Mark Zuckerberg Childhood Biography

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984 and grew up in the
suburbs of New York, Dobbs Ferry. He was the second of four children and
the only son in the educated family. Marks father, Edward Zuckerberg, is a
dentist and mother, Karen Zuckerberg, is a psychiatrist. His father owned a
dental practice next to the family house. Mark and his three sisters, Arielle,
Randi and Donna were raised in Dobbs Ferry, New York.

Mark Zuckerberg Childhood

Mark got interested in programming yet in elementary school. The fact that
the world is divided between programmers and users, Mark found out when
he was 10 years old and got his first PC Quantex 486DX on the Intel 486.
From Mark Zuckerberg biography we found out he was taught Atari BASIC
Programming by his father and when Mark was about 12, he used Atari
BASIC to create a messenger, which he called ZuckNet. It made all the
computers connected to each other and allowed to transfer messages
between the house and dental office. His father installed the messenger on
his computer in his dentist office and the receptionist could inform him when
a new patient arrived. Mark also enjoyed developing games and
communication tools and as he said he was doing it just for fun. His father,
Edward Zuckerberg, even hired a computer tutor David Newman who gave
his son some private lessons.

Also being at high school, Mark wrote an artificially intelligent media player
Synapse for MP3-playlists that carefully studied the preferences of a user
and was able to generate playlists guessing, which tracks user wants to
listen to right now. Microsoft and AOL got unusual interest in Synapse media
player and wanted to buy it out. However, the young talent rejected the offer
of IT-giants and then politely rejected their invitation to cooperate. Just like
that, Mark Zuckerberg refused from dozens, maybe even hundreds of
thousands of dollars, and work in one of the top IT-corporations.
Soon Mark Zuckerberg studied at the Academy of Phillips Exeter, an
exclusive preparatory school in New Hampshire. He showed good results
there in science and literature, receiving a degree in classics. He also
showed a great talent in fencing and even became the school captain of the
fencing team. Yet Mark Zuckerberg stayed fascinated by coding and wanted
to work on the development of new software.
In 2002, after graduating Phillips Exeter, Zuckerberg entered Harvard
University. By his second year at the Ivy League he had gained a reputation
as a software developer on campus. It was then when he wrote a program
CourseMatch, which helped students choose their subjects on the basis of
lists of courses from other users.

Mark Zuckerberg graduates Phillips Exeter Academy in 2002.

FaceMash A Fun Site for Voting

In 2003, once summer evening when Mark Zuckerberg suffered from
insomnia in the Harvard dormitory room, he got an idea to create a site
called FaceMash. Mark decided to hack the database of Harvard, where the
students uploaded their profile pictures. He quickly wrote a program that
randomly selected two pictures of two random female students and put them
next to each other, asking Who is hotter?, giving the option for voting.
The process was in full swing and site was visited by most of the students in
Harvard. When the number of visitors exceeded the limit, the server crashed
due to overload. Mark appeared before the committee on computer hacking.
Of course nobody told Mark Zuckerberg Well done! and he received a
disciplinary action, and had noticed that such kind of things cause stormy

interest in society. By the way, Harvard has refused to comment on the

incident up till now.

The Rising of Facebook

Divya Narendra, Co-founded HarvardConnection

About ten months before the Zuckerbergs FaceMash epic, one of the
students of Harvard Divya Narendra had already spoken with the idea of
creating a social network exclusively for Harvard students, many of whom
were suffering from emotional stiffness. And not have aliens engaged into
the network, Narendra suggested using Harvard email address as the main
username.
Divya Narendras partners were twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. The
father of the Winklevoss twins, Howard Winklevoss, is a successful financial
consultant and put in his sons a lot of efforts and money so the problem
with the initial capital for the future network could be solved easily.
In conversation with Mark Narendra said that the project would be called
Harvard Connection (later renamed to ConnectU), and its members will be

posted to the Internet their photos, personal information and useful links.
The tasks of Mark Zuckerberg included programming of the site and creating
a special source code, which would allow the system to work as quickly as
possible.

