Social Media Entrepreneur: Mark Zuckerberg

“Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected”

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is a 34-year-old American technology entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is best known for co-founding and leading Facebook, currently the world’s largest social media networking site, as its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Mark Zuckerberg attended Harvard University and along with his college roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, launched Facebook from his dorm room on February 4, 2004. In 2007, he became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at the age of 23 and proved to the world that one does not need years of work experience to become famous and rich.

Mark Zuckerberg’s father, Edward Zuckerberg is a dentist and his mother, Karen is a psychiatrist. He has three sisters, Randi, Donna and Arielle, and they were brought up in Dobbs Ferry, New York. He attended Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and taught himself how to program computers. During his final year in high school, he and Adam D’Angelo caught the interest of AOL, an American web portal and online service provider, as well as Microsoft when they created a Winamp plug-in that could build customized playlists.

Both, however, turned down job offers to attend college in 2002; Zuckerberg went to Harvard and D’Angelo went to CalTech. In his college, Mark Zuckerberg created a photo-rating site called Facemash, using the photos of fellow students of Harvard from the school’s online facebook, a yearbook like publication which was designed to introduce students to one another. However, he had created this program by hacking into student records and used photos without permission. He was reprimanded by the administration for violating privacy rules and breaching computer security.

Even after being reprimanded, Zuckerberg wasn’t deterred. He finished the platform by combining the concept of traditional facebooks with large-scale social networking sites like Myspace and Friendster. He launched the finished program from his room in 2004 and in just a few weeks, more than half the college had opened accounts. Zuckerberg and his group expanded the program to more universities and colleges. That summer, he moved along with his team to Palo Alto, California. They rented a sublet and partnered with PayPal co-founder, Peter Thiel, and Napster co-founder, Sean Parker.

In August 2005, Mark Zuckerberg officially changed the name of the company to Facebook. He was ready to move the company to the next level after raising $12.7 million in venture capital. The site eventually opened up to high school students and work groups, and by September 2006, anyone with an email ID could join Facebook. Today, there are more than 110 million active users and even more, are joining the site regularly.

Conclusion

Mark Zuckerberg’s success hasn’t always been viewed in a positive light. He was accused of stealing the code for Facebook by some of his college peers and when he introduced the Newsfeed function, which shared all activity updates between people in their respective social networks, it was no less than a controversy. Regardless, one thing is for sure: Zuckerberg is, and will be a major player in the tech industry for the years to come.