It's an obvious fact: to succeed in life, you need a lot of arrogance. Facebook's success story Once again fully confirms this thesis, since initially Mark Zuckerberg borrowed the data and photographs of his fellow students without asking and published them online.
A short history of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg in October 2008So it all started in 2003, when a Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg hacked the database of his student dormitory, after which he posted personal information and photographs online. He published all this stuff in the Facemash program he created. The goal was to entertain users who had to rate the photos and decide which ones were “Wow!” and which ones were “Hot or Not.”
The result caused more outrage than laughter, because Zuckerberg did not ask permission from any of the victims of such a “beauty contest.” The university management was also not happy, and the site was removed from the network.
However, Zuckerberg already felt the promise of this idea and began further development of the project. At the beginning of 2004, Mark launched TheFacebook, which immediately caused a scandal again: three of his fellow students, a few days after TheFacebook appeared on the network, said that Zuckerberg had stolen the idea from them. But the social network, which had begun its path to success, could not be stopped.
Just a few weeks later, scores of Harvard students signed up for TheFacebook. The news about the emergence of a new social network spread very quickly, and soon students at other universities: Yale, Columbia and Stanford were captured by a wave of enthusiasm.
Zuckerberg invited several fellow students into his business and soon moved out of his student dormitory at Harvard. In the summer of 2004, the first office was opened in Palo Alto, and soon the first investor appeared. Former CEO PayPal Peter Thiel supported a start-up company, investing about 450 thousand euros in it.
Former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel backs startup company In 2006, the launch of Facebook's News Feed set the stage for its ultimate breakthrough, and just four years later, the social network is logging more than a billion page views every month.
Just nine years after its inception in a Harvard student dormitory, Facebook was worth about $5 billion (as of May 2012). Today the resource is worth more than 300 billion euros and provides jobs to approximately 30 thousand employees around the world.
Photo: pxhere.com, wikimedia.com
Celebrity biographies
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13.09.16 10:14
When organizing an “online beauty contest,” he did not even think about the stunning consequences this would lead to. The biography of Mark Zuckerberg, the youngest billionaire in history, began with a student prank.
Biography of Mark Zuckerberg
The son of a dentist from the suburbs of New York
Mark was born in large family dentist Edward Zuckerberg and his psychiatrist wife Karen Kempner on May 14, 1984. The Zuckerbergs lived in a small Westchester County village 21 miles north of midtown Manhattan. Jews Edward and Karen raised three daughters (Randy, Donna, Ariel) and only son.
At the age of 13, Mark underwent a Jewish bar mitzvah, but later admitted that he is an atheist and does not support any faiths. Despite this, he believes in karma and believes that the most amazing religion in the world is Buddhism.
Mark Zuckerberg's school biography is replete with bright pages. He excelled at Ardsley High School and was transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy in Hampshire, where he won prizes in mathematics, physics, astronomy and classical studies. When Mark entered college, he indicated on his application 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 programming prodigy. Despite the fact that Mark entered the psychology department, the newly minted student studied computer science and joined the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. In his second year he wrote computer program CourseMatch, which helped form study groups.
And soon Mark created another program, initially called "Facemash", which allowed students to choose the best photos. It was simply an entertainment site where pictures of two guys or two girls were posted and visitors had to vote on who was “hot.” This is how the rating of this or that participant was formed. Over the course of a couple of weekends, a record number of students visited the site. But by Monday morning the college had closed it because Harvard's computer network simply collapsed under such pressure. The college authorities did not know that this was the beginning of the Facebook era.
Youngest billionaire
Mark left Harvard in his second year to bring his project to fruition. Together with several friends (including Dustin Moskovitz), Zuckerberg moved to Palo Alto. There they rented a small house, which became their “headquarters”. Over the summer, Mark found a sponsor (Peter Thiel), who invested money in new company. At the initial stage of the work, Harvard student from Brazil Eduardo Saverin, who later sued Zuckerberg and received 5 percent of Facebook shares, helped financially.
