Even people who are not registered on Facebook and have a vague idea of this social network are familiar with the name of Mark Zuckerberg today. Having started its growth from a modest student association, Facebook gradually grew to the scale of, one might say, a planet-wide means of communication.
Whatever language you speak, whatever country in the world you are in, whatever your range of interests - with the help of Facebook you can easily find friends, like-minded people and helpers.
The creator of this universal virtual portal is a seemingly ordinary guy, Mark Zuckerberg. If you meet him by chance on the street, you are unlikely to be very interested or surprised: a young man in a simple gray T-shirt and comfortable sneakers does not make any special impression.
But looks can be deceiving and Mark seems like an ordinary guy only until you decide to dig a little deeper.
In 2019, Mark will be only 35. By this age, he has managed to achieve everything that fortune can give a person.
The beginning of the beginning: childhood
Mark was born on May 14, 1984 in White Plains (territorially part of New York). He became the second child of Edward and Karen Zuckerberg. Daughter Randy was born first. After Mark, two more girls were born: Donna and Ariel.
The elder Zuckerbergs worked in healthcare: Edward is a dentist (he still works today), Karen is a psychiatrist. From an early age, children saw how their parents knew how to organize their workday with maximum efficiency: the treatment room was located in the same house where they lived.
Karen helped her husband record patients and took on administrative duties. There was no need to travel to work, thanks to which the couple had time to devote time to making money and raising four heirs.
Often children came to their father’s office, equipped with last word technology. There was always perfect order there. By personal example, the parents gave the children a lesson on how to properly organize their workspace.
Edward and Karen Zuckerberg adhered to fairly strict rules in matters of education, while always encouraging a thirst for knowledge and independence. Measures of physical coercion were never used in the family, but the children had certain boundaries beyond which they should not go when playing pranks.
Edward Zuckerberg said in an interview that in his office there were always computers equipped with modern programs, and children learned to communicate with this technology on a first-name basis almost from infancy. Having once noticed Mark’s increased interest in everything related to IT technologies, his parents gave him a Quantex 486DX.
At that time the boy was 10 years old. This became the starting point for the beginning of Mark’s future career and, one might say, the work of Mark’s entire life. He began to study Atari BASIC, one of the then popular programming languages. Soon the first attempts to create his own software product began: boy friends brought Mark their drawings, and the young programmer invented and created computer games based on them.
The next fruit of young Mark’s labors is the ZuckNet program. It allowed people who were quite far from each other to communicate. Mark's father installed this application on his computer and used his son's work for its intended purpose: he discussed various matters with his assistant.
Education
Mark studied at school with pleasure. He was distinguished by his curiosity and ability to easily assimilate the material of any subject. Natural science disciplines (mathematics, chemistry, physics), as well as foreign languages, were especially easy for the future programmer. By the time he entered college, Mark was fluent in an impressive list of languages, including:
- French;
- Hebrew;
- Ancient Greek.
Friends claim that he freely quoted huge passages from Homer's Iliad by heart.
There were two secondary schools where Mark studied: first, Ardsley School, then Phillips Exeter Academy. After that there was college, and the final step was Harvard University, where, by the way, by the time Marka entered, she was already studying the sciences of elder sister Randy.
All the time Mark was accumulating knowledge, he was interested in programming. Although higher education He received a degree in psychology (probably influenced by his mother), his favorite hobby was the creation of computer programs.
IN student years he created the program CourseMatch. With its help, students chose those disciplines that were interesting to them and which they would like to study in depth.
All this was an excellent preparation for the project, which one day “shot”, so much so that it conquered the whole world with one shot, - Facebook.
Personal life
During his school and student years, Mark was not particularly popular with girls. Perhaps he could be classified into that category of guys who are called “nerds”: everyone free time He devoted himself to his studies and was not carried away by student parties. However, such complete immersion in creativity still did not prevent him from meeting his future life partner, Priscilla Chan.
The girl turned out to be a match for Mark - just as gifted, passionate about her studies, striving to achieve success in the business field. She studied medical profession.
The young people dated for a long time, and the marriage was registered only in 2012. Friends and relatives were invited to the celebration, to whom it was initially announced that the celebration was being held on the occasion of Priscilla receiving her Doctor of Science degree in medicine. And only when they got into the house did the friends realize that they were at a wedding.
The couple has two children: daughter Max was born in 2015, and daughter August was born in 2017. Mark turned out to be a very caring father: he willingly helps his wife bathe and entertain the little ones. For the sake of his children, he even gave up active participation in business for a while, going on “maternity leave.”
Mark and Priscilla lead a rather modest lifestyle, do not try to “shine” at various events, and their names do not appear in scandalous chronicles. It looks like the couple is happy.
