Celebrity biographies

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13.09.16 10:14

Arranging "online beauty contest", he did not even think about the staggering consequences of this. The biography of Mark Zuckerberg - the youngest billionaire in history - began with a student prank.

Biography of Mark Zuckerberg

Son of a suburban New York dentist

Mark was born into a large family of dentist Edward Zuckerberg and his wife, psychiatrist Karen Kempner, on May 14, 1984. The Zuckerbergs lived in a small Westchester County village 21 miles north of central Manhattan. Jews Edward and Karen raised three daughters (Randy, Donna, Ariel) and their only son.

At the age of 13, Mark underwent the Jewish rite of bar mitzvah, but later admitted that he was an atheist and did not support any confessions. Despite this, he believes in karma and believes that the most amazing religion in the world is Buddhism.

School biography of Mark Zuckerberg is replete with bright pages. He studied well at Ardsley High School and was transferred to the Phillips Exeter Academy in Hampshire, where he won prizes in mathematics, physics, astronomy and classical studies. When Mark entered college, he indicated on a statement that he could read and write French, Ancient Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. In addition, he was the captain of the fencing team.

Programming prodigy

By the time he began his studies at Harvard (in 2002), Zuckerberg had already earned a reputation as a computer prodigy. Despite the fact that Mark entered the Faculty of Psychology, the newly minted student studied computer science and joined the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. In his sophomore year, he wrote CourseMatch, a computer program that helped form study groups.

Mark soon created another program, originally called Facemash, that allowed students to choose the best photographs. It was just an entertainment site with pictures of two guys or two girls, and visitors had to vote which one was hot. This is how the rating of this or that participant was formed. A record number of students visited the site in a couple of days off. But by Monday morning, the college had shut it down because the Harvard computer network had simply collapsed under the pressure. Unbeknownst to college officials, this was the beginning of the Facebook era.

Youngest billionaire

Mark left Harvard in his sophomore year to perfect his project. Together with several friends (including Dustin Moskowitz), Zuckerberg moved to Palo Alto. There they rented a small house, which became their "headquarters". During the summer, Mark found a sponsor (Peter Thiel became him), who invested money in a new company. Eduardo Saverin, a Harvard student from Brazil, who later sued Zuckerberg and received a 5 percent stake in Facebook, helped financially at the initial stage of the work.

The first office of the company appeared in mid-2004, and soon Mark, who owns 24% of the shares of the company he invented, became the youngest billionaire on the planet.

Released in October 2010, Fincher's biopic The Social Network is a detailed story about the start, the rise of Facebook and the litigation surrounding the company. Zuckerberg did not welcome the idea of ​​making such a movie: "I did not want anyone to film a biography of Mark Zuckerberg while I was alive." However, he later appreciated the drama (which won two Oscars and four Golden Globes) at its true worth. The role of Mark in the film was played by Jesse Eisenberg.

The actor and his character first shook hands on Saturday Night Live in January 2011.

Generosity is his middle name

On December 9, 2010, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett wrote a promise called "The Giving Pledge." This agreement provides that each millionaire (billionaire) who signs it must donate 50% or more of their wealth to charity. Later, other billionaires joined the "oath".

Mark not only traveled the world, widely promoted his social network, contributed to the creation of numerous applications, but also remained one of the most famous philanthropists.

So, on December 19, 2013, Zuckerberg donated part of the Facebook shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (the donation was approximately $ 990 million). As of December 31, 2013, this gift was recognized as the largest charitable contribution. Every year, Mark is one of the 50 most generous Americans, his total contribution to a good cause has already exceeded $ 1 billion.

In the fall of 2012, Mark visited Moscow, and his lecture at Moscow State University. Lomonosov has caused a huge stir.

Personal life of Mark Zuckerberg

Together with Priscilla

Mark met his future wife Priscilla Chan at a frat party when he entered his sophomore year at Harvard. In 2003, they started dating. Priscilla is the daughter of Sino-Vietnamese refugees who came to the United States after the fall of Saigon in 1975. She was born in Braintree, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. Chan attended the University of California School of Medicine.

In September 2010, Zuckerberg invited a friend to move in, and they began to live in Palo Alto. In December of the same year, the couple traveled to China. Prior to that, Mark managed to master the basics of Mandarin.

On May 19, 2012, Zuckerberg and Chan got married in the backyard of the groom's house, combining a wedding celebration with Priscilla's graduation from medical school.

Thanks for the birth of Max

One thing darkened the personal life of Mark Zuckerberg and his wife - they could not become parents in any way. Priscilla suffered three miscarriages. But on July 31, 2015, Mark announced that his wife was pregnant again, and this time the risk of losing the child was minimized.

On December 1, 2015, the first-born of the billionaire was born - daughter of Maxim ("Max") Chan Zuckerberg. In an open letter to Max, Mark and Priscilla promised to donate 99% of their shares to Facebook, as they expressed gratitude to fate for the birth of their daughter.

Talented people are talented in everything. Fencing, programming, knowledge of languages, psychology - this is not a complete list of the hidden possibilities of a young purposeful guy Mark Zuckerberg. He managed to turn his favorite pastime into a profitable business, creating a world famous social network. Today Facebook is one of the five most visited sites, and its founder became the youngest billionaire on the planet. What drove the average guy to success?

Mark Zuckerberg: biography, first steps

The future programmer was born into a family of doctors, in the town of White Plains (USA). Zuckerberg's father found himself in dentistry, and his mother in psychiatry. Mark Elliot has 3 sisters - the older Randy and the younger Donna and Ariel.

Mark's acquaintance with information technology happened quite early, at the age of 10. The guy received a present from his father, Edward Zuckerberg, - the first PC. The surprise was a contribution to the future education of his son. Computers and digital radiography were just getting started, and the elder Zuckerberg took advantage of that advantage. Edward became the first mentor in Mark's life, teaching him the Basic programming language. The child was so carried away by the new occupation that after a couple of years he was writing the ZuckNet program to improve the work of his father's dental clinic. The program allowed Edward, who was in the office, to communicate with his family and assistants.

In his free time, a talented child created computer games and received additional knowledge from a private tutor.

