Who is Mark Zuckerberg?

Mark Zuckerberg was born in White Plains, New York on 14th May 1984. He is the fourth child and first boy of Edward Zuckerberg and Karen Kempner. Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook and one of the youngest billionaires in the world. He started Facebook out of his college dorm and the site, now one of the most visited websites in the world has earned him his billions.

Beginnings

Right from middle school, Mark Zuckerberg had started using computers and writing software. He learnt Atari basic programming with the help of his father, and he was such a fast learner that his father had to hire a tutor for him. David Newman – the tutor who was hired to teach young Mark Zuckerberg – had a tough time doing so because the young chap was very bright, and he couldn’t stay ahead of him before classes. In high school, Mark Zuckerberg took a college graduate program in programming and won prizes in mathematics, physics and astronomy. He used his knowledge to build a program called Zucknet that made it possible for users of the computer at home to communicate with the computer at his father’s dental practice. He started building computer games too, mostly from ideas that friends came up with. When Mark Zuckerberg went to college, there were claims that he could speak English, Greek, French, Latin and Hebrew. He was highly intelligent and knowledgeable in college. This helped him to succeed.

Harvard University

At Harvard University, Mark Zuckerberg was known as a programming guru largely due to what he had achieved with computer programming in high school. Here, her created CourseMatch – a program that helped students pick the right courses, based on those picked by others. At Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg also built a website called Facemash that was so popular, the school had to shut it down.

Facebook

In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg began creating a website called TheFacebook. The website was hosted on thefacebook.com domain. Other Harvard students like Chris Hughes, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Andrew McCollum helped him with building the website. The website was primarily for Harvard students alone, but it became viral and spread to other universities and colleges. Mark Zuckerberg and his friends decided to spread the idea, and other universities became involved in the network. The project spread fast, and Mark Zuckerberg decided to drop out of Harvard, so he could solely dedicate his time it. Together, he and his small team moved to Palo Alto and rented a small house which they used as their office. By 2005, the name had changed from TheFacebook to just Facebook. In 2006, the site was opened up to people over the age of 13. In 2007, over 100,000 businesses had created pages and listed their companies on Facebook. In 2011, Facebook became the largest host of digital photographs, and over 350 million people were accessing the website via their mobile phone.

Independent Public Offer (IPO)

Facebook made its Independent Public Offer (IPO) in May 2012, where they offered 421m shares to investors at $38 per share. The value of the company was set at $104 billion, and this meant that Facebook was the largest business that went public. $16 billion was raised from investors as so many people rushed to purchase the shares. But a couple of weeks after the IPO, the market price of Facebook shares dropped to $27 per share. The share price continued dropping till it reached $19. Investors had lost about 50% of their investment and people weren’t happy. The first week after the IPO saw over 40 lawsuits filed. Now the share price has risen to about $41 per share.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Legacy

In 2010, Times Magazine listed Mark Zuckerberg as one of the 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world. He is also one of the most influential Jews in the world. Today, Mark Zuckerberg is the CEO of Facebook and one of the top five richest people in the world with an estimated net worth of $71 billion. Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg, we have Facebook which has revolutionized the way people all around the world communicate with one another.