Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg: biography, interesting facts and photos. The extraordinary talent of Mark Zuckerberg

Childhood. Mark Zuckerberg's school years

Mark Eliot Zuckerberg was born in White Plains, New York, a few kilometers from New York City, USA, into a family of doctors. Mark's father still works as a dentist, and his mother is a psychiatrist by profession, but this moment does not practice. Zuckerberg is the second child and only boy in the family. Has three sisters - the eldest Randy and two younger ones - Donna and Ariel.

Computer programming attracted Mark back in school. In high school, Zuckerberg developed an online version of the tactical board strategy game Risk, after which he was noticed by Microsoft and AOL, who offered Mark a job. These offers were rejected by Zuckerberg - he decided to go to Harvard. Later, together with a friend, Zuckerberg developed the Synapse program for the Winamp audio player. This program determined the user's tastes and automatically generated a playlist based on the information received.

His passion for programming did not mean that the future billionaire spent days and nights in front of the computer. The boy's development was comprehensive: he loved fencing, mathematics, and enjoyed studying Latin and Ancient Greek. Mark was also interested in psychology - he entered Harvard for this specialty.

Harvard University. Creation of a social network

While studying at the Faculty of Psychology, Mark attended IT courses. It was there that Zuckerberg came up with the idea of ​​creating a website for Harvard students to communicate with each other. The idea, in collaboration with Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes, took a week to implement. This is how Facebook was born. There was no money then, and another classmate of Mark’s, a guy, helped with finances Brazilian origin Eduardo Saverin. Subsequently, a conflict broke out between Zuckerberg and Saverin, and Mark removed Eduardo from managing Facebook. Saverin was not satisfied with this, and a legal battle began, which ended in Zuckerberg’s victory.

Mark Zuckerberg in the studio of Channel One

Now the young programmer needed to promote his brainchild. He didn’t know how to do it. Sean Parker, a cult figure of the American Internet, helped in promoting Zuckerberg. Sean introduced Mark to businessman Peter Thiel, who saw the prospects of the project and was ready to attract investment in it. By 2006, Facebook, which had long ceased to be a communication site for Harvard University students, became the seventh most popular Internet site in the United States. Zuckerberg is starting to receive offers to sell social network, but he unconditionally rejects them.

Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg

After graduating from university, Zuckerberg founded the Facebook company, monetized the site and began making money. The audience of the social network is growing steadily. In just three years, Mark becomes financially independent, and in 2009 he meets Yuri Borisovich Miller, co-owner of Mail.ru Group. At the end of May of the same year, the Russian Internet giant acquired a 1.96% stake in Facebook for $200 million. From this moment, other large corporations begin investing in the social network. Currently, Mark Zuckerberg owns 24% of Facebook shares and is considered the youngest billionaire in history.


In March 2010, Zuckerberg's fortune was estimated at $4 billion, and already in September of the same year, Mark almost doubled his assets, which amounted to $7 billion. On the list of the most influential Americans of 2010, Zuckerberg ranks 29th. In December 2010, the young billionaire became Time magazine's Person of the Year. At the same time, Mark announced his joining the so-called “Giving Pledge,” a philanthropic project founded by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. According to the campaign charter, 50% of the person who joined can be donated to charity, both during the life and after the death of the person who took the oath.

In 2011, the Facebook founder ranked 14th on the list of the wealthiest US citizens. His fortune is estimated at $17.5 billion. Further, the growth rate of Zuckerberg's assets slowed down, but Mark is constantly getting richer.

Zuckerberg's visit to Russia

In the fall of 2012, Mark Zuckerberg comes to visit Russian Federation. Behind short term in three days the billionaire manages to meet with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, take part in two TV shows on Channel One and give a lecture at the Moscow state university. In addition, he takes an active part in the international conference developers of the “Facebook World Hack”, which took place in the Russian capital on the same days.

Meeting between Medvedev and Zuckerberg (FULL VIDEO)

At this conference, Mark states that the main advantage of the social network he created compared to other similar projects (hinting, first of all, to VKontakte) is the largest number of active users on the Internet. Zuckerberg encourages developers to create apps for the social network, not for local networks, explaining this by access to an audience of almost 1 billion users, unprecedented in the history of the global Internet community.