Zuckerberg's versatility

Passion for programming was not Mark's only area of ​​expertise. While studying at the Phillips Exeter Academy, the smart guy was fond of literature, mathematics, languages ​​and fencing. In his university resume, Mark indicated knowledge of languages ​​such as French, Latin, Ancient Greek, and Hebrew. Often in literature classes, Zuckerberg quoted excerpts from works in the original.

The sporting achievements of the future billionaire were also outstanding. Passion for fencing led to the dominant position of the captain in the school team.

First successes in programming

Despite being successful in many areas, Mark's heart and soul belonged to programming. While studying at the academy, Zuckerberg, together with his classmate Adam D'Angelo, wrote the Synapse program. The invention was a music player capable of analyzing the tastes of the owner and, according to the information received, creating playlists. This program was created for personal use, but the creators shared it with the public on a special site. The creation was spotted by two well-known companies, Microsoft and AOL, and Zuckerberg received an offer to sell the product and then collaborate. However, the guy decided to refuse the global IT giants, substantiating his decision with the words that "inspiration is not for sale."

Instead of signing an agreement with world leaders, Zuckerberg entered the prestigious Harvard University with a degree in Psychology.

University studies

At Harvard, Mark studied psychology diligently, not forgetting to improve his programming skills. Zuckerberg was a member of the Alpha Insilon Pi Jewish student society, studied diligently and attended computer courses.

The second year of study was marked by the creation of two computer programs. The first invention, called CourseMatch, helped students choose subjects based on the experiences of other students. The second creation was called Facemash and lasted only 2 days. The program consisted in choosing the most attractive one out of two students. Thus, a list of the most popular students of the university was formed. The invention had real photographs of students, which was the reason for a large number of complaints and the closure of the project. Zuckerberg confessed to hacking into Harvard's database, but explained his behavior by his usual desire to joke.

Soon, everyone forgot about the failed joke. However, the incident was decisive for three of his fellow students, who were recruiting a team to create a new project, HarvardConnection.com. Mark played an important role in the programming of the social network. Zuckerberg accepted the offer, but soon left the project due to being busy with another creation.

The birth of Facebook

Work on the site started in January 2004. Sophomore Mark Zuckerberg registered a domain called thefacebook, and in early February the project saw the world. It was originally a social networking site for Harvard students. During the day, about a thousand people registered on the site, and a month later, a good half of the students had their own page on the social network.

The growth of the site required more people to work on it. Mark was joined by fellow students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum, Chris Hughes. Through diligence and financial investment, within a few months, the network became available to Stanford, Columbia and Yale universities. Over time, the list has expanded to include Ivy League universities, higher education institutions in Canada and the United States.

The development of the social network has been rapid and successful. In the summer of 2004, Facebook was created, with Sean Parker as president and Mark Zuckerberg as CEO. The guy decided to follow the example of Bill Gates and quit his studies at Harvard, fully devoting himself to the project.

A new page in Facebook history began in 2005 when the facebook.com domain was acquired. From that moment on, Mark Zuckerberg's social network not only became a place for students to communicate, but also made it possible for anyone to plunge into the electronic world.

Three years later, Mark Zuckerberg was recognized as the youngest billionaire in the world, and his project continued to flourish. Today the Facebook network has over 1 billion users.

Here are some interesting facts about Mark:

Acquaintance with the future wife

Mark Zuckerberg met his wife Priscilla Chan at one of the student parties at Harvard. They met for nine years and in 2012 they finally legalized their relationship. The wedding ceremony took place in a circle of relatives and friends. Initially, the event was supposed to celebrate the successful graduation of the future wife and the placement of Facebook shares on the stock exchange. However, the couple presented an unexpected surprise and announced their wedding.

The billionaire's chosen one has American and Chinese roots. The girl studied at the Faculty of Biology at Harvard, and then at the Medical College in San Francisco, at the Department of Pediatrics. In 2015, Priscilla began work on the opening of a special school with elements of education and health promotion.

Despite the huge fortune, the couple are not regulars at parties and social events, preferring board games and walks in nature.

First experience of fatherhood

Mark and Priscilla dreamed of replenishing the family for a long time, but the girl had miscarriages. In December 2015, the first child of Mark Zuckerberg was born. Daughter Maxim Chan (Max) lit up the social network with her appearance just a few days after birth. Non-superstitious Mark Zuckerberg posted a photo with a child on his personal Facebook page. Joyful dad took two months off to enjoy the happiness of being a father.

Charity

In 2010, the billionaire joined the Oath of Giving charity, which encourages wealthy people to donate half of their capital to those in need.

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife and children (they are still part of the young couple's plans) will donate 99 percent of the Facebook shares (currently about $ 45 billion) they own to charity. The joyful couple made such a statement after the birth of their daughter. The future should open up opportunities for everyone, regardless of their social status and financial well-being.

In addition, Zuckerberg supported the Diaspora project, which was a direct competitor to Facebook. Mark allocated 100 thousand dollars for the development of an open source social network. The billionaire has shown concern for the development of public schools in New Arch. Mark Zuckerberg donated $ 100 million to improve them.

Visiting Russia

In 2012, Mark Zuckerberg flew to the Russian Federation. After staying on its territory for three days, the young billionaire managed to complete many important missions. One of them was a meeting with the Prime Minister of Russia. Mark also gave a lecture for students of Moscow State University. To get to the meeting, you had to register. The number of applicants exceeded the capacity of the audience, so a lottery was held among those who signed up. At the lecture, the billionaire shared with the audience the story of the creation of the famous social network and told his story. In addition, Zuckerberg took part in several Russian programs and was actively involved in an international conference he created. The conference discussed the advantages of the Facebook network, the main one of which is the huge number of active users.

Mark Zuckerberg titles

Mark Zuckerberg has already won the following titles:

  • The youngest billionaire in the world according to Forbes magazine.
  • Person of the Year 2010 according to Time magazine.
  • GQ Magazine's Most Tastefully Dressed Billionaire.

Mark Zuckerberg, whose photo you see in the article, is a young, successful man. He managed to achieve a lot thanks to his perseverance and hard work. Let's wish him every success and prosperity!