Tyler Winklevoss (left), Cameron Winklevoss (right). ( Stephen Lovekin)

After a private meeting with Narendra and the Winklevoss twins, Zuckerberg
agreed to join in the work, but the potential of his new partners he
estimated it skeptically. While working on Harvard Connection he got a
fantastic idea about his own social network.

On February 04, 2004 he registered the domain name TheFacebook.com,

now known throughout the world as Facebook.com. However, it functioned
only within Harvard.
After Zuckerberg and his partner Eduardo Saverin realized that there were
already registered 4000 users, they have come to the conclusion that they
needed the services of new programmers. One of them was a Marks
neighbor, Darren Moskowitz, who further opened the Facebook service to
students at Columbia University, Stanford, and Yale.
Around the same time after the IPO, Zuckerberg owned 503.6 million
shares. And now Zuckerberg controls nearly 60% of the companys votes,
35% Eduardo Saverin, and 5% went to newcomer Moskowitz. Another
friend of Mark, Chris Hughes, was assigned as the Press attache of
Facebook.

TheFacebook.com in April 2004

Some time later, the registration was opened to all students. The main
condition was the availability of an email address in .edu zone, which also
indicated a persons belonging to education sector.
It must be said that at first this tactic worked out nicely. The project
attracted audience attention of sufficient quality. When a user was trying to
sign up he had to fill out a detailed profile, and in addition to the email
address in .edu zone it was requested to add a real profile picture. If people
used avatars instead of real pictures their profiles were deleted.
Soon Facebook went beyond the education sector, becoming more and more
popular. Mark Zuckerberg started looking for investors. The first investments
Mark received from one of the founders of PayPal, Peter Thiel, who is well
known throughout Silicon Valley. Peter Thiel allocated $500,000 dollars and
that amount was sufficient for immediate Facebook purposes. The project
began to evolve rapidly. In less than a year after it was founded more than 1
million people joined the social network. For further development of
Facebook they needed more investments. Accel Partners invested in
Facebook $12.7 million dollars and then Greylock Partners added to this
amount $27.5 million dollars.
By 2005, Facebook became accessible for all educational institutions and
universities in the USA. Zuckerberg still believed that his project is a social
network for students, but the interest of users to Facebook grew
exponentially. Then it was decided to make a registration accessible to the
public. And after this a Facebook epidemic started.

Facebook logo

The main thing that immediately attracted users in Facebook, is that friends
who meet in real life now could communicate with each other online. It was
something new.
Facebook audience grew rapidly, but the monetization of the project still
remained unclear. Everyone expected that the main instrument should be
context advertising. The fact is that every Facebook user fills sufficiently
detailed profile, which can be used to show relevant advertisements.
Obviously that would open up enough options to advertisers, who may be of
interest to their audience. But Facebook continued just to build number of
users. When they got over 50 million users, large companies began to offer
Zuckerberg to sale them the project. So, one time even Yahoo! offered $900
million dollars for Facebook. Impressive sum, but it absolutely did not satisfy
Mark. Facebook biography and Mark Zuckerberg success story is quite
intriguing, isnt it?

Lawsuits against Facebook

The Facebook project launch was accompanied by series of scandals. Six
days later after launching the site senior students brothers Cameron and
Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra accused Mark Zuckerberg in stoling
their idea. They claimed that in 2003 hired Zuckerberg to make him
complete the establishment of the social network HarvardConnection.com.

According to their testimonies, Zuckerberg did not provide them the results
of his work, but used the original source code to create Facebook.
In the same year, Narendra and the Winklevoss twins launched their own
network renamed to ConnectU. And they continued to attack on Mark
Zuckerberg, complaining Harvard administration and The Harvard Crimson
newspaper. Initially Zuckerberg urged journalists not to publish the
investigation: he showed them what supposedly he did for
HarvardConnection, and explained that those developments did not have any
relation to Facebook. But very inappropriately, another Harvard student
John Thomson in personal conversations started saying that Zuckerberg
stole one of his ideas for Facebook. The newspaper decided to publish the
article and it offended Mark Zuckerberg very much.

