Mark Eliot Zuckerberg's Biography

Source: www.nationofchange.org.

In this success story we are going to share Mark Zuckerberg biography, the youngest billionaire on the planet who created Facebook social network that now has 1 billion monthly active users.

Thanks to Facebook people around the world can easily keep in touch with all their friends. Not long ago, society just did not have such opportunity, but now everything has changed. However, Facebook is not limited only to communication and acquaintances. There are numerous interest groups and fan pages that help to rally the people together. This is not counting the fact Facebook is also a huge database of profiles, exceeding the most popular dating sites and chances to find your second half are impressive.

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 Zuckerberg’s 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 Narendra’s 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.

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 Facebook’s 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.

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’s 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 Zuckerberg’s 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 
http://astrumpeople.com/mark-zuckerberg-biography-success-story-of-facebook-founder-and-ceo/

Mark Zuckerberg Biography: Success Story of Facebook Founder and CEO. (2015). Astrum People website. Retrieved 5:53, Sep 22, 2015, from http://astrumpeople.com/mark-zuckerberg-biography-success-story-of-facebook-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-story-of-facebook-founder-and-ceo/. [Accessed 22 Sep 2015]. 

MLA Style

"Mark Zuckerberg Biography: Success Story of Facebook Founder and CEO." Astrum People, (2015). Web. 22 Sep 2015.

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