Biography of Mark Zuckerberg, Success Story of Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook creator and person of the year Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook launch personal life and Mark Zuckerberg's girlfriend, The Social Network movie

Section 1. Childhood of Mark Zuckerberg.

Section 3. Creation of Facebook.

Section 4. Lawsuits Against Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg is American programmer and entrepreneur in the field of Internet technologies, one of the developers and founders of the social network Facebook. Head of Facebook, Inc.

Mark Zuckerberg's childhood

A businessman and one of the founders of Facebook, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984 in Dobbs Ferry, New York, into a well-educated family. His father, Edward Zuckerberg, kept a dental practice near the family's home. His mother, Karen, worked as a psychiatrist until the birth of four children - Mark, Randy, Donna and Ariel.


Mark Zuckerberg showed an interest in computers at an early age, when he was about 12, he used Atari BASIC to create a messaging program he called "Zucknet". His father used the software in his dental office so that the receptionist could tell him that a new patient had arrived so he wouldn't scream across the room. The family also used Zucknet to communicate inside the home. Together with his friends, Mark Zuckerberg created computer games just for fun.


To support Mark's growing interest in computers, his parents hired private computer mentor David Newman to come home once a week and work with Mark. Newman later told reporters that it was difficult to keep up with the child prodigy who began attending graduate courses at a nearby Mercy College at the same time.

Zuckerberg later attended Phillips Exeter Academy, an exclusive preparatory school in New Hampshire. There he showed talent in fencing, becoming the captain of the school team. He also excelled in literature, earning a degree in classics. However, Zuckerberg remained fascinated with computers and continued to work on developing new programs. While still in high school, he created the first version of Pandora's music software, which he called Synapse. Several companies, including AOL and Microsoft, have expressed interest in buying software and hiring a teenager before graduation. Mark Zuckerberg turned down the offer.

After graduating from Exeter in 2002, Zuckerberg entered Harvard University. In his sophomore year at the Ivy League, he developed a reputation as a software developer on campus. It was during this time that he built a program called CourseMatch that helped students select their subjects based on a selection of other users' courses. He also invented Facemash, which compares pictures of two female students on campus, allowing users to vote which one is more attractive. Mark Zuckerberg's program became wildly popular, but was later closed by the school administration after it was deemed inappropriate.

Extremely entertaining personality, one of the youngest entrepreneurial and talented businessmen, ranked among the wealthiest and most influential people on the planet. Today analysts predict a cloudless and successful future for Mark.


Mark Zuckerberg is a little over twenty years old, however, already today he occupies the minds of many advanced figures in the world of business and science.

Despite the fact that Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of one of the global technology enterprises Facebook, as well as its leader, the young businessman claims that he practically does not care about finances and power. On the contrary, he is attracted by intellectual activity, advances in technology and other "smart" things.

Mark Zuckerberg currently owns a significant part of the shares of the company he created, which are worth approximately three billion dollars.

However, once this enterprise was just a good and promising Internet project. Today, Mark's enterprise has become an extremely popular company, which has already managed to attract a huge audience of 68 million people.

Experts never cease puzzling over how, after all, such a young - but extremely highly developed - creation succeeded in this phenomenon. The media's aspirations to learn as much as possible about Mark Zuckerberg himself are rarely crowned with success. This is because the author of such a successful project is an extremely secretive, inaccessible person who does not want to show himself. If there are very short interviews, then in them a young and talented figure generally gets lost, stutters, stutters, in general, feels very awkward in front of the camera. However, most analysts are convinced that this state of affairs is a temporary phenomenon and very soon Mark will definitely outshine even the most advanced orators of our time.


And yet, sometimes Mark appears in public and tries to communicate with the media. Not so long ago, he spoke briefly about himself, but the information turned out to be too little. Thus, Mark is reluctant to communicate with the press. It is quite another matter - people close to him or colleagues. In contact with them, he is insanely charismatic, open and sociable.


University performance was so-so: the passion for programming was taking up too much of my time. Sometimes preparing for exams required extraordinary solutions, such as, for example, the case with 500 paintings in an art history course. There were two days left before the exams, and it was impossible to read at least something about each painting. Zuckerberg quickly created a website, on each page of which he put a picture, and asked fellow students to comment on the works. "In two hours," recalls the innovator, comparing himself to Tom Sawyer, painting a fence with the help of commercial ingenuity, "each picture was overgrown with comments, and I passed that exam perfectly."


Mark Zuckerberg's girlfriend Priscilla Chan can certainly be considered one of the luckiest on the planet. Not much biographical information is known about Chan, but we know for sure that she met Zuckerberg while attending Harvard in 2004. This was the year Mark came up with the concept of Facebook. He and his pals, including Chan, packed up and moved to Palo Alto, California to develop their business project into an empire. Initially, he and his friends planned to return to college, but their business took off and they stayed in California.


According to Forbes magazine for 2011, Macra Zuckerberg's fortune is estimated at approximately $ 13.5 billion. He lives in a modest rented home in Palo Alto, California with his girlfriend Priscilla Chan. Mark Zuckerberg studied Chinese every day in preparation for the couple's visit to China in December 2010. In March 2011, the couple finally changed their Facebook status to "dating."

On a summer night in 2003, when Mark Zuckerberg was suffering from insomnia in a Harvard dorm room, the future Internet tycoon was abandoned by a girl, and he poured his resentment with a good portion of whiskey. “In my fevered brain, the idea came to make a website called Facemash,” Zuckerberg later recalled. - I decided to hack Harvard's information base, get out of there photographs of students and place sheep and cow faces next to each of them. And to make it funnier, I came up with a vote with the question "Which of them is sexier?" At eleven in the evening, the process was in full swing, and a couple of hours later, Mark launched a site with photographs of female students in pairs, urging them to vote on which of the two is more attractive.

Of course, Zuckerberg also did not forget about his ex-girlfriend: the first published text entry on his blog on the network was the sacramental phrase "Jessica A. (Jessica Alona) is a bitch." After more than twenty thousand people visited Mark's website in a couple of hours, and the network collapsed, he appeared before the Harvard special commission on computer hacking.


