Born
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg
May 14, 1984 (age 31)[1]
White Plains, New York, U.S.
Residence
Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Alma mater
Harvard University (dropped out)
Occupation
Computer programmer, Internet entrepreneur
Years active
2004–present
Known for
Co-Founder of Facebook
Home town
Dobbs Ferry, New York, U.S.
Salary
$1.00 a year [2]
Net worth
US$45.4 billion (December 2015)[3]
Title
Chairman and CEO of Facebook
Spouse(s)
Priscilla Chan (m. 2012)
Children
1
Relatives
Randi Zuckerberg (sister)
Website
facebook.com/zuck
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) is an
American computer programmer, Internet
entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is the chairman,
chief executive, and co-founder of the social
networking website Facebook.[4][5] His personal
wealth, as of December 2015, is estimated to be $45.4
billion, ranked by Forbes as the 7th richest American.
[3] Zuckerberg receives a one-dollar salary as CEO of
Facebook.[2] In the spirit of The Giving Pledge,
Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced
they would give the majority of their wealth over the
course of their lives to "advancing human potential
and promoting equality".[6][7]
Together with his college roommates and fellow
Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin,
Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris
Hughes, he launched Facebook from Harvard's
dormitory rooms.[8] The group then introduced
Facebook onto other campuses nationwide and
moved to Palo Alto, California shortly afterwards. In
2007, at the age of 23, Zuckerberg became a
billionaire as a result of Facebook's success. The
number of Facebook users worldwide reached a total
of one billion in 2012. Zuckerberg was involved in
various legal disputes that were initiated by others in
the group, who claimed a share of the company
based upon their involvement during the
development phase of Facebook.
Since 2010, Time magazine has named Zuckerberg
among the 100 wealthiest and most influential people
in the world as a part of its Person of the Year
distinction.[9][10][11] Zuckerberg was played by actor
Jesse Eisenberg in the 2010 film The Social Network,
in which the rise of Facebook is portrayed.[12] He has
been married to Priscilla Chan since 2012 and they
have one child.
Early life
Zuckerberg was born in 1984 in White Plains, New
York.[13] He is the son of dentist Edward Zuckerberg
and psychiatrist Karen Kempner.[14] He and his three
sisters, Randi, Donna, and Arielle,[15] were brought
up in Dobbs Ferry, New York, a small Westchester
County village about 21 miles (34 km) north of
Midtown Manhattan.[15] Zuckerberg was raised
Jewish and had his bar mitzvah when he turned 13.
[16] Afterward, he became an atheist.[17][18][19]
At Ardsley High School, Zuckerberg excelled in
classics. He transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy in
New Hampshire in his junior year, where he won
prizes in science (math, astronomy and physics) and
classical studies. On his college application,
Zuckerberg claimed that he could read and write
French, Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek. He was
captain of the fencing team.[18][20][21][22] In college,
he was known for reciting lines from epic poems
such as The Iliad.[20]
Software developer
Early years
Zuckerberg began using computers and writing
software in middle school. His father taught him Atari
BASIC Programming in the 1990s, and later hired
software developer David Newman to tutor him
privately. Newman calls him a "prodigy", adding that
it was "tough to stay ahead of him". Zuckerberg took
a graduate course in the subject at Mercy College
near his home while still in high school. He enjoyed
developing computer programs, especially
communication tools and games. In one such
program, since his father's dental practice was
operated from their home, he built a software
program he called "ZuckNet" that allowed all the
computers between the house and dental office to
communicate with each other. It is considered a
"primitive" version of AOL's Instant Messenger,
which came out the following year.
According to writer Jose Antonio Vargas, "some kids
played computer games. Mark created them."
Zuckerberg himself recalls this period: "I had a bunch
of friends who were artists. They'd come over, draw
stuff, and I'd build a game out of it." However, notes
Vargas, Zuckerberg was not a typical "geek-klutz", as
he later became captain of his prep school fencing
team and earned a classics diploma. Napster co-
founder Sean Parker, a close friend, notes that
Zuckerberg was "really into Greek odysseys and all
that stuff", recalling how he once quoted lines from
the Roman epic poem Aeneid, by Virgil, during a
Facebook product conference.[15]
During Zuckerberg's high school years, under the
company name Intelligent Media Group, he built a
music player called the Synapse Media Player that
used machine learning to learn the user's listening
habits, which was posted to Slashdot[23] and