Of Mark’s three sisters, the eldest Randa turned out to be most closely connected with him, and not only through family ties: she for a long time worked at Facebook doing advertising.
Randa even wrote a book about this period. It is interesting that family ties did not give Randa any advantages: her brother treated her the same as other employees, and once tore up a report he did not like.
How did Facebook start? In 2003, Mark Zuckerberg was a sophomore at Harvard. It was then that he came up with the idea of a large-scale network that could be used by students and other people, primarily to solve some professional problems.
During his “training,” a promising student hacked into a university server and “stole” photographs and other data stored there. He was accused of copyright infringement.
The incident brought scandalous fame to the novice programmer. He continued to work on the project and in 2004 introduced the world to a new social network - Thefacebook.
Investments
To develop the project, substantial sums of money were needed. The creator did not have the required amount of start-up capital, so he began looking for people willing to invest their funds. It was assumed that in the future all this would pay off and the social network would bring good profits.
Another Harvard student, Eduardo Saverin, acted as an investor. He was rich and well versed in business - or so Zuckerberg assumed. In one of his messages to a friend, Mark writes: “Eduardo will pay for my servers... He thinks he will make money... I don’t know about business.”
In fact, Zuckerberg admitted that he was not sure about the benefits of the investment. His intention was different: “I’ll be satisfied if I do something cool.”
The social network was expanding rapidly and more and more money was needed. Well-known businessmen in the States saw interesting prospects for the project and began to willingly invest considerable sums. Here are their names: Peter Thiel, Ride Hoffman, Mark Pincus. The developer felt: it was time to leave the role of a student and seriously get involved in the Big Business.
Lawsuits
At this stage, difficulties began with the company's first investor. Eduardo Saverin did not play by the rules that Zuckerberg had established in his company (now called simply Facebook). Eduardo tried to convince the head of the company that it was necessary to make the most of the possibilities of online advertising.
In addition, he creates the Joboozle project, designed to help meet potential employers and those who are looking for work. All this displeases Mark: firstly, he does not want to turn his social network into a space for advertising, and secondly, he reproaches Eduardo for unworthy rivalry: they say, Facebook should also soon develop a platform to help job seekers. It turns out that Saverin is “crossing the road.”
When it became clear that the founders had finally parted ways, the question arose of eliminating the competitor. And Mark does the following: he sells the company and acquires a new one so that the number of shares owned by Eduardo is sharply reduced. His share in the case is simply being eroded.
After the trial, Saverin was actually removed from managing the company and signed an agreement to transfer all intellectual property and voting rights to Mark Zuckerberg.
This vague story was not the last for Facebook to “highlight” the name of its owner in court.
A really big scandal broke out when it became clear that from 2014 to 2017, the social network transferred data of its users to Cambridge Analytica. Of course, this was done without obtaining user consent.
Cambridge Analytica analyzed data and used it to create portraits of American voters, that is, illegally used it in preparation for presidential elections. According to some sources, this was the personal data of 50 million, according to others – 86 million people.
The precedent turned out to be so egregious that not only the Massachusetts prosecutor's office, but even the European Parliament became interested in the process.
After legal proceedings, Facebook was fined $238,000.
How did the head of the social network react to what happened? Facebook is satisfied with the court's decision, as stated by the company's press secretary, Gauthier. Zuckerberg held several meetings with people in important positions and announced that Facebook was now at war.
This means that it is necessary to develop a methodology that will reliably protect users’ personal data. This type of information leakage cannot be allowed to happen again.
Second important task“wartime” Zuckerberg announced a search for opportunities to expand the user base. It’s not surprising: after all, some people, fearing a possible leak of personal data, will move to some other platforms.
How Facebook makes money
For most of us, Facebook is a means of communication and communication. But no company will last long if it does not make money for its founder. Interesting data: the social network earns $5.45 per user. This is on average. If we take Europeans into account, for them this figure will be approximately 8 dollars, and in Canada and the USA it is 23.59 dollars.
The scheme for earning capital is simple - by selling advertising. Advertising is used widely and actively:
- ads;
- video;
- advertising posts.
A very interesting thing is targeted advertising. As soon as a user takes a “walk” through the pages of travel agencies and looks for, for example, a ski tour, offers of excellent ski equipment, conveniently located hotels, courses and instructors teaching the art of dashing mountain skiing will immediately appear unobtrusively.
Social network in cinema
Facebook has become so famous that a film has already been made about it. The name is simple: “Social Network”. The film tells the story of the beginning of Mark Zuckerberg's journey, the first steps and development of his grandiose project. In general, the facts coincide with reality, although there is also fiction - the filmmakers themselves admit that they do not claim one hundred percent truthfulness.