Zuckerberg's drunken trick causes predictable discontent - firstly, the girls, whose photographs were involved in the "battle of faces", and secondly, the university administration, which was extremely outraged that Mark hacked the faculty servers to gain access to photo banks. As a result, the curly-haired nerd earned the fame of a cynic and a hardened programmer, and in the evening champagne was already being uncorked in his room - the hero of the occasion was making toasts to the success of projects related to the lives of real people.

Facebook creation

Based on the success of his previous projects, three of his fellow students - Divya Narendra, and twins Cameron and Tyler Winkelvos - offered him a job, the idea was to create a social network they called Harvard Connection. This site was designed to use information from a student on the Harvard University network to create a dating site for the Harvard elite. Zuckerberg agreed to help with the project, but soon dropped out to work on his own social network with friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin.


Zuckerberg and his friends have created a website that allows users to create their own profiles, upload photos, and chat with other users. The group called the site Facebook, and they worked in a Harvard University dorm room until June 2004. After his sophomore year, Zuckerberg dropped out of college to devote himself entirely to Facebook, and the company was relocated to Palo Alto, California. By the end of 2004, Facebook had 1 million users.

In 2005, Zuckerberg's venture received a huge boost from Accel's venture partners. Accel invested $ 12.7 million in the network, which at the time was open only to Ivy League students. Zuckerberg's company then gave access to other colleges, schools and international schools, pushing Facebook membership to gain over 5.5 million users in December 2005. Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook began to attract the interest of other companies looking to advertise with a popular social hub. Not wanting to sell, Zuckerberg turned down offers from companies such as Yahoo! and MTV Networks. Instead, he focused on expanding the site, opening up his project to third-party developers and adding new features.


However, in 2006, the business tycoon faced the first big hurdle in his entire career. The creators of the Harvard Connection claimed that Zuckerberg stole their idea and insisted that the software developer pay for the loss of their business. Zuckerberg argued that the ideas were based on two very different types of social media, but after that, lawyers found Zuckerberg's tapes incriminating him that he may have deliberately stolen intellectual property and offered Facebook as an idea to his friends.


Zuckerberg later apologized for the incriminating messages, stating that he expressed regret for them. “If you’re going to move on to building a service that is influential and used by many, then you have to be mature, right?” He told The New Yorker. "I think I grew up and learned a lot."

Although an initial agreement for the payment of $ 65 million was reached between the two parties, the legal dispute continued in 2011 after Narendr and Winkelvos claimed they were misled about the value of their shares.


“The older I get, the more I'm convinced that serving voyeurs is the best way to make money.” Using this mission statement, Zuckerberg was able to amass a team of die-hard nerds around him who were passionate about dating and social networking.

About ten months before Zuckerberg's epic Facemash, one of Harvard's Indian students, Narendra, had already come up with the idea of ​​a social network exclusively for Harvard students, many of whom suffered from emotional tightness. Well, in order to prevent outsiders from getting into the network, Narendra suggested using a password with a Harvard email address.


The twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss became Divya Narendra's partners. The twins' father, Howard Winklevoss, was a successful financial consultant and invested a lot of money in his blond sons, athletes - thus, the problem with the initial capital for the future network could be solved.

In a conversation with Mark Narendra said that the project will be called Harvard Connection, and its participants will upload their photos, personal information and useful links to the Internet. Zuckerberg's tasks included programming the site and creating special code that would allow the system to work as quickly as possible.

After a personal meeting with Narendra and the twins, Zuckerberg agreed to join the work, but he was already quite skeptical about the potential of new partners. “They had no idea how to advertise the future site and how to make money on it,” Mark later admitted. - Soon I began to show the guys in every possible way that we were not on the way: as if accidentally forgot charging for a mobile phone, was playing for time and in every possible way dodging personal meetings.

It all ended with the fact that Narendra and the Winklevoss brothers still managed to pull Zuckerberg out of his lair, after which Mark announced that the ideologists of the Harvard Connection could look for a new programmer. At the same time, the future Facebook creator did not say a word about what he had been doing for the past two months. And, of course, Zuckerberg concealed that three days before the meeting with his “colleagues”, he registered the domain TheFacebook.com on the network, now known throughout the world as Facebook.

A social network called TheFacebook (hereinafter “The” was removed) was launched on February 4, 2004. After Zuckerberg and his partner Eduardo Saverin realized that 4,000 users were already registered there, they concluded that the duo would need the services of new programmers. One of them was Mark's roommate, short-haired athlete Darren Moskowitz, who opened Facebook for students at Columbia, Stanford and Yale.

Around the same time, the division of the company's property took place: 60% belonged to Zuckerberg, 35% was controlled by Saverin, and 5% went to the newcomer Moskowitz. Another fellow dorm roommate, Chris Hughes, became Facebook's press officer. Zuckerberg described his position as "the founder, master and enemy of the state."

Tracking Facebook's progress, the Harvard Connection trio posted angry rebukes to Zuckerberg on their website. Their own Internet project, ConnectU, was not a success, and the angry guys were left puzzling over how Mark had managed to code Facebook in a matter of weeks.

In order to protect himself from the three angry "copyright holders of the idea", Zuckerberg plucked up the nerve and wrote a letter to the Harvard management, where he presented himself as an innocent lamb, who suffered from assertive blackmailers. The message had considerable resonance, and even two honest girls from the Harvard Black Women Association spoke out in support of the injured computer genius Zuckerberg.

“I’m constantly accused of things I didn’t do,” Zuckerberg wrote on his personal website. “The Harvard Connection Trinity is trying to do just that and prove that I stole their non-existent ideas. But the fact is, the ideas of creating a social network for Harvard were in the air! I just "breathed" them in the right way. "


At first, Facebook only functioned within Harvard. Some time later, registration was open to all students and schoolchildren. The main condition was the presence of a postal address in the .edu zone, which indicated that a person belonged to the educational sector.

I must say that at first this tactic worked perfectly. The project attracted attention, but at the same time, its audience was of a fairly high quality. When registering, it was necessary to fill out a detailed profile, and in addition to the email address in the educational zone.edu, the creators demanded to add their real photo. All profiles in which people used avatars were deleted.