received a rating of 3 out of 5 from PC Magazine.[24]
College years
By the time he began classes at Harvard, Zuckerberg
had already achieved a "reputation as a
programming prodigy", notes Vargas. He studied
psychology and computer science as well as
belonging to Alpha Epsilon Pi and Kirkland House.[9]
[15][25] In his sophomore year, he wrote a program
he called CourseMatch, which allowed users to make
class selection decisions based on the choices of
other students and also to help them form study
groups. A short time later, he created a different
program he initially called Facemash that let students
select the best looking person from a choice of
photos. According to Zuckerberg's roommate at the
time, Arie Hasit, "he built the site for fun". Hasit
explains:
“
We had books called Face Books, which included
the names and pictures of everyone who lived in
the student dorms. At first, he built a site and
placed two pictures, or pictures of two males and
two females. Visitors to the site had to choose
who was "hotter" and according to the votes there
would be a ranking.[26]
”
The site went up over a weekend; but by Monday
morning, the college shut it down because its
popularity had overwhelmed one of Harvard's
network switches and prevented students from
accessing the Internet. In addition, many students
complained that their photos were being used
without permission. Zuckerberg apologized publicly,
and the student paper ran articles stating that his site
was "completely improper."[26]
The following semester, in January 2004, Zuckerberg
began writing code for a new website.[27] On
February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched
"Thefacebook", originally located at
thefacebook.com.[28]
Six days after the site launched, three Harvard
seniors, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and
Divya Narendra, accused Zuckerberg of intentionally
misleading them into believing he would help them
build a social network called
HarvardConnection.com, while he was instead using
their ideas to build a competing product.[29] The
three complained to the Harvard Crimson and the
newspaper began an investigation in response.
Following the official launch of the Facebook social
media platform, the three filed a lawsuit against
Zuckerberg that resulted in a settlement.[30] The
agreed settlement was for 1.2 million Facebook
shares that were worth US$300 million at Facebook's
IPO.[31]
Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard in his
sophomore year to complete his project.[32] In
January 2014, Zuckerberg recalled:
“
I remember really vividly, you know, having pizza
with my friends a day or two after—I opened up
the first version of Facebook at the time I thought,
"You know, someone needs to build a service like
this for the world." But I just never thought that
we'd be the ones to help do it. And I think a lot of
what it comes down to is we just cared more.[33]
”
Career
Zuckerberg listening to President Barack Obama
before a private meeting where Obama dined with
technology business leaders in Woodside, California,
February 17, 2011. Also seen in the picture are Carol
Bartz of Yahoo!, Art Levinson of Genentech, Steve
Westly of The Westly Group, and Eric Schmidt of
Google.
Facebook
Main articles: Facebook, History of Facebook and
Timeline of Facebook
Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard
dormitory room on February 4, 2004.[34][35] An
earlier inspiration for Facebook may have come from
Phillips Exeter Academy, the prep school from which
Zuckerberg graduated in 2002. It published its own
student directory, "The Photo Address Book", which
students referred to as "The Facebook". Such photo
directories were an important part of the student
social experience at many private schools. With
them, students were able to list attributes such as
their class years, their friends, and their telephone
numbers.[34]
Once at college, Zuckerberg's Facebook started off as
just a "Harvard thing" until Zuckerberg decided to
spread it to other schools, enlisting the help of
roommate Dustin Moskovitz. They began with
Columbia, New York University, Stanford, Dartmouth,
Cornell, Penn, Brown, and Yale.[36] Samyr Laine, a
triple jumper representing Haiti at the 2012 Summer
Olympics, shared a room with Zuckerberg during
Facebook's founding. "Mark was clearly on to great
things," said Laine, who was Facebook's fourteenth
user.[37]
After Zuckerberg moved to Palo Alto, California with
Moskovitz and some friends, 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.
According to Zuckerberg, the group planned to
return to Harvard but eventually decided to remain in
California.[38][39] They had already turned down
offers by major corporations to buy the company. In
an interview in 2007, Zuckerberg explained his
reasoning: "It's not because of the amount of money.
For me and my colleagues, the most important thing
is that we create an open information flow for
people. Having media corporations owned by
conglomerates is just not an attractive idea to
me."[35]