Newspaper clip from The Harvard Crimson article published on May 28, 2004

Zuckerberg took revenge on The Harvard Crimson. According to Silicon Alley

Insider, in 2004, he breaks the mailboxes of two journalists from The
Harvard Crimson, using the newly launched Facebook. He found users who
were involved in the newspaper and browsed their logs (i.e. history) of
incorrectly entered passwords in Facebook. Zuckerbergs expectations were
met: two employees of the newspaper absentmindedly tried to login
Facebook with passwords from their mailboxes. Silicon Alley Insider wrote
that Zuckerberg got lucky: he had a chance to read the correspondence
about him between the editorial office and HarvardConnection.
The Winklevoss twins and Narendra filed a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg,
but the court rejected their claim. They were persistent and filed another
lawsuit. This time the court examined the code sources to understand
whether they were actually stolen. But the truth was still not clear. The
examination results were not announced. In 2009, Zuckerberg agreed to pay
$45 million ($20 million in cash, and the remaining amount in Facebook
shares) ConnectU as part of the court settlement. The case was closed. By
that time ConnectU had less than 100,000 users, Facebook boasted about
150 million users.
The Winklevoss twins yet did not calm down and filed a petition in the U.S.
Court of Appeals, but they were denied a retrial. According to their lawyer
Jerome Falk, the appellate court refused to take a review of the case based
only on the parties settlement agreement, which states that members of the
trial after the signing of the document does not have the right to resume the
trial. In counsels view, the decision was illegal, as Mark Zuckerberg in a
proceeding in 2008 provided false information about the companys value.

On May 17, 2011 Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss filed another lawsuit
against the owner of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg to the U.S. Supreme Court.
That was the latest attempt of the brothers to make the court to reconsider
the case.

Bill Gates and Facebook

Bill Gates Facebook Page

In 2007, a major event happened to Facebook. Microsoft acquired 1.6%

equity stake in Facebook for an impressive amount of $240 million dollars.
On this basis, a number of analysts suggested that the total value of
Facebook reaches $15 billion. Quite good results for the company, whose
income did not exceed $200 million a year. After the deal Bill Gatescreated
an account in Facebook. He used to spend for several hours a day to
communicate through Facebook with everyone, but after a time decided to
close his account for some time, because there were too many people willing
to chat with him. Physically, he was not able to chat with all of them.

However, Gates provided a major PR campaign for Facebook worldwide. This

is particularly important for Microsoft, given that it had an exclusive
advertising agreement with the social network until 2011.

How Facebook Makes Money

In 2013, the turnover of Facebook, Inc. reached $7.87 billion and net income
$1.5 billion. The growth rates are also impressive: three years turnover
has increased six-fold.
Basis earnings of Facebook come from contextual ads on the pages of social
network. Growing number of users and the time they spend on the site is
converted into advertising revenues. 85% percent of cash-flow that went
through the company last year was earned through contextual advertising.
Most of the rest 15% are deductions from purchases made through the
Facebook payment system. These are mostly not real, but virtual goods. For
example seeds, fruits and vegetables, purchased by fans of the popular
game Farmville developed by Zynga.

FarmVille popular game on Facebook developed by Zynga

Despite the apparent frivolity, virtual goods is a serious business, and the
Facebook report confirms that. The company estimates that in 2010 the

global market turnover for virtual goods reached $7 billion, and by 2014 it
rose to $15 billion.
At the beginning of January 2013, Facebook Inc. started testing the service
of paid private messaging. Facebook charges $1.00 for a private message
that you can send to the users who are not in your friend list. And the
message goes directly to their Inbox folder, instead of Other one. But
Facebook went further and realized that some users are worth more than a
$1. If you want to send a message to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and
get into his inbox, you might have to pay $100 for this exclusive option. This
is another very simple way to generate additional revenue.