On May 28, 2004, Zuckerberg boasted two hundred thousand users from thirty colleges across the country. "Harvard students have been communicating with each other long before Mark entered this school," sums up Zuckerberg's activities, head of the interactive journalism program at New York University Jeff Jarvis. - Mark just helped this communication: thanks to his brainchild, it became easier to organize parties and take pictures of girls. According to Jarvis, Facebook is the most elegant service in terms of design among all existing ones; moreover, it allows you to find friends with similar interests with incredible ease and accuracy.

It was a sin not to use such advantages in the interests of advertising, and Zuckerberg set out to turn the student website into a global world network. After packing his bags, Mark went to California. Mindful of the itinerary of his spiritual father, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg landed in Palo Alto, the Mecca of modern Internet technology in the summer of 2004.

Together with his main partner Saverin, who remained in his native New York, Mark invested more than $ 20,000 in the development of Facebook. Thanks to these investments, Zuckerberg's landing (the future tycoon himself, Darren Moskowitz and two very young guys in the wings) took over a whole house on Jennifer Way, in one of the quiet dead ends of Palo Alto.

When Zuckerberg was asked about this period of his life, he replied: “Usually I woke up in the bedroom, looked into the kitchen and went to program. I had a girlfriend at the time, but when she suddenly disappeared, I wasn't particularly upset. After all, I always had Facebook to have a good party. "

Zuckerberg and his friends almost never left their hideout, programming new services, drinking beer and listening to Green Day and Infected Mushrooms. According to the testimony of his then friends, Mark did not go far from his image of the Harvard botanist. “It was like college,” recalls Stephen Hegarty, who joined Zuckerberg's team that summer. "When Mark was not programming, he watched historical films like Gladiator or stuck out in the kitchen, constantly quoting the comedy Crashers with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn."

At the same time, one of the future Facebook programmers Sean Parker, one of the creators of the file-sharing program Napster, began to visit the Zuckerberg house. Sean is a handsome young man who was considered by many to be a role model for the jammed Zuckerberg. Sean was the first to contact, informing Mark that he uses Facebook with might and main and would like to meet with him in person. After lunching together at a Chinese restaurant, Sean moved to Jennifer Way, and social networking programming continued with renewed vigor.

It was Parker who introduced Zuckerberg to Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal. An experienced businessman, after a fifteen-minute conversation, invested $ 500,000 in the red-haired youth. Zuckerberg wrote a letter of leave to the university, as another famous Harvard "dropout", Bill Gates, did.

“Even when our stakes were seriously raised,” Parker recalled, “Zuckerberg continued to negotiate in pajamas and slippers. Now I understand that in fooling around in this way, Mark was acting absolutely deliberately. It never occurred to me that he had an iron business acumen. And then it happened that Mark Zuckerberg decided to leave us all at once. "

The first to fly was the head of Marc's closest partner, Eduardo Saverin, who was accused of trying to freeze a Facebook bank account. All he had to do was give a series of revealing interviews, to which Zuckerberg, of course, did not react in any way.


Already in November 2004, the number of Facebook users exceeded a million, and Mark himself voiced a simple philosophy of the network: "We will do everything so that our site does not let you leave the monitor." So, in general, it happened: numerous primitive toys like "vampires" or modern Tamagotchi from the Haikoo Zoo tied a person to Facebook seriously and for a long time. Music lovers, whose favorite bands were featured on Zuckerberg's social network, were even more addicted to the service.

Already in the spring of 2005, about thirteen million dollars were invested in the Facebook project, although Zuckerberg himself continued to play the role of a wayward eccentric botanist. In particular, he had two types of business cards: one was engraved only with the name and surname of the owner, and the inscription on the other read: "I am the president here, Bitch" ("I" m CEO, bitch "). With the same infantile arrogance, Mark walked away from interviews that could shed light on his relationship with former accomplices and present him as a living person.

The faster Facebook's capital grew, the fewer friends remained with Zuckerberg. Harvard boyfriend Chris Hughes now works for Barack Obama, lead programmer Adam D "Angelo left the company in May this year, Eduardo Saverin started a lawsuit against Mark, and Dustin Moskowitz went on indefinite leave.

Lawsuits against Facebook

The first of the lawsuits involving the social network and its creator began just six days after the launch of TheFacebook. Three Harvard seniors - brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and their partner Divya Narendra - said in Harvard Crimson newspaper that Mark had stolen their ideas. They allegedly hired a programmer to work on their HarvardConnection.com site and provided him with the source code for their ConnectU project, and he misled them for about a month, using their ideas to write their own code. The trial itself was initiated later, but in the end the dispute was settled - Zuckerberg paid the plaintiffs $ 65 million so that they calm down and no longer file claims.


The second lawsuit was more serious, as it was associated with one of the founders of Facebook. Eduardo Saverin, in fact, is the first sponsor of the project and its business manager, as well as a close friend of Zuckerberg. Saverin filed a lawsuit and in January 2009 the court confirmed his right to a 5% stake in the campaign (more than $ 1 billion).

However, the twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who accused Mark Zuckerberg of stealing the Facebook idea from them, filed another lawsuit.

The Winklevoss twins said the $ 65 million they were paid in 2008 to end their legal battle in the case was not enough because their former friend lied about the real value of Facebook.com. The brothers claim that Zuckerberg is involved in securities fraud and are demanding more substantial compensation.

Facebook vehemently denies the Winklevoss' claim, and its legal filing claims that the twins themselves miscalculated the value of the company, and their claims of fraud are based on an important omission - "they mistakenly believe that their nemesis will voluntarily provide them with their financial statements and information. about company". Zuckerberg's lawyers insist that the Winklevoss brothers never required their client to provide them with official documents on the site's income.

The feud between the twins and Zuckerberg is taking on an even sharper color against the backdrop of the wealth that has been pouring down like a golden rain on the founder of the worldwide social network in the past few years. Forbes ranks Zuckerberg among the 35 richest Americans with a net worth of $ 6.9 billion, ahead of Apple founder Steve Jobs.

"The" disappeared from the name of the site in 2005 after the company acquired the domain Facebook.com for a fabulous price of $ 200,000. In the fall of 2005, the number of Facebook users was already over 5 million active customers. In September of the same year, the possibility of registration appeared for students of high schools in the United States, however, then for this it was necessary to receive an invitation from one of the already registered participants. Then the circle expanded to include employees of some companies, for example, Apple and Microsoft.