He restated these goals to Wired magazine in 2010:
"The thing I really care about is the mission, making
the world open."[40] Earlier, in April 2009,
Zuckerberg sought the advice of former Netscape
CFO Peter Currie about financing strategies for
Facebook.[41] On July 21, 2010, Zuckerberg reported
that the company reached the 500 million-user mark.
[42] When asked whether Facebook could earn more
income from advertising as a result of its
phenomenal growth, he explained:
“
I guess we could..... If you look at how much of
our page is taken up with ads compared to the
average search query. The average for us is a little
less than 10 percent of the pages and the average
for search is about 20 percent taken up with
ads..... That's the simplest thing we could do. But
we aren't like that. We make enough money. Right,
I mean, we are keeping things running; we are
growing at the rate we want to.[40]
”
In 2010, Steven Levy, who wrote the 1984 book
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, wrote
that Zuckerberg "clearly thinks of himself as a
hacker". Zuckerberg said that "it's OK to break things"
"to make them better".[43][44] Facebook instituted
"hackathons" held every six to eight weeks where
participants would have one night to conceive of and
complete a project.[43] The company provided
music, food, and beer at the hackathons, and many
Facebook staff members, including Zuckerberg,
regularly attended.[44] "The idea is that you can build
something really good in a night", Zuckerberg told
Levy. "And that's part of the personality of Facebook
now..... It's definitely very core to my personality."[43]
Vanity Fair magazine named Zuckerberg number 1 on
its 2010 list of the Top 100 "most influential people of
the Information Age".[45] Zuckerberg ranked number
23 on the Vanity Fair 100 list in 2009.[46] In 2010,
Zuckerberg was chosen as number 16 in New
Statesman's annual survey of the world's 50 most
influential figures.[47]
In a 2011 interview with PBS after the death of Steve
Jobs, Zuckerberg said that Jobs had advised him on
how to create a management team at Facebook that
was "focused on building as high quality and good
things as you are".[48]
On October 1, 2012, Zuckerberg visited Russian
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow to
stimulate social media innovation in Russia and to
boost Facebook's position in the Russian market.[49]
Russia's communications minister tweeted that
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev urged the social
media giant's founder to abandon plans to lure away
Russian programmers and instead consider opening
a research center in Moscow. In 2012, Facebook had
roughly 9 million users in Russia, while domestic
clone VK had around 34 million.[50] Rebecca Van
Dyck, Facebook's head of consumer marketing,
claimed that 85 million American Facebook users
were exposed to the first day of the Home
promotional campaign on April 6, 2013.[51]
On August 19, 2013, the Washington Post reported
that Zuckerberg's Facebook profile was hacked by an
unemployed web developer.[52]
At the 2013 TechCrunch Disrupt conference, held in
September, Zuckerberg stated that he is working
towards registering the 5 billion humans who were
not connected to the Internet as of the conference on
Facebook. Zuckerberg then explained that this is
intertwined with the aim of the Internet.org project,
whereby Facebook, with the support of other
technology companies, seeks to increase the number
of people connected to the internet.[53][54]
Zuckerberg was the keynote speaker at the 2014
Mobile World Congress (MWC), held in Barcelona,
Spain, in March 2014, which was attended by 75,000
delegates. Various media sources highlighted the
connection between Facebook's focus on mobile
technology and Zuckerberg's speech, claiming that
mobile represents the future of the company.[55]
Zuckerberg's speech expands upon the goal that he
raised at the TechCrunch conference in September
2013, whereby he is working towards expanding
Internet coverage into developing countries.[56]
Alongside other American technology figures like Jeff
Bezos and Tim Cook, Zuckerberg hosted visiting
Chinese politician Lu Wei, known as the "Internet
czar" for his influence in the enforcement of China's
online policy, at Facebook's headquarters on
December 8, 2014. The meeting occurred after
Zuckerberg participated in a Q&A session at Tsinghua
University in Beijing, China, on October 23, 2014,
where he attempted to converse in Mandarin Chinese
—although Facebook is banned in China, Zuckerberg
is highly regarded among the people and was at the
university to help fuel the nation's burgeoning
entrepreneur sector.[57]
Zuckerberg fielded questions during a live Q&A
session at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park
on December 11, 2014. The founder and CEO
explained that he does not believe Facebook is a
waste of time because it facilitates social
engagement, and participating in a public session
was so that he could "learn how to better serve the
community".[58][59]