The company's first office 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 " Social network" - This detailed story about the start, formation of Facebook and litigation surrounding the company. Zuckerberg did not welcome the idea of making such a movie: “I didn’t want anyone to film the biography of Mark Zuckerberg while I was alive.” However, he later appreciated the drama (which received two Oscars and four Golden Globes). The role of Mark in the film was played by Jesse Eisenberg.
The actor and his hero shook hands for the first time on Saturday Night Live. live"in January 2011.
Generosity is his middle name
On December 9, 2010, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett signed a promise called The Giving Pledge. This agreement stipulates that every millionaire (billionaire) who signs it must donate 50% or more of his 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 his Facebook shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (the amount of donations was approximately $990 million). As of December 31, 2013, this gift was recognized as the largest charitable contribution. Every year, Mark is among 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 caused a huge stir.
Personal life of Mark Zuckerberg
Together with Priscilla
Mark met his future wife, Priscilla Chan, at a fraternity party during his sophomore year at Harvard. In 2003 they started dating. Priscilla is the daughter of Chinese-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 studied at Faculty of Medicine University of California.
In September 2010, Zuckerberg invited his friend to move in together, and they began to live in Palo Alto. In December of the same year, the couple traveled to China. Before this, Mark managed to master the basics of Mandarin.
On May 19, 2012, Zuckerberg and Chan got married on the back patio of the groom's home, combining the wedding celebration with Priscilla's graduation from medical school.
Gratitude for the birth of Max
One thing darkened the personal life of Mark Zuckerberg and his wife - they could not become parents. 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 billionaire’s first-born daughter, Maxim (“Max”) Chan Zuckerberg, was born. IN open letter To Max, Mark and Priscilla promised to donate 99% of their Facebook shares - this is how they expressed gratitude to fate for the birth of their daughter.
Beginning in late 2014, Zuckerberg began conducting Q&A series with groups of people during his travels around the world. He answered the most various questions- for example, how to open a startup and what kind of pizza he likes most. Over time, such communication turned into almost daily publications on Zuckerberg page on Facebook. In them he writes both about the company’s important achievements and about his own successes. Sometimes Mark posts personal photos and talks about how he lives as a father. Sometimes he responds to user comments.
Meeting with developers in Lagos. Photo: Facebook
Zuckerberg is getting help, and a lot of it, writes Bloomberg Businessweek. Several Facebook employees are involved in Zuckerberg's communications with the public, helping him write posts and texts for speeches. Some are engaged in deleting offensive comments and spam on his page. Facebook employs professional photographers who film Zuckerberg, say, jogging in Beijing or reading a book to his daughter. Among them is Charles Ommanney, who recently photographed the Syrian refugee crisis for the Washington Post. Company spokeswoman Vanessa Chan said Facebook is an easy way for management to connect with different audiences.
Many big CEOs have employees who look after their image, but in Zuckerberg's case we're talking about a completely different scale. The image of Zuckerberg himself merges with the image of the company itself: photographs of the head of Facebook changing diapers are published next to statistics on user growth.
“I don’t think there are many executives who could publish personal and business news as easily as Zuckerberg does,” said Fred Cook, director of the University of South Carolina Center for Public Affairs, who once worked with and.
On Lake Naivasha in Kenya. Photo: Facebook
The company itself has a slightly different attitude towards this. Facebook co-founder Sheryl Sandberg used her Facebook page to discuss gender equality in the workplace and talk about her feelings after her husband's death. Company employees believe Zuckerberg's image reflects the company's image. If people think Zuckerberg is a charming innovation enthusiast, then the same definitions can be applied to Facebook. Perhaps that is why in Lately Facebook's PR department is trying to compare its head to Iron Man.
Jogging in Beijing. Photo: Facebook
In December, the network began to appear with Zuckerberg, his wife, daughter, dog and relatives, which talked about a personal assistant for a smart home, which Mark had been developing for a year. Zuckerberg named his project Jarvis - that was the name of the AI butler Iron Man in Marvel films.