September 26, 2006 became one of the most important milestones in the history of the project: the site opened registration for everyone who has a working e-mail address. Only the age limit remained - 13 years. The percentage of customers over 30 has grown significantly, and Facebook has established itself among the leaders of the Internet, consistently remaining the seventh most popular site in America.

2007 was a major event for Facebook. Microsoft acquired 1.6% of Facebook for an impressive $ 240 million, as well as the rights to place its ads on this resource until 2011. Based on this, many analysts have suggested that the total value of Facebook is $ 15 billion. Not a weak result for a company whose revenues did not exceed 200 million per year. A rather interesting event took place after the deal. Bill Gates himself signed up for Facebook. At one time, he devoted several hours a day to communicate through Facebook with everyone who wanted, but then decided to delete his account, as there were too many of those who wanted to. He just physically did not have time to communicate with them. Nonetheless, Gates has provided serious Facebook PR around the world. This is especially important for Microsoft, given that it has an exclusive agreement with the Zuckerberg Network, under which it is Facebook's primary advertising partner.

If we talk about the atmosphere in the company itself, then until now it corresponded to the image of a tech startup. No dress code, day off, the founder walking around in sandals - many of these things are still relevant to Facebook today. However, since Sherryl Sanberg from Google came to the company, the situation has changed somewhat. The discipline in the company has become much stricter. Facebook is starting to transform itself from a startup to a corporation.

Facebook's latest breakthrough was the development of its API, which allowed thousands of developers around the world to write programs for the social network. Quite quickly, the project began to grow overgrown with small applications of varying degrees of usefulness. Various informers, calendars, organizers. But the main thing was the small games that simply flooded Facebook.

Interestingly, many developers have already made some serious money from this platform. And Facebook, unlike Apple (the iPhone situation), doesn't charge them any money.

As for the models of earning, then the company is trying to try various options.

Selling advertising isn't everything. So, for some time now, on Facebook, each network member can order another completely real product that can be obtained in a regular store. This is a simple gift that you can give on the spot. What is needed for this? Pay for the goods, choose the recipient. Tom will receive a special identifier, which he will have to present in one of the stores cooperating with Facebook.

Another interesting way that Facebook makes money is through paid groups for companies. In general, many companies from the very beginning were engaged in the creation of their groups on Facebook, but then the administration of the resource introduced a number of serious restrictions that complicated the interaction of the group's audience with its creators. In particular, one of these restrictions was the limit on 1200 messages per day that the group administrator can send. And if there are millions in it? Then the company will have to purchase a subscription to a paid group. Here the possibilities are extremely wide, there are no numerous restrictions of ordinary groups, and in general everything has been done so that companies could communicate productively with customers. There is even a possibility of styling the page to fit your corporate identity.

The influential American magazine Time gave the cover of its January issue to 26-year-old billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, calling him "2010 Man of the Year."

Lady Gaga, James Cameron, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, and others fought for the title of "Person of 2010" in the past year. However, Time magazine chose its hero - the founder of the social network Facebook Mark Zuckerberg. “The social network created by Mark has connected almost every tenth inhabitant of the planet,” explained Richard Stengel, Time’s editor-in-chief. In his opinion, "today Facebook is the third largest country in the world that knows as much about its citizens as no other government on Earth knows."


According to Time, no one person in the past year has had a greater impact on the world than the current laureate. Its popularity is so high that this year the movie "The Social Network" was even released, in which Jesse Eisenberg brilliantly played the main role of the creator of Facebook. Earlier, US Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama became "People of the Year" according to Time magazine.

Galina Galkina: Did you meet Mark before you played him?

Jesse Eisenberg: No - I did not know him before filming the picture and still have not met him. But my cousin works for Zuckerberg's company, and he told me about him.

Galina Galkina: And what did he tell you?

Jesse Eisenberg: Don't expect sensations. Mark is humility itself. He is completely unpretentious in everyday life. He is the epitome of what we call a computer geek. He lives by the interests of Facebook.

Galina Galkina: Did your brother tell you how Mark reacted to the film?

Jesse Eisenberg: Mark kind of called it “fiction”.

Galina Galkina: What do you think about this?

Jesse Eisenberg: Ben Mezrich did a lot of research when he wrote his novel The Social Network, which became the basis for the film's script. However, Mark Zuckerberg did not give him an interview. Therefore, it is not surprising that he has a similar reaction to the film.

"Each of us thinks of ourselves as the hero of our own story."

Galina Galkina: What definition could you give to your character now?

Jesse Eisenberg: I ​​think Mark Zuckerberg is at least my character, not a real person - an innovator, but his goal is not personal gain. About the real Mark Zuckerberg, I know that he is a very humble person. Even after the number of visitors to his site has exceeded 500 million, he continues to lead a very modest lifestyle. He is not interested in luxury goods, as well as money. He is, above all, passionate about his website. Mark considers Facebook to be much more important than himself. The drama of this story lies in the fact that he treats the site as a goal of paramount importance, so his relationship with associates breaks down.


As a dateanopic, Zuckerberg distinguishes between red and green much worse than blue, Facebook's primary color.

In the second episode of the 22nd season of The Simpsons, Zuckerberg voiced himself.


In January 2011, an unknown hacker hacked Mark's Facebook page.

The Facebook database is listed as the 4th registered user (the first three are test).


Mark Zuckerberg is a fan of the American band Green Day.

According to the men's magazine GQ, Mark is considered the most tastelessly dressed resident of Silicon Valley.

Back in college, Mark was noticed by Microsoft employees after he wrote the Synapse program, which allowed the computer to independently compose a sequence of musical hits for its owner.

Sources of

Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia, WikiPedia

forbes.ru - Forbes

novostimira.com.ua - World News

allreport.ru - A little about everything

peoples.ru - People

spaceincome.com - Spaceincome

constructorus.ru - Success Builder

Mark Zuckerberg- American IT specialist, programmer, dollar billionaire, philanthropist, entrepreneur and executive FacebookIncorporated... He became famous for his participation in the creation of the most visited social network in the world - Facebook (Facebook).

short biography

Mark Zuckerberg (full name - Mark Elliot Zuckerberg) was born May 14, 1984 not far from New York in the town of White Plains, USA. His father - Edward Zuckerberg, dentist. His mother is Karen Zuckerberg, a psychiatrist.