MzPecs:
That's nice..

Thanks

Cool, we all are beneficiaries of that decision he made in 2005.

Seun, you did well, its just that some people have turned nairaland into something else today.. I wish it is still what i met then in 2012, calm and loaded with much reasonable info not the irrelevancies a lot bring up lately..

Nice one.But the way Nairalenders always mention Lalasticlacla,it makes one wonder if he/she is the owner of Nairaland.

Sacramento4real:
Nice one.But the way Nairalenders always mention Lalasticlacla,it makes one wonder if he/she is the owner of Nairaland.

He is like d VP of NL

Lalasticlala is a blood relative of seun but pls don't tell anyone I told you..


When I grow up I will like to co-own Nairaland so that I can sack Mynd44 or make him moderate the recycle bin..

Only amadioha know how many yrs Ban I go get now as Nwa Biafra..

menix:
Lalasticlala is a blood relative of seun but pls don't tell anyone I told you..


When I grow up I will like to co-own Nairaland so that I can sack Mynd44 or make him moderate the recycle bin..

Only amadioha know how many yrs Ban I go get now as Nwa Biafra..

Lol

Atom57:
He is like d VP of NL

Seun has no VP... If you want Seun's whole family pix lemme know.... But its a contraband in hia

praxisnetworks:

Seun has no VP... If you want Seun's whole family pix lemme know.... But its a contraband in hia

Seriously?

Hey ya full ban coming for you....you and i knows seun does not like this.

Atom57:
Seriously?

You in doubt? Get Seun's permission....even childhood

DaFlash:
Hey ya full ban coming for you....you and i knows seun does not like this.

Full ban for who?

praxisnetworks:

Full ban for who?

OP na. Before the page hit trending not to talk of fp dem go don close this trend and ban op.

DaFlash:
OP na. Before the page hit trending not to talk of fp dem go don close this trend and ban op.

What ma offence

Cool. God loves u

So if I post the profile on Mark on Facebook am going to get ban?

Atom57:
What ma offence

Lets just say sometimes strange ban happens on NL concerning seuns profile. Ma advice when the ban its done open new acc and ask the mods why you where banned.

DaFlash:
Lets just say sometimes strange ban happens on NL concerning seuns profile. Ma advice when the ban its done open new acc and ask the mods why you where banned.

LMAO this kain thread na sure ban..tru tru

DaFlash:
Lets just say sometimes strange ban happens on NL concerning seuns profile. Ma advice when the ban its done open new acc and ask the mods why you where banned.

Thanks bro I never knew that

Anyway am waiting to get Ban for this. I neva knnew I can get ban for this

I pray the MOD have mercy and spare me. I swear I no go do am again

Atom57:
I pray the MOD have mercy and spare me. I swear I no go do am again

Lols

Abeg someone should tell me how to delete the thread myself before the MODS ban me

Maybe the guy does not like much attention i think thats what he always try to protect.

DaFlash:
Maybe the guy does not like much attention i think thats what he always try to protect.

yea,smth like dat

DaFlash:
Maybe the guy does not like much attention i think thats what he always try to protect.

He gets mortified whenever his pictures surface online

DaFlash:
Maybe the guy does not like much attention i think thats what he always try to protect.

can I delete the thread

Atom57:
can I delete the thread

I dont think so but you can lay low with this trend.

DaFlash:
I dont think so but you can lay low with this trend.

how

[quote author=DaFlash post=40754782]I dont think so but you can lay low with this trend.[/quote I think I did dat now]

It is insightful. Thanks.