So, probably to create intrigue, director David Fincher forces the movie Mark to meet a certain girl and go through a difficult breakup with her. Allegedly, this was the starting point for the emergence of the idea of Facebook - a network that would make it easy to make acquaintances without the barriers that sometimes appear in real life, communicate.
The film then tells how a grieving Mark hacks the university server and creates a page where you can vote for the most beautiful student at Harvard. And all this happens in one night.
Subsequent events develop according to a scenario similar to reality.
The real Mark Zuckerberg reacted coolly to the film. On the one hand, he was delighted with how the creators accurately reproduced it external image– eternal simple gray T-shirts and light sneakers.
On the other hand, he pointed to the fact that no girl left him on the eve of the creation of Facebook. Moreover, then he already knew Priscilla, his only love.
Mark Zuckerberg today
In the book “The Durov Code” by Nikolai Kononov, which tells about the life and work of the author of the large Russian social network “VKontakte”, Mark Zuckerberg is presented as a cold and unemotional person, whose soul is truly dark for those around him.
Let's try to lift the veil of secrecy a little: what is the young billionaire really like?
Charity
Perhaps the decision to give part of one’s income to charity can say a lot about a person. One day (it was in 2015), Mark and Priscilla announced that during their lives they would give 99% of their Facebook shares to help those in need.
The couple keeps their word: today Mark is the creator and curator of dozens of charitable foundations.
Visit Russia
In 2012, apparently as part of a project to expand the Facebook network, the young billionaire came to Russia. He met with Medvedev and appeared twice on Channel One. Then Zuckerberg gave a lecture to students of Moscow State University. Lomonosov.
There were rumors that all this was done to create a development center for the Facebook project in Russia, taking into account the local “flavor”. They were also afraid of the active recruitment of young ambitious guys and the subsequent “brain drain”.
Nothing happened: Mark simply talked about the features of his social network, drew attention to its advantages and encouraged everyone to register their own page.
Titles
Mark Zuckerberg is the recipient of an honorary Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from Harvard University.
He is “Person of the Year 2010” according to Time magazine. He is also recognized as the youngest billionaire in the world. And it remains so to this day.
State
Forbes magazine, which loves to follow the lives of the Earth's top billionaires, has been steadily ranking Mark Zuckerberg among the very top for several years now.
But this year, after a major scandal involving the leak of user data and a lawsuit, Zuckerberg’s fortune was under threat: if in January 2018 it was $75 billion, then by December 2018 it was “only” $56 billion. In a year, the businessman lost more than $19 billion.
However, now the situation has stabilized somewhat. Most likely, the head of the company will be able to cope with the problem - it was not for nothing that he declared “martial law” to his employees.
Quotes
Mark Zuckerberg is accused of young people spending hours on social networks - so virtual communication seems simpler than reality to many. He himself says the following about this:
What does a person need to be able to fully realize themselves in life? Let's listen to Mark: "A person can be a genius... but if he doesn't believe in himself, he won't give it his all." This means that he will not reach the heights that were, in principle, available to him. So, the beginning of any business is faith in yourself and your strength!
Lifestyle
Mark Zuckerberg leads a normal life without the “billionaire habits”. He gets up in the morning at 8 o'clock and goes for a run. Sometimes he takes his favorite dog with him, which makes running more fun. Then he eats breakfast, not really paying attention to what exactly appears on his table - Mark is not what you would call a fan healthy eating. Then he gets behind the wheel of his Volkswagen Golf GTI and goes about his business.
Working on improving Facebook takes him, by his own admission, 50-60 hours a week. He successfully solves many problems without leaving home. By the way, the house in Palo Alto, where Maroc lives with his family, is controlled by a virtual assistant. Zuckerberg created it himself.
Most of the interesting ideas come to Mark, ironically, just when he is distracted from work.
Does a billionaire have free time? When such moments occur, Mark devotes them to reading, studying Mandarin Chinese and, of course, raising his daughters.
Contacts
Every morning Mark checks the news by checking WhatsApp, Facebook and Facebook Messenger. Therefore, if you want to chat with him, the easiest way to catch him is there at the beginning of the day.
Mark Zuckerberg is a legend for his generation. He is not yet 40, and his name is known in every corner of the globe. How did he manage to achieve worldwide recognition? Talent? Undoubtedly. And also great hard work, perseverance and the desire to reach the goal by any means (even if not always perfect - remember the story with the first investor Eduardo Saverin).
Be that as it may, today Mark Zuckerberg is a billionaire who has achieved his goal of “doing something cool.” And we have Facebook, thanks to which we can make friends living in the most remote parts of the planet.