In a family of 4 children, Mark was the second child and only boy. Already at 10 little Zuckerberg Jr. realized that the whole world connected with computers is divided into 2 types: users and programmers.

When the first computer was presented to him at the age of ten, he did not leave it for hours:

Users work on a computer, and programmers use it to change the world!

Mark Elliot decided that he wanted to be a programmer, and a couple of months after he started mastering the PC, he delved into clever programming books.

Zuckerberg's first successes

Reading books on topics of interest to him bore fruit- already in high school, he wrote his first programs. One of them became the computer embodiment of a board game Risk.

However, Zuckerberg himself always considered himself a hacker and not all of his software wisdom at school could be called correct.

Offer from Microsoft

He would not want to immediately, in his own words, create something global, but I would be glad to do "a bunch of cool little things." One of these little things is a smart mp-3 player - Synapse... He wrote it for personal use.

After carefully studying the owner's preferences and finding out what music, at what time of day and how often he listens, this player was able to generate playlists on its own, "guessing" which tracks the owner would like to hear right now.

They even became interested in an unusual program. Microsoft andAol... However, the young programmer turned down the giants' offers to buy Synapse, and then politely rejected their invitations to cooperate.

Versatile youth

Despite the fact that programming took the main place in the life of Mark Zuckerberg, he skillfully spent the remaining time to completely different classes: he did well in mathematics and natural sciences. He was actively engaged in fencing.

He was fond of the history of antiquity and spent one of his summer vacations in the school of the ancient Greek language. And at the university ( Harvard - from 2002 to 2004) chose a rather unexpected, albeit understandable discipline - psychology. True, he still did not graduate from the university.

The beginning of Facebook success

There was a section on the Harvard intranet where students posted their photos and personal information. The photographs were so-so - the usual face and profile, tense expressions.

It occurred to Mark Zuckerberg to frolic: he made the program, which chose two random faces and offered to compare who is sexier. There was no end to those wishing to conduct a comparative analysis.

By the evening of the first day, the site was viewed by four thousand people.
When the number of visitors exceeded 20,000, the server crashed due to overload.

Mark appeared before the Computer Hacking Commission. He received a disciplinary sanction, but, apparently, already then noticed that such things arouse great interest among the people.

"The Facebook"

February 4, 2004 Mark Elliot launched a social network called « TheFacebook ", which was conceived as a communication site for Harvard students. "The Facebook" has become popular among students mainly due to the convenience of self-organization into groups, courses and parties that already exist in offline universities.

Opening "The Facebook" it was possible to find out where acquaintances live this year, which girls are cute and which are not, who ... All this strongly resembles what Facebook is today.

After the launch of the site, Zuckerberg told the press that Facebook was written in just a week, and this idea just ripened in his head and was quickly implemented, "without leaving the cash register." Fortunately, fellow students also helped - together with Mark, they were also engaged in launching the project Eduardo Severin, Dustin Moskovitz, AndrewMcCollum and Christopher Hughes.

Mark Zuckerberg known all over the world as the creator of the very first social network Facebook and as a successful entrepreneur, whose fortune is estimated at several tens of billions of dollars. Despite his young age - 33 years old, the biography of Mark Zuckerberg is already full of interesting events and facts.

The content of the article :

Biography

M ark Elliot Zuckerberg ( Mark elliot zuckerberg) was born in the small town of White Plains, located near New York, on May 14, 1984, to a Jewish medical family. His mother, Karen Zuckerberg, is a psychiatrist, and his father, Edward Zuckerberg, is a dentist. In addition to Mark, they have three more children: daughters Ariel, Randy and Donna.

Since high school, Zuckerberg began to engage in programming, but this was not his only hobby. He also took lessons in fencing, mathematics and several languages. After completing primary school, Zuckerberg transferred to an elite school " Phillips Exeter Academy“Where the bias towards programming was made. At the age of 12, he created his first program “ ZuckNet“, Which is a local chat in which his family members could communicate with each other. And for his final work in the last year of school, Mark developed an Internet application “ Synapse“That recognized people's musical preferences. The project turned out to be successful, and Microsoft even wanted to buy it for $ 2 million and hire him, but the graduate refused this offer.

Having entered the Faculty of Psychology at Harvard University in 2002, the future billionaire continued to study various programming languages, and over time, together with a team of other students, which included Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes, begins to develop. Mark was so fascinated by the future social network that he dropped out of university and completely focused on his creation, and until now he is actively engaged in improving it.

12 years later, Mark Zuckerberg still received a Harvard diploma.

In 2004, Zuckerberg launched the first version of the social network Facebook, which immediately became popular among Internet users.

Mark Zuckerberg's wife

Mark Zuckerberg with Priscilla Chan

Zuckerberg married on May 19, 2012 to Priscilla Chan, whom he met while studying at Harvard. Interestingly, initially all the guests were invited to a party to celebrate Priscilla's medical education. Arriving at the private house where the couple lived, they learned that, in fact, the wedding ceremony will take place now. Also, according to Wikipedia, it was on this day that Facebook went public, and the billionaire sold part of the shares of the social network.

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife do not like to appear in public, spending most of their time in their house. Also, the family donates a large amount of funds to charity. Last year, Mark and Priscilla started their own foundation, which funds the development of drugs for various diseases. Until 2026, the organization will provide a total of approximately $ 3 billion.

The couple had their first daughter on December 2, 2015, who was named Maxine, and two years later, on August 28, the couple had another daughter - August.

Mark Zuckerberg with his wife

Mark Zuckerberg regularly on his instagram (https://www.instagram.com/zuck/) publishes photos of how his family spends time: walking, celebrating holidays or doing various things in his private house.

Mark Zuckerberg's fortune

Mark Zuckerberg's fortune at the moment is estimated approximately $ 70 billion... It's not hard to guess that almost all of his business is based on.

