Mark Elliot Zuckerberg or Mark Zuckerberg is known as a tech entrepreneur, chief executive officer and co-founder of Facebook – a social media platform with over 2.32 billion monthly active users worldwide and Forbes’ Top 4 on World’s Most Valuable Brands of 2018.
Early years and education
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on the 4th of May, 1984 in White Plains, New York. The second child to parents Karen Kemper, a psychiatrist and Edward Zuckerberg, who is a dentist by profession. Mark Zuckerberg was nicknamed Princely by his mother and three siblings Arielle, Randi and Donna.
His interest in computer and technology started at a young age. Zuckerberg was taught Atari Basic Programming by his father which led him to develop “ZuckNet”. They used it as an inter-office communication system within his father’s dental office and within their home. He created his own games together with his artist friends who’d draw stuff for him.
Edward Zuckerberg hired a private tutor David Newman, a software developer for his son. Newman called Mark Zuckerberg a “prodigy” because of his skills. While he is in Ardsley High School, Zuckerberg excelled in classics – he included on his college application that he understands both written and oral classical languages like Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek.
Mark Zuckerberg transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy during his junior year of high school. While in high school, he and his friend, Adam D’Angelo started Intelligent Media Group and created the Synapse Media player, a software that automatically adds up music on the playlist based on the listener’s taste. It is known that both Microsoft and AOL tried to buy the software. And on one interview, Zuckerberg mentions that they were offered $950,000.00 for the software but they refused as they were also asked to work for the company for 3 years, and they wanted to go to college.
In 2002, Mark Zuckerberg enrolled at Harvard University and majored in Psychology while taking classes in Computer Science. He was one of the students who are famous even before the classes began because he turned down the offer from Microsoft.
During his sophomore year, he created a program called CourseMatch that allows students to check who are enrolled and how many are enrolled in a course which allowed students to plan their schedules. He would then develop another platform called Facemash that would cause an uproar in Harvard and would land Zuckerberg into trouble. He gathered photos of students from all undergraduate dormitories that he called “facebooks” or head shots. Two photos will be compared against another to determine who was more attractive. After Facemash was shut down, he received a disciplinary action from the Harvard Administrative Board. He was put on probation and was made to apologize publicly.
Zuckerberg then met his wife, Priscilla Chan, a biology student at the going-away party his friends threw for him after they thought he was going to be kicked out because of Facemash. They married in 2012 and are blessed with two beautiful daughters, Maxima Chan Zuckerberg (4) and August Chan Zuckerberg.
Divya Narendra, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss sought Zuckerberg out for another social networking site called Harvard Connection, designed as a dating site for Harvard students. He then later dropped out to create his own social networking site together with Chris Hughes, Dustin Moskovitz, and Eduardo Saverin in 2004. This site will then be called The Facebook.
In 2005, Zuckerberg drops out of Harvard to focus on The Facebook. They moved to Silicon Valley and secured venture capital of $500,000 from Peter Thiel, founder of Paypal. And another $12.7 million from Jim Breyer and Acce Partners to help with the expanding the social networking site. The “The” on The Facebook was officially removed and Facebook.com was registered.
Facebook started with access to any one who has a valid institutional email address and expanded in 2006 when it allowed access to anyone who has a valid email address. Membership continued to grow, and the website’s traffic even grew by 89% between May of 2006 to May of 2007.
Facebook Ads and Facebook pages were launched in 2007, which became essential marketing and advertising tools. Companies and businesses were given direct consumer engagement on a large scale that was made possible by Facebook. It also became a powerful tool for political movements that started in 2008 US presidential elections. With the increase of users, Facebook for mobile devices was released. Facebook for iPhones in 2008 and for android phones in 2011.
Facebook reached the 1 billion users mark in 2012. And by 2014, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus VR Inc are already under Facebook. Marketplace was launched in 2016 as an E-commerce platform which allows users to buy and sell. Another milestone was reached in 2017 as Facebook reach 2 billion users. Making it the largest social networking website in the world.
Facebook continues to move forward and dominate the world of social networking.
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
With the success of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg and wife, Priscilla Chan announced the creation of Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2015. It aims to drive social progress by “supporting scientific research to cure, prevent and manage all diseases in our children’s lifetime”.
Net Worth
Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth as of March 2019 is $64.4 billion