Name: Mark Zuckerberg
Age: 35 years
Place of Birth: White Plains, USA
Height: 166 cm
Weight: 84 kg
Activity: American programmer, founder of the social network Facebook
Family status: married to Priscilla Chan
Mark Zuckerber - biography
Mark Zuckerberg is one of the richest and most famous young businessmen in the world. What is the secret of the successful biography of the famous young genius?
Mark Zuckerberg was born in the suburbs of New York. His parents are doctors. The father works in the field of dentistry and now, the mother used to practice psychiatry, but at this moment is not engaged in medical activities. Zuckerberg himself is the second oldest; the programmer has three sisters - Randi, Donna and Ariel.
Mark Zuckerberg - childhood, school years
Mark started programming during his school years. Soon after he began studying, he began to write quite simple programs, but constantly improved his skills. In high school, Zuckerberg introduced a full-fledged strategy game, which he called “Risk.” It was at this moment that representatives of Microsoft and AOL noticed his talent and immediately offered to collaborate with them. Since Mark Zuckerberg had not yet completed his studies at school, he rejected the offers. In 2012, Zuckerberg decided to continue his biography by enrolling at Harvard University.
Mark Zuckerberg decided to tackle the next development with a friend. They jointly created special program for the Winamp audio player, which analyzed the tastes of music listeners and then showed a selection of similar tracks. This program was called Synapse.
Zuckerberg was not only interested in programming. When he entered Harvard, Mark had a dozen different hobbies. It is known that he was engaged in fencing and devoted a lot of time to studying mathematics and ancient languages, Latin and ancient Greek. The guy decided to enter the university at the Faculty of Psychology.
Mark Zuckerberg - Harvard University
It was at Harvard University that Mark came up with the idea of creating a network for communication. Initially, his project was created only for students. This is how the Facebook network was born in Zuckerberg’s biography. Of course, Mark did not work on the project alone; he was helped by Dustin Moskwitz and Chris Hughes. At that time, the project was in dire need of funding, and the students quickly found a sponsor. It turned out to be Mark’s classmate, Eduardo Saverin, with whom a conflict later occurred, which the court had to resolve.
The Facebook site needed serious promotion, which was undertaken by prominent businessman Peter Thiel. The result of this promotion was the multimillion-dollar popularity of the site. Already in 2006, the social network entered the top seven popular sites in America.
Monetization of the site began after Zuckerberg graduated from university. Then the programmer started making money from his brainchild. Three years later, in 2009, Facebook went public and was supported by more than 20 major investors. Then Mark became a billionaire. It was a huge success in the biography of Mark Zuckerberg.
In 2010, the success of the social network was noticed by Times magazine. At the same time, Zuckerberg appeared on the cover of this magazine, becoming “person of the year.” The magazine noted Mark's achievements and did not go unnoticed by the fact that the genius earned about 7 billion in his company. At the moment, Mark Zuckerberg's income is about 20 billion. Now profit growth has begun to slow, but Facebook and its director are still getting richer.
Mark Zuckerberg's visit to Russia
In 2012, another important event occurs in Zuckerberg’s biography - he comes to Russia. His goal was a meeting with Dmitry Medvedev. Mark also gave a lecture at Moscow State University, and with his participation two programs were filmed for Channel One. At the same time, I attended a conference of developers from all over the world, which took place that year in Russia. The event was called Facebook World Hack.
At this event, Zuckerberg gave a speech in which he called on the entire developer community to create social networks with a worldwide reach. He said that local sites obviously cannot achieve the popularity of global ones. The message also hinted at the vkontakte domain, which was Russian at that time. It was after this speech that the board of directors decided to move to an international domain.
In 2010, a film was made about the programmer, called “The Social Network.” The picture was a story about the emergence and development of Facebook, and also contained many moments from the biography of the main character.
Mark Zuckerberg - biography of personal life
Mark Zuckerberg and his family always behave extremely modestly in public. They rarely give interviews, and very rarely talk about their personal lives and their achievements. Mark usually talks to reporters, and he rarely goes beyond discussing Facebook.
Mark's wife, Priscilla Chan, became the legal wife of the computer genius only in 2012. They met much earlier, while still in their second year at university. The first meeting happened completely by chance - young people at a party were waiting in line to use the public restroom. The affair with Priscilla began precisely from this, and it continued until the official marriage for almost ten years. During this time, the couple learned a lot about each other, they strengthened their relationship every day. The premarital period passed calmly, without scandals, and even now the couple spends a huge amount of time together.
In 2012, Mark and Priscilla decided to legalize their relationship in their personal lives. But they had no intention of informing the public of their intentions. Moreover, until the last moment even close friends had no idea about the wedding ceremony. They were invited to the party by Priscilla, and the reason for the celebration was receiving a scientific degree. It was only while visiting that everyone learned that the Zuckerbergs were having a wedding.