The story of Mark Zuckerberg's life and success is incredibly similar to the plot of a movie, which has everything necessary for a good movie: an eccentric genius, lies, betrayal, intrigue, unexpected turns of events and an unpredictable outcome. But it’s probably better to start from the very beginning.
Beginning of life
Mark was born on May 14, 1984 in New York into an intelligent and financially secure Jewish family, becoming the second of four children and the only son. The future genius's passion for programming began to manifest itself almost from primary school. When Mark got his first computer, and this happened in the sixth grade, his interest in lines of code acquired the character of fanaticism, without exaggerating the word.
In the ninth grade from under light hand rising star of the information age, a digital version of the then popular board game“Risk”, and a couple of years later, Mark and a friend created an add-on for the Winamp audio player, which analyzed the user’s musical preferences and created track lists that suited the listener at a given time.
It should be noted that with the growth of programming skills, the future creator of Facebook also developed an eccentricity. So, for example, after publishing the same add-on for Winamp on the Internet, Microsoft asked to sell the project for two million US dollars, but Mark refused, arguing his answer with the phrase “inspiration is not for sale.”
University life
It is also interesting that for all his passion, Zuckerberg managed to excel in other disciplines, including mathematics, fencing, history and psychology. Such a capable young man easily entered the most prestigious university in the States - Harvard; moreover, the financial condition of his family clearly contributed to this.
It is not surprising that Mark’s university performance left much to be desired, since the aspiring genius devoted all his time to programming, and, oddly enough, his studies also required long hours.
However, Zuckerberg’s unusual mentality has helped him out more than once when preparing for exams. So, for example, two days before the exam, where it was necessary to talk about half a thousand paintings on the history of art, Mark created a website, on each page of which there was a separate painting, and asked his classmates to express their opinions about each one. In general, literally in two hours the material for submission was prepared, and Mark himself received the highest mark.
Programming: interest, passion, mania...
It cannot be said that Mark was an exemplary student: this man did not exactly lead correct image life and was too passionate about programming. Mark could suddenly leave a lecture or any other event and run across campus to the computer to bring his next idea to life.
One day, Mark broke up with his girlfriend, which he immediately, as was his habit, wrote about on a blog on MySpace. After a few bottles of beer, Zuckerberg decided to create a website that would allow him to rate girls based on their photographs. Using vulnerabilities in the protection of the university's servers, Mark downloaded photographs of all the students, and then displayed them on the website page in pairs and in random order, giving users the opportunity to vote. Based on the voting results, the most attractive girl at the university was determined.
Such cynicism immediately had an effect: the university network traffic increased several dozen times, reaching a record high. In addition, Mark’s actions won the attention of the most different people, including the Winklevoss brothers.
The Facebook. Start
The Winklevoss brothers represented the most elite student club in all of America. And they couldn't ignore Zuckerberg's impressive capabilities. As a result, Mark was invited to participate in the development of the university social network “Harvard-connection”. However, the young genius was not very interested in such an offer and he began working on the creation of The Facebook. Financial assistance he was assisted by fellow student Eduardo Saverin, whose name was on the list of authors of the project for some time.
The first global social network developed every day and approached the level that anyone can see in their browser. At first, Facebook only worked at universities, then it began to take over one educational institution after another. City by city, country by country, continent by continent. Soon, Mark hired several programmers to help him from among the university students.
Eduardo Saverin insisted that Facebook should make money through advertising. Mark did not agree with him and in every possible way prevented negotiations with potential investors. But at one fine moment, Zuckerberg was lucky enough to meet Sean Parker, the notorious developer of a music service who turned the music industry upside down and incurred the wrath of all recording studios and copyright holders.
Sean Parker. A new round of Facebook history
Sean Parker produced Mark strong impression. He managed to persuade Zuckerberg to move to California and begin to attract large investors, which, by the way, led to the fact that Eduardo Saverin began to gradually move away from the project, and after some time his name was crossed out from the list of authors.