Zuckerberg earned his first capital in the first year of the social network's existence, when he was able to attract large investors. With the development of his project, Mark simultaneously increased his income. Already in 2010, the talented programmer became the youngest billionaire on Earth, and Forbes has estimated his fortune at $ 4 billion. In the same year, the magazine Time awarded Mark Zuckerberg the title Person of the Year". Since that moment, in seven years, its capital has increased 17.5 times.

However, despite the large income, neither the billionaire nor his wife have ever been seen squandering money or significant spending. On the contrary, the family lives rather modestly in their cottage in Palo Alto. Instead of an expensive Mercedes, Mark drives an ordinary Volkswagen Golf, which an ordinary average worker can afford. As mentioned above, Zuckerberg and Chan donate a considerable part of their income to various funds, and not so long ago, the creator of Facebook even stated that during his life he plans to spend 99% of the money earned on charity.

Zuckerberg now owns 24% of Facebook and is the company's CEO. This year, Forbes magazine included Mark in the five richest people on the planet.

Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook started working on February 4, 2004. The creator himself describes the process of working on a social network without any special colors. According to him, every day, after classes at Harvard, he met with his team of students, and together they wrote the program code for the future site. And then the developments were tested.

When the social network was brought into working order, its first version was launched. Zuckerberg almost immediately started looking for investors who would help develop the project in the future, but for now hewas in search, Facebook was funded from his personal pocket. To seriously deal with his brainchild, Mark dropped out of university and invested all the money saved up for further education in the social network.

Within a few months, the list of investors included such well-known Internet personalities as Reed Hoffman- business network creator Linkedin, Peter Thiel- co-owner PayPal, and Sean Parker- file hosting developer Napster... By early next year, the total investment in Facebook was several million dollars.

In 2005, the total number of registered users of the social network reached five million users! This secured Facebook the seventh place on the list of the most popular sites in America. Such a success of a rapidly developing resource could not fail to attract the attention of large IT companies who wished to acquire it. Zuckerberg received several offers, but he refused all of them.

Indeed, 2007 was a watershed year when Microsoft acquired a 1.6% stake in the company for $ 240 million. Thus, the social network began to be valued at $ 15 billion. This made it possible to sell the assets of the social network for a lot of money and receive large investments for the development of the project. Reaching a new level, Zuckerberg opened an office in Dublin and began working on expanding the site's functionality. In 2009, the company announced its first profit. At the same time, access to the program code was opened on the Facebook site, thanks to which any user can now create an application for a variety of purposes and upload it to the network.

Since then, the social network has been developing rapidly. In 2015, the site became the second most visited site in the world, behind only the search engine Google... At the moment, the monthly traffic of the resource is on average 2 billion people... In terms of revenues, the company has an annual profit of approximately $ 10.2 billion and an annual turnover of $ 27.6 billion. Also Facebook.Inc owns a service for posting photos Instagram as well as messenger Whatsapp.

Some interesting facts about Facebook statistics

  1. In August 2015, the service reached the mark of one billion visitors per day;
  2. Every day, social media users upload about 300 million images to their pages;
  3. The number of daily video views is approximately 9 billion;
  4. In the first seven years of the social network, its various pages were opened 1 trillion times;
  5. People give 6 billion likes every day;
  6. On March 13, 2010, the social network was visited by more people than the Google search engine;
  7. In 2017, the total value of Facebook shares reached the $ 500 billion mark.

In 2017, the company did a lot of work to develop Facebook. Along with Instagram, the social network added the ability to leave stories that disappear from the users' feed after a certain period of time. A service has appeared that tracks victims of natural disasters. Perhaps, in the future, this will save a lot of lives. Since the beginning of summer, the company has been considering a way to introduce paid viewing of news, which will be activated after a user opens a certain number of posts. Along with the introduction of paid content viewing, Facebook.Inc also plans to start paying active users to publish various useful materials. And the current priority for Zuckerberg and his team is to create artificial intelligence that will recognize the current mood of users based on the material, pages, videos, images they are viewing, and the frequency of using certain emoticons.

Mark Zuckerberg's rules of success

Many people ask the question: what is the secret of Mark Zuckerberg's success? However, there is most likely no specific answer. The billionaire himself is in no hurry to reveal any secrets, so one can only guess, analyzing the work he has done over the past 15 years.

  1. Zuckerberg has always been single-minded, putting his principles above all else. He tries to make the most of all the opportunities available to him and get as much of the knowledge he needs as possible. All this turned him into a purposeful and educated person who thinks sensibly and soberly evaluates the situation.
  2. Zuckerberg owes much of his success to the people who have been working on his team all this time. The billionaire is excellent at recruiting and motivating employees to bring maximum value.
  3. Some of Mark's values ​​are humility and generosity. Zuckerberg never tries to stand out from others or draw attention to himself. And constant donations to various charitable foundations speak of his desire to help people.
  4. Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg is the only billionaire who does not have his own business secret, but simply tries to completely devote himself to work and not make mistakes.

Film "Social Network"

In 2009 director David fincher announced the development of the film, which is based on the period in the life of Mark Zuckerberg and his team, when they were developing the first version of Facebook, while studying at the university. Responsible for writing the script Aaron Sorkin, and the book “ Reluctant billionaires«.

The motion picture was supposed to show the first months of the development of the social network and show how Zuckerberg gathered into one team the personalities who laid the foundation for the work of the first version of Facebook. Of course, there were some assumptions and deviations from the real story in the script to make it more interesting for the viewer to watch the movie.

Several candidates were considered for the role of Zuckerberg, including Andrew Garfield (he still took part in the film and played Eduardo Saverin) and Shia LaBeouf, but in the end received it Jesse Eisenberg... Also in the "Social Network" played and Justin Timberlake playing the role Sean Parker.

The film was released on October 28, 2010. The film was well received by audiences and grossed $ 225 million with a budget of 40 million. The average critics' rating on Kinopoisk is 7.7 points.

The plot transports viewers to 2003, when, while still a student at Harvard, Zuckerberg assembles his first team and begins work on the future social network Facebook. Over time, they manage to achieve overwhelming success, but it turns out that not all of the main characters were ready for the popularity that fell on their heads. The film also tells how Zuckerberg became the youngest billionaire on the planet.