The Zuckerbergs live extremely modestly. First distinctive feature Many people call the couple a poor wardrobe. Mark was repeatedly condemned in magazines for bad taste. Journalists and stylists are usually indifferent to his wife. Lately, it’s quite difficult to see a couple on the streets; spouses rarely go out in public. Often even the paparazzi can't take pictures. But what is certain is that the family is always together, they live quite modestly and donate monthly to charities huge amounts.
Mark Zuckerberg definitely great person. From a young age, he showed his genius, actively studied programming and mathematics, and later was not afraid to conquer the Internet and presented the world-famous Facebook project. His biography is eventful, and Mark has a successful personal life. We can only hope that the future of the genius is just as impressive and happy.
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg(b. 1984) – American programmer of Jewish origin, entrepreneur in the field of Internet technologies, dollar billionaire, one of the developers and founders of the social network Facebook.
Zuckerberg's biography is of great interest to many people, because he is so early age became one of richest people peace. Every year he donates large sums to charity.
Zuckerberg's diploma work was the Synapse program, which allowed the computer to independently determine the order of musical compositions. Later, Microsoft would buy it from Mark for $2 million.
In 2002, Zuckerberg joined the faculty of Harvard University. In parallel with this, the student attended IT courses. In the future, he will say more than once that hacking was his main credo in life.
After 2 years, he wrote the CourseMatch program, which allowed students to communicate with each other.
After this, Mark developed the “Facemash” project, thanks to which users could rate each other’s photos. An interesting fact is that to create the project, he had to hack the educational institution’s database.
For this, Zuckerberg was almost expelled from the university, as users began to complain that their photos were being used without permission.
As a result, Facemash was closed, but this did not stop the talented programmer. Having corrected his previous mistakes, he immediately creates a new project.
Initially, Mark Zuckerberg and his classmates created the social network Facebook so that Harvard students could actively communicate with each other.
Soon many other universities joined this network. On Facebook, people could view photos of friends, find out useful information about a person, and also find interest groups.
However, this required considerable funds. As a result, Mark took an example from, namely, he dropped out of Harvard and invested all the money he had set aside for his studies in his project.
In 2004, Zuckerberg’s biography took place important events: He moved to Palo Alto and registered Facebook in his name. Later, he began collaborating with wealthy investors, whose money made his project even more famous.
Mark Zuckerberg with Ivan Urgant In 2015, Zuckerberg made a sensational announcement saying that he was ready to donate 99% of Facebook shares to charity.
Today he continues to be one of the richest and most popular people in the world. Mark often appears on various television programs as a guest.
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Mark Zuckerberg- founder and developer of the popular Facebook network, the youngest billionaire in history. In 2010, he was recognized as Person of the Year by American Time magazine. As the publication explains, the 26-year-old billionaire was elected person of the year for “uniting more than half a billion people and drawing a map social relations between them, created new system exchange of information, and changed our lives"
In 2010, the number of Facebook users exceeded 500 million people, and the figure of Zuckerberg was “mythologized” by Hollywood - in the fall of 2010, the film “The Social Network” was released on the screens about the history of the creation and development of Facebook.
« In a world where social structures above all, a virtual, publicly accessible dossier is an information bomb. And in general, if a person has brains, he simply does not have the moral right to work not for himself, giving most of his time and the results of his achievements to his employer.» Mark Zuckerberg
Success story, Biography of Mark Zuckerberg
Childhood, youth and student years of Mark Zuckerberg
Mark was born on May 14, 1984 in White Plains in southeastern New York. He was the second of four children and the only son in an intelligent family of a dentist and psychiatrist.
Mark learned that the world is divided into programmers and users when he was 10 years old and received his first PC (Quantex 486DX on an Intel 486 processor). Users are working on the computer. Programmers use computers to change the world. After the computer appeared, Mark felt terribly grown up and at first literally did not leave his new toy. After a couple of months, he got tired of simply changing the background color, and he began to read smart books, deciding to learn something more useful, namely programming.
Reading was good for me. Mark mastered the programming wisdom perfectly and, while still studying at high school, wrote several small programs, for example, computer version popular board game Risk. But not all of his crafts were so harmless. In principle, Zuckerberg himself says that he would not like to immediately create something global, but would be happy to do a bunch of cool little things, and the Synapse program is one of those. He wrote it for himself. The program was a smart mp3 player, which, having carefully studied the owner’s preferences and found out what music, at what time of day and how often, he listened to, was able to generate playlists independently, “guessing” which tracks the owner would want to hear right now. Both Microsoft and AOL became interested in the unusual program, and both Microsoft and AOL became interested in Zuckerberg himself. However, the young talent rejected the giants' offers to purchase Synapse, and then politely rejected their invitations to cooperate. Just like that, Mark gave up several tens, and maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a job in one of the top IT corporations in the world.