The Facebook project lost the “The” prefix, because, according to Sean, “it’s cooler,” and began to bring in a lot of money. However, Mark was not interested in finances; the project itself was important to him.
What followed was a series of lawsuits and proceedings. Mark was sued by the unsuccessful co-authors of “Harvard-connection” and Eduardo Saverin himself, who, in his opinion, was unreasonably excluded from the project.
Zuckerberg and Facebook today
Today, Facebook is the most popular social network in the world. This project generates billions of dollars in profits through promotions and advertising. Mark himself is one of the richest people planets:
- At the beginning of 2010, the billionaire's fortune was estimated at only $6.9 billion. By the end of the year, this figure had increased by almost two and a half times;
- In the first half of 2013, Mark entered the top ten richest people, with almost 14 billion US dollars at his disposal;
- In October 2014, Zuckerberg purchased land on the Kauai coast for a hundred million dollars, where the construction of a 280-hectare estate was planned;
- At the end of 2014, Mark took fourteenth place according to Forbes in the ranking of billionaires with a fortune of about 33.6 billion US dollars.
10 best quotes Mark Zuckerberg
1. “In a world that is changing very quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not to take risks.”
— From an interview given in October 2011 at the Y Combinator Startup School in Palo Alto, California.
2. “The question is not what we want to know about people, the question is what people themselves want to tell about themselves.”
— From an interview with Charlie Rose in November 2011.
3. “I actually wrote code for Facebook in my dorm and ran it from my room. For $85 a month I rented a server and covered my expenses through advertising on the site. We are still making money from this."
— In the same interview with Charlie Rose, Zuckerberg talked about the humble beginnings of his career.
4. “A squirrel dying in your yard, in this moment may be more important than people dying in Africa"
— From an appeal to colleagues on Facebook regarding the relevance of certain events, according to The New York Times.
5. “Move fast, destroy everything. If you don't destroy everything, you're not fast enough."
— In an interview with Business Insider's Henry Blodgett, Zuck (Zuckerberg's nickname) talked about innovation and management. However, he recently announced that Facebook would change its much-talked-about motto.
6. “It sounds strange, of course, but I’d rather be among people who underestimate us. It motivates them to go out and do something big, something that will excite them, that will amaze them.”
— At the Disrupt SF conference organized by TechCrunch in September 2012, the entrepreneur shared his views on the criticism and doubts expressed towards Facebook.
7. “A person can be a genius or have all the necessary skills, but if he doesn’t believe in himself, he won’t give it his all.”
— From a series of talks at Stanford University in October 2005 on hiring the right employees.
8. “People don’t care what they say about you in the movies—or even what you say. They're interested in what you're doing."
— From an interview with Diane Sawyer, ABC, July 2010.
9. “When you're in Silicon Valley, you feel like this is where you should work. But it is not so. If I were starting my career now, I would work in Boston. Silicon Valley, in my opinion, is focused on the short term, and I don't like that."
— From an interview given in October 2011 at the Y Combinator Startup School in Palo Alto, California.
10. “Almost every day I ask myself: Am I doing my best? important thing of all possible ones? If I understand that I am working on the most significant problem that I can help solve, I get satisfaction from the time spent.”
— From the biography “Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook Creator” by Marcia Amidon Lusted.
About life famous people always interesting to listen to. Especially if it is filled with many interesting facts and reveals the secrets of achieving success. The article will talk about the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, starting with the very idea of developing such a popular project and ending with forecasts. You will learn the history of the social network, the biography of its owner, and much more.
History of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg is the name of the “father” of social networks, exactly the way we are used to seeing them. Back in 2004, using almost illegal means, he was able to develop the now popular website www.facebook.com. Of course, this story is not as simple as it seems. Not only Mark, but also his student friends took part in the development of this resource. This, as well as many other things, will be discussed further in the text.