On October 2, Mark gives a lecture in the auditorium of the Moscow State University Library. On open lecture Zuckerberg talks about himself, about the history of the creation, development and monetization of Facebook. The number of people wishing to attend the lecture was much greater than the actual capacity of the audience, and a lottery was held between registered students to receive invitation cards.

Personal life of Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg and his current wife Priscilla Chan met in line at a public toilet at a student party. This was during my second year at Harvard. Mark and Priscilla dated for nine years, and in 2012 they decided to legalize their relationship. Not wanting to advertise the wedding, the couple invited friends to Vacation home Zuckerberg in Palo Alto, ostensibly to celebrate Priscilla receiving her MD degree. However, after everyone had gathered, it was announced that Zuckerberg and Chan's wedding would take place that evening.


The Zuckerbergs are very humble people. When appearing in public, giving interviews, Zuckerberg always remains silent and stutters, gets lost, and feels awkward. Mark also cannot be called a fashionable and stylish dresser - GQ magazine recently called the billionaire “the most tasteless resident of Silicon Valley.” IN Lately young people generally try not to appear in public, devoting time exclusively to each other, and donating a sufficient portion of their funds to charity.

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 2008

So it all started in 2003, when a Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg hacked the database of his student dormitory, and then posted personal information and photos on the web. 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

Today, a very large team consisting of developers, programmers, marketers and other specialists is working on improving Facebook. However, only the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, became the idol of youth and one of the most unusual businessmen of our time. They write and talk about him, discuss him and admire him. This man made the world a little different, and that in itself is an achievement.

How it all began

Born into a family of doctors (father is a dentist, mother is a psychiatrist), Mark, it seems, was supposed to follow in the footsteps of his parents. But talking about medicine was not interesting to him, but working with computers gave the future billionaire great pleasure. It is worth noting that a huge role in future fate Mark was played by his father. He bought him his first computer, taught him the Atari BASIC programming language, and even hired a tutor. The son did not disappoint his father - Zuckerberg created several computer games, as well as a kind of messenger, ambitiously called “ZuckNet”. But the most serious project at that time was the Synapse program - a music player capable of analyzing the user’s musical preferences and offering him an individual playlist. AOL and Microsoft showed interest in the program, but the far-sighted Mark refused the, by the way, very tempting offers.

Talent in everything

Future CEO of Facebook Inc. I have always been an extremely enthusiastic and versatile person. He enjoyed learning new languages ​​and studying natural sciences. Moreover, Zuckerberg was the captain of the fencing team at school. And the choice of higher education completely surprised his loved ones. The programmer decided to enroll at Harvard to study... psychology! And, of course, I did. But the young man did not forget about programming. It was during his student years that Zuckerberg created his landmark project – Facebook. After this, the programmer began a completely different life.

Achievements

When talking about Mark's achievements, it is foolish to limit ourselves to financial data. This man did much more - he created jobs, took part in charity events and brought communication to new level. That's why its appearance in numerous rankings is not surprising. It is quite natural that The Times named the creator of Facebook Person of the Year, and Forbes included him in the list of the richest people in the world. Indeed, it is necessary to note the business talent of the young programmer. He is not just a “techie” creating an IT product. He skillfully manages finances, increasing his fortune every day.

Happy Mark and family life. His chosen one was Priscilla, an old friend and simply a wonderful girl who always supported the programmer. The couple met at Harvard, at a time when almost no one knew about Zuckerberg. Today, the married couple rarely appears in public, preferring to spend time in each other’s company.

And in general, it’s worth noting Mark’s modesty. He is often invited to interviews and TV shows, but the shy billionaire often refuses. Still, he is a man of action and most devotes time to his work. Behavior worthy of a humble talent, which Mark Zuckerberg certainly is.

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 computer network Harvard 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”. During the summer, Mark found a sponsor (Peter Thiel), who invested money in the new company. On initial stage The work was financially helped by a Harvard student from Brazil, Eduardo Saverin, who later sued Zuckerberg and received 5 percent of Facebook shares.

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 The Social Network is a detailed story about the start, development of Facebook and the legal proceedings 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 attended medical school at the 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 an open letter to Max, Mark and Priscilla promised to donate 99% of their shares to Facebook - this is how they expressed gratitude to fate for the birth of their daughter.

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 online 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, 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 person will be caught in various Forbes lists For example, in 2012 he took second place in the ranking of young billionaires. In 2014 there were two interesting events. 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 the whole 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