It’s surprising that with such passion, Zuckerberg found time for other activities: he did well in mathematics and natural sciences. He devoted himself enthusiastically to such an extraordinary sport as fencing. I immersed myself in antiquity, studying ancient languages. Once I spent three months of school holidays at a summer school taking ancient Greek language courses. True, I changed my mind about enrolling in the corresponding department, but I retained the ability to read and write in both classical languages. And at the university I chose a rather unexpected, although understandable, discipline - psychology.
My university performance was so-so: my passion for programming took up too much of my time. Sometimes preparing for exams required extraordinary solutions, as, for example, in the episode with 500 paintings in an art history course. There were two days left before the exams, and it was impossible to read anything about each painting. Zuckerberg quickly created a website, on each page of which he placed a painting, and asked fellow students to comment on the works. “After two hours,” the innovator recalls, comparing himself to Tom Sawyer, painting a fence with the help of commercial savvy, “every picture was overgrown with comments, and I passed that exam with flying colors.”
Creation of Facebook
There was a section on the Harvard internal computer network where students posted their photographs and personal information. The photographs were so-so - the usual front and profile, tense expressions on their faces. And then it occurred to young Mark to have some fun: he made a program that selected two random faces and offered to compare who was sexier. There was no end to those wishing to conduct a comparative analysis. By the evening of the first day, four thousand people had viewed the site. When the number of visitors exceeded twenty thousand, the server crashed due to overload. Mark appeared before the computer hacking commission. Of course, they didn’t pat Zuckerberg on the head for this - he received a disciplinary sanction, but, apparently, even then he noticed that this kind of thing arouses intense interest among the people. Harvard, by the way, still refuses to comment on that incident.
However, the basis for the future communication masterpiece had already been created. On February 4, 2004, Mark launched a social network called “The Facebook”, which was intended as a communication site for Harvard students. “The Facebook” has become popular among students mainly because of the convenience of self-organization in groups, courses and parties that already exist offline in universities. By opening “The Facebook” you could find out where your acquaintances live this year, which girls are cute and which are not, who, in the end, is this year’s newcomer... all this is very reminiscent of 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 simply matured in his head and was quickly implemented, “on the spot.” Fortunately, fellow students also helped - together with Mark, Eduardo Severin, Dustin Moskowitz, Andrew McCollum and Christopher Hughes were involved in the launch of the project.
Very quickly, the social network created by Zuckerberg outgrew the boundaries of the campus (Let me remind you that at that time there were no “classmates” and “Twitters”; they were cloned later); already in the spring of 2004, it included all Ivy League colleges. Users were invited to post photographs and any information about themselves - from scientific and creative interests to gastronomic and love preferences. And also photographs, photographs, photographs...
Serious and promising projects at the stage active development, as a rule, require substantial investments. But as life shows, these issues can be solved if there are determination.
Mark spent all the money his parents set aside to pay for his studies on the business, but naturally this was not enough for the megaproject. And so one summer Zuckerberg rushed to Silicon Valley, where interesting ideas, if you're lucky, they may get support. And again luck smiled on the assertive guy. Like the hero of the Finnish writer Martti Larni, who left home for matches and ended up in America, student Zuckerberg went on reconnaissance and got stuck in Palo Alto - the heart of Silicon Valley.
One evening on the street, he chanced upon Sean Parker, an Internet cult figure and one of the creators of the file-sharing program Napster. It turned out that Parker was moving to Palo Alto, but did not yet have an apartment. " We(Mark and his friends) we just invited him to spend the night with us", says Mark. It was Parker who introduced Zuckerberg to Peter Thiel, co-founder of the PayPal payment system. An experienced businessman, after a fifteen-minute conversation, invested the red-haired youth for 500 thousand dollars. Zuckerberg wrote an application to the university for an indefinite period academic leave, as another famous Harvard “dropout” - Bill Gates - did at one time.
Half a million is just a lot of money at first glance. Mark and his team perfected their brainchild in rented premises in Palo Alto, some sitting on wobbly chairs, some right on the floor. There was no ventilation in the rooms where the servers were located. In the California summer heat of 45 degrees, the plastic racks melted at the edges.
In November 2004, the number of users exceeded one million. Another six months later, with the help of Peter Thiel, the company managed to receive serious funds - $12.7 million from Accel Partners. In the fall of 2005, there were already more than 5 million active clients.
Soon the portal announced free registration - for any user with a valid email address. 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.