Creator Mark Zuckerberg
Having dealt with the history of the emergence of the social network Facebook, let’s move directly to the biography of its creator Mark Zuckerberg. In addition to some well-known facts, we will talk about his personal life, income and wealth, as well as his good deeds expressed in donations to charity.
Biography
It makes sense to start the story directly from the childhood of the future millionaire. Mark Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984 in a family of American Jews. His childhood passed in the city of White Plains, which is located near New York. He grew up in a family of doctors, his father Edward Zuckerberg worked as a dentist, and his mother Karen was a psychiatrist. In addition to Mark, they had three more children: Randy, Donna and Ariel - all girls. The future creator of the most popular social network began to get involved in programming since childhood, and already in school age developed the first network game. It was computer version games "Risk".
By coincidence, Mark was unable to receive higher education. He entered Harvard University in 2002, and studied only until 2004 at the Faculty of Psychology. In addition, he systematically attended IT courses and could work with many popular programming languages, including C, C++, Java, PHP, and so on. Zuckerberg described himself as a hacker. By the way, while studying in college, Microsoft executives paid attention to him after he developed the Synapse program. It was a simple program for compiling music tops on a computer.
As mentioned earlier, in 2004, Mark, along with his friends Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes, began developing the now popular social network Facebook. At that time, their acquaintance, student Eduardo Saverin, who later sued Zuckerberg because the latter tried to remove Saverin from managing the company, sponsored them.
- At the beginning of 2009, I met Yuri Milner, whose company five months later bought a 1.96% stake in Facebook for $200 million.
- In 2010 he became “Person of the Year” according to Time magazine.
- At the end of 2010, he joined the Giving Pledge campaign, founded by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.
- In the summer of 2016, I attended a meeting with Pope Francis.
As you can see, Zuckerberg’s life is quite eventful, but only general facts were considered, now let’s move on to the most interesting thing - Mark’s personal life.
Personal life
Mark Zuckerberg married only once - on May 19, 2012, to Priscilla Chan, who was his longtime girlfriend. The ceremony was not entirely ordinary. The young couple invited all their friends and relatives to a celebration dedicated to Priscilla receiving her PhD in medicine. It was only after all the guests had gathered on the back patio that they revealed that the celebration was actually in honor of the wedding. Many thought that the young people timed such a significant day to coincide with the IPO of Facebook, but a representative of the couple said that this was not so, and the reason was the end of Priscilla’s education.
Three years later, on December 2, 2015, a daughter was born into the young family, who was named Maxima Chan, or Max for short. And on August 28, 2017, sister Max was born. Her parents named her after the month - August.
Income and wealth
Mark Zuckerberg owns 24% of his company's shares, making him the world's youngest billionaire, according to Forbes magazine. His share is worth 4 billion US dollars. The corresponding entry was published in March 2010. That same year, in the same magazine, Mark was ranked 29th on the list of the richest people in America. According to Forbes, his fortune was $7 billion. With all this, the young billionaire’s official salary is only one dollar.
Some time later, after all the above calculations, Mark increased his fortune, and already in 2011 Forbes magazine ranked him 14th in the list of the richest people in the United States. His income was 17.5 billion.
Mark’s personality will appear on various Forbes lists more than once; for example, in 2012 he took second place in the ranking of young billionaires. There were two interesting events in 2014. First, he purchased a piece of land on the island of Kauai. It cost him $100 million. In the future, Mark plans to build a family property; it is expected that its total area will occupy 280 hectares. Secondly, he was ranked 14th in Forbes. At that time, his fortune was estimated at $33.6 billion.
Four years later, in 2018, his capital doubles and equals 70 billion. This year he was ranked fifth in Forbes and received the status of the youngest multi-billionaire.
Since 2010, Zuckerberg has been on the list of the most influential people in the world, according to the same American magazine. By the way, in 2018 his position in this list was 13, although previously it reached 10.
Charity
In addition to all of the above, Mark Zuckerberg has made a huge contribution to charity. So, at the end of 2015, he published a post on his Facebook page in which he said that he would donate 99% of the company’s shares. At that time it was equal to 45 billion US dollars. This amount will be transferred to appropriate organizations throughout life, and it is aimed at “improving this world for the next generation,” the billionaire said.
In addition, in September 2016, Zuckerberg's wife announced that she was preparing to launch a project called Chan Zuckerberg Science. It will be aimed at combating all kinds of diseases; the total donation budget is $3 billion, distributed over 10 years.
Stages of creating Facebook
Now let's optimize all the information about the social network Facebook and look at key points its creation. And we will start directly from 2003, when Mark Zuckerberg took the first step towards his billions.
While studying at Harvard University, Mark had his eye on the institution's network, which represented profiles of students and teachers, with the ability to exchange messages within it. Having gained access to the network, Zuckerberg copied all his data and launched his own website called Facemash. As you might guess, the project was entirely based on the institution's network, so when it became more or less popular, it was blocked for copyright infringement. By the way, it was under this pretext that he was excluded from educational institution Mark himself.
Surprisingly, in 2004, all charges against Zuckerberg were dropped, and, without thinking twice, he began developing his own project based on Facemash. Only this time it was given a different name - The Photo Address Book, or, in short, The Facebook.
The question of who exactly created Facebook is quite difficult to answer, since Mark is not the only one who was involved in its development. As mentioned earlier, the project was created through mutual efforts in close collaboration with Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskowitz, Mark’s student friends. By the way, Parker left the company in 2005, although he continued to communicate with its creators.
Fun fact: the domain name www.facebook.com was received in 2005, but the social network continued to operate within the framework of Harvard University. And only in 2006, every interested user over 13 years old could register in it.
Facebook headquarters and office
Have you ever wondered where Facebook's head office is located? Of course, the site's servers are scattered all over the world, which is why any user does not experience problems connecting to the social networking site, but such a multi-billion dollar company cannot exist without a headquarters.
It is located in the city of Menlo Park. The city itself is quite quiet and cozy, and, perhaps most importantly, it is gentrified. All employees of the purple social network work in such a calm and peaceful atmosphere.
In the images above you can see that the headquarters does not look like a typical office building, rather, it is a resort village. According to managers, such an atmosphere promotes productive work. All employees come not to work, but to create.
Further development of Facebook and its prospects
Perhaps, enough has been told about the entire history of the Facebook company, so we can only think about what will happen to it next. For example, in 2006, more than 25 million people were already registered on the resource. It is worth noting that the calculations took into account only active users who systematically visited the social network. At the same time, developers worked in two directions: they developed a news feed and made registration publicly available. While this was happening, Mark was haggling with Yahoo, trying to sell his company. He was offered $1 billion. In fact, any price would not have satisfied the young billionaire; he just wanted to know how much his company was worth.
Soon the news feed was added and a scandal erupted. The fact is that the developers completely forgot about confidential information, and users began to have personal data of their friends. Surprisingly, after letters poured in asking him to remove the tape, Mark did nothing, he just continued to watch everything.
Following the feed, registration appeared for everyone, and the flow of users began to pour in. Already in 2007, more than 50 million accounts were created on the resource. Accordingly, the company was developing and investments were required, so it was necessary to look for partners. Zuckerberg addressed two worldwide well-known companies– Microsoft and Google. As a result, the contract was concluded with the first.
A year later, in 2008, the hundred millionth user was registered on Facebook, and in 2010 their number increased to 500 million. However, this does not suit the young billionaire. He is not going to stop there and is going to overcome the mark of 3 billion users. To do this, every day the company’s specialists try their best to improve Zuckerberg’s brainchild, introducing new additions and improving existing functionality. It is worth noting that Mark Zuckerberg is considered young for a reason. Despite the fact that he has a multi-billion dollar net worth, he is not yet thirty years old. Therefore, everything is ahead for him.