students choose their classes based on other student's selections. He also created "Facemash", which was basically a voting game where students would compare two students and choose which was better looking . The school shut down the degrating site, but by that time Zuckerberg was known as "the software developer guy" on campus.
Zuckerbergs name was well known throughout the campus. Three fellow students, Divya Narendra and Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, approached him with an idea for a social networking site called "Harvard Connection". Harvard Connection was planned to be a school dating site, and for a short time Zuckerberg helped with the site until he dropped out to work on his own, which had a similar idea. He began working with his friends Distin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Edward Saverin, and soon, the social networking site, "The Facebook", was born.
The Facebook was a site for Harvard students to connect with each other without the primary purpose of dating like Harvard Connection. It was used as a place for students to communicate with one another, share pictures, and create a personal profile with user information. Within a very short time, The Facebook was known and used all over campus, and soon, Zuckerberg began expanding the site to other colleges and universities.The site's popularity grew rapidly, however, so did the creators of Harvard Connection. During this time, the creators of Harvard Conncection were confronting Zuckerberg for presumably stealing their idea. Zuckerberg claimed he had no intention of this, but chat messages between him and fellow creators of The Facebook said otherwise. This launched a huge lawsuit resulting in Zuckerberg having to pay a high price, but by that time The Facebook (changed to just, "Facebook") had become one of the most popular social networking sites, not just for universities, but in the entire country.
After his sophomore year at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg dropped out to devote his time to Facebook. The company moved to Palo Alto, California by 2004, and the site, by that time, had 1 million users. By December of 2005, Facebook's following grew to in impressive 5.5 million users. Since then, Facebook has bought out popular companies such as Instagram and Spotify. Facebook is now the number one social network in the world, and has anabled people to connect and reconnect with each other from anywhere in the world. Mark Zuckerberg is not only the youngest billionaire in the world, he is also among the richest people in the technological world like Bill Gates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin 2013, and Steve Jobs.
Zuckerberg infront of the Facebook logo
Works Cited:
"Mark Zuckerberg Doubles His Net Worth in One Year." Celebrity Net worth Richest People in the World Mark Zuckerberg Doubles His Net Worth in One Year Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Oct. 2013. <http://www.therichest.com/technology/mark-zuckerberg-doubles-his-net-worth-in-one-year/>.