In 2006, Zuckerberg began receiving the first purchase offers. At first the amounts were very cautious, but they began to increase quite quickly. They offered $750 million, but Mark refused and said that this was three times less than the amount about which serious discussions could be held. Later, at the already mentioned negotiations with Yahoo, there was talk of a billion, but Zuckerberg again said no. Rumors claim that there was also an offer from Google, and they gave more, but Facebook remained in the same hands, and the rumors remained rumors.
The site, meanwhile, grew not only with people, but also with new services, both successful and outright failures. It was clear to everyone in the company that they were sitting on a lot of money, but coming up with elegant ways to get it from users was not such an easy task. The site tested various methods of introducing contextual advertising that was as gentle as possible. In this regard, there were also scandals, in particular related to data privacy (which turned out to be a big question) and the inability to permanently delete your account. In general, everything is natural - the larger the community, the larger the unrest.
2007 was definitely a year of change for Facebook. To begin with, Microsoft acquired a 1.6% stake in the company for $240 million. It is easy to calculate that in Microsoft's understanding, the total value of Facebook is equal to 15 billion pieces of paper with portraits of dead presidents. Where are Yahoo and Google with their modest amounts?
In 2009, Facebook officially opened the platform codes to everyone, so everyone had the opportunity to create new applications for the site, be it toys, horoscopes, calendars, or something else entirely. By the way, now more than 140 new applications are added to the site every day.
Madness has gripped the world. Even the casual dating model has changed. The phrase “Can you give me your phone number?” was replaced by a request for a link to a Facebook profile. And it’s really convenient: instead of taking a long time to check by trial and error whether a person is right for you or not, you can simply view him personal page. The popularity of Facebook has ensured the convenience of self-organization by interest groups that already exist offline or newly created.
A vengeful thief or a victim of envious people?
The launch of the project was accompanied by a scandal. Six days after the site opened, senior students, brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra, accuse Zuckerberg of stealing their idea. They claim that they hired Zuckerberg in 2003 to complete the creation of the social network HarvardConnection.com. According to them, Zuckerberg did not transfer the results of his work to them, but he used the work he received from them to create Facebook.
That same year, the Winklevosses and Narendra launched their network, renamed ConnectU. And they continue to attack Zuckerberg, complaining about him to the Harvard administration and the Harvard Crimson newspaper. At first, Zuckerberg convinces journalists not to publish the investigation: he shows what he allegedly did for HarvardConnection.com and explains that these developments have nothing to do with Facebook. But very inopportunely, another Harvard student, John Thomson, begins to say in personal conversations that Zuckerberg stole one of his ideas for Facebook. The newspaper decides to publish the article, which greatly offends Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg takes revenge on the Harvard Crimson. According to the Silicon Alley Insider resource, in 2004 he hacked mailboxes two journalists from the publication using the newly launched Facebook. It finds all users who indicate their affiliation with the newspaper and looks at the logs (i.e. history) of the incorrect passwords they entered into Facebook. Zuckerberg's calculation was justified: two newspaper employees absent-mindedly tried to log into Facebook with the password for their email. Silicon Alley Insider claims that Zuckerberg was lucky: he read with interest comments in their correspondence about the editorial team’s communication with him and HarvardConnection.com.
The Winklevoss brothers and Narendra sue, but the court rejects their claim. They prove persistent and file another lawsuit. The second court conducts an examination of the source codes to understand whether they were actually stolen. But the truth is still not clear. The results of the examination were not made public: in 2009, Zuckerberg agreed to pay $45 million ($20 million in cash and the rest in Facebook shares) to ConnectU as part of a pre-trial settlement. After this, the case was closed. By that point, ConnectU had fewer than 100,000 users, while Facebook boasted 150 million.
But the Winklevoss brothers did not rest on this; they filed a petition with the US Federal Court of Appeal, but they were denied a review of the case. According to their lawyer, Jerome Faulk, the appeals court denied the brothers a review of the case, based only on a settlement agreement between the parties, which states that the parties to the trial, once signed, have no right to reopen the trial. According to the lawyer, decision illegal, since Mark Zuckerberg provided false information about the company's value during the proceedings in 2008.
On May 17, 2011, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss filed a lawsuit against the owner of the social network Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, in Supreme Court USA. This is the brothers' last attempt to reconsider the case.
Lifestyle of Mark Zuckerberg
Having received the status of a billionaire, Zuckerberg himself did not change his lifestyle. As usual as a student, he rents a house (apartment) with a minimum of amenities in Palo Alto, where there is not even a bed, and sleeps on a mattress on the floor. The way to work overcomes on foot or by bicycle. Favorite appearance- worn-out trousers, a T-shirt and sandals on bare feet. True, he admits that for trips to such “adult” events as the forum in Davos, he has a decent suit in stock. His girlfriend's name is Priscilla Chen and she is of Chinese descent. Our hero, still in his first year at Harvard, confessed in an online diary that he liked Asian girls.
The spirit of the young founding father is reflected at Facebook's headquarters. The three buildings look decent and modern, but have not lost the image of a student dormitory. Casually dressed employees, whose number has already exceeded 400 people, show up at work late after lunch, but also stay until the roosters. To ensure that everyday life does not interfere with creativity, meals, clothes washing and other services are provided right in the office, and free of charge.
It is impossible not to note Mark’s sensible view of his “empire”. He understands that technological breakthroughs are one thing, but business strategy is something else, and he is not as knowledgeable about these things. The news that Facebook has appointed veteran Google manager Sheryl Sandberg to run Facebook's day-to-day operations has been welcomed by the business community.
The media's quest to learn as much as possible about Mark Zuckerberg is rarely successful. This is because the author of such a successful project is an extremely secretive, inaccessible person who does not want to demonstrate himself. If there are very short interviews, then in them the young and talented figure is mostly lost, stammers, stammers, in general, feels very awkward in front of the camera (this was the case on the Oprah Winfrey show). However, most analysts are convinced that this state of affairs is a temporary phenomenon and very soon Mark will definitely eclipse even the most advanced speakers of our time.
Secrets of Mark Zuckerberg's success
Unlike other famous billionaires, Mark Zuckerberg is in no hurry to reveal his secrets, therefore, many experts are independently trying to analyze the personality of the Facebook founder in order to understand how a 26-year-old young man managed to do something that 99 percent of people today cannot do?
The first thing to note is that Mark has always understood the difference between technological breakthrough and creative strategy. And if he is not strong in the latter, then he is happy to entrust this area of work to a good manager. Although in the field of management, Mark cannot be considered so mediocre, because in the most miraculous way the best of the best, specialists who have been hunted by large companies for years, end up on his team. Many argue that Zuckerberg has a rare ability to negotiate correctly.
Mark Zuckerberg is extremely demanding. He loves to argue, rarely praises his employees and strives to do everything to ensure that they work with their souls, completely devoting themselves to the task. However, there are simply no indifferent people in Mark’s team.
Many psychologists say that Mark’s modesty and unpretentiousness in terms of comfort contribute in every possible way to the fact that he can fully concentrate on his main mission - the development of the Facebook network. In general, the simplicity and even some carelessness in Mark’s business negotiations are legendary. So one day he refused a meeting with a Microsoft representative, which was scheduled for 8.00. " I'm still sleeping at this time", said Mark. When Zuckerberg was invited to discuss cooperation with Yahoo, he said that a girl was coming to see him that day. No talk about that we're talking about the billion dollar deal had no effect on Mark. There is no need to rush - Zuckerberg learned this principle back in his school years after the first offer from Microsoft. Today Mark is true to himself, and the money still flows into his hands. The youngest billionaire today has become the idol of millions of people who want to reach the same unprecedented heights. But only a few can do this...
What can we say today about Mark as a businessman and prominent IT figure? Perhaps nothing specific. Even experts disagree - some call Facebook new Google, and Zuckerberg as a replacement for Page and Sergey Brin, others speak out very cautiously, especially after trials and accusations of theft of ideas. It is still not entirely clear what in this whole story was a competent calculation, and what was luck and a wave caught by chance. The most common characteristic of Mark, heard from the mouths of most experts, critics and powerful of the world This boils down to one phrase: “He is still so young.” And it’s hard to disagree with this: Mark’s age really makes it difficult to consider who he is - a young genius or just a very lucky guy who is favored by circumstances.
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0 28 August 2017, 20:48 
Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg with their daughters
Congratulations to 33-year-old Mark Zuckerberg and 32-year-old Priscilla Chan on the addition of their second daughter to their family. The founder of Facebook shared the good news on the social network today and published the first photo of the baby, whom he and his wife named Augusta:
Dear Augusta, welcome to this world! Your mom and I can't wait to see who you become,” Mark wrote on his Facebook page.
Mark Zuckerberg with his eldest daughter Max and wife Priscilla Chan
The American programmer and billionaire publicly welcomed his second daughter and shared his optimism about the future.
Childhood is magical. You only get to be a kid once, so don't worry about the future. You have us, so we will do everything possible to make the world a better place for you and all the children of your generation,” Zuckerberg addressed his second daughter in a letter.
He and his wife Priscilla Chan became parents for the first time on December 2, 2015, when their daughter Maxima was born. In the photo published by her father, she is sitting next to her newborn sister. About Priscilla Mark's pregnancy