Acquisition of Instagram, Oculus Rift and WhatsApp

Co-founders of Instagram Mike Krieger (left) and Kevin Systrom (right)

Mark Zuckerberg is a great strategist and he keeps acquiring companies that

continue their operation as independent entities under Facebooks umbrella.
In April 2012, acquired mobile photo sharing app Instagram for $1 billion in
cash and stock. Initially, it was an iOS application developed by Mike Krieger

and Kevin Systrom. Now Instagram application is available on Android OS as

well.

Palmer Freeman Luckey, founder of Oculus VR

In March 2014, Facebook closed acquisition of Oculus Rift for $2 billion.

Oculus Rift is a virtual reality hardware engineered by Oculus VR Company
headed by Palmer Freeman Luckey. Facebook paid $400 million in cash plus
23.1m Facebook shares, with a further $300 million in incentives if it hits
certain milestones in the future.
In October 2014, Mark Zuckerberg completed purchase of WhatsApp for $22
billion. Facebook paid $4.59 billion in cash and 177,760,669 shares in the
company. WhatsApp is an instant messaging application founded by Jan
Koum and Brian Acton in 2009.

WhatsApp Co-Founders Brian Acton (left) and Jan Koum (right)

Mark Zuckerberg: TIMEs 2010 Person of the Year

In January 2010, TIME magazine named Facebook founder, CEO and 26-year
old billionaire Mark Zuckerberg the Person of the Year 2010.
Lady Gaga, James Cameron and founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, were
struggling for this title that year. However, TIME magazine chose his hero.
The social network created by Mark connected almost every tenth person on
the planet, Richard Stengel, TIME editor-in-chief explained their choice.
According to him, Today, Facebook is the third largest country in the world
that knows about its citizens as much as no government on planet does.

Mark Zuckerberg named TIMESs person of the year 2010

According to TIME, in the past year no one else had such great impact on
the world than the current winner. Marks popularity is so high that in 2010
David Fincher shot a movie The Social Network in which the main role of
Facebook founder was brilliantly played by Jesse Eisenberg. Previously,
TIMEs persons of the year became the United States presidents Bill Clinton
and Barack Obama.
In 2010, Forbes magazine admitted Mark Zuckerberg as the youngest
billionaire in its list to the state of $4 billion.
In the rating of the 400 richest people in the United States, published by
Forbes magazine in 2014, Zuckerberg took 11th place with a net worth of
$34 billion.

Mark Zuckerbergs Lifestyle

Currently Zuckerberg lives in the Palo Alto in a $7 million estate that
features 5 bedrooms a saltwater pool, and over 5,000 square feet of
property.

Mark Zuckerbergs Wife Priscilla Chan

On May 19, 2012 Mark Zuckerberg married his longtime girlfriend Priscilla
Chan in Palo Alto, California and finally they happy live together.
We hope you have enjoyed reading Mark Zuckerberg biography and
breathtaking success story of Facebook and it has inspired you to new
discoveries.
Cite This Article
APA Style
Mark Zuckerberg Biography: Success Story of Facebook Founder and CEO.
(2015). Astrum People website. Retrieved 1:34, Jan 31, 2015,
from http://astrumpeople.com/mark-zuckerberg-biography-success-story-offacebook-founder-and-ceo/.
Harvard Style
Mark Zuckerberg Biography: Success Story of Facebook Founder and CEO.

[Internet]. 2015. Astrum People website. Available

from:http://astrumpeople.com/mark-zuckerberg-biography-success-storyof-facebook-founder-and-ceo/. [Accessed 31 Jan 2015].
MLA Style
"Mark Zuckerberg Biography: Success Story of Facebook Founder and CEO."
Astrum People, (2015). Web. 31 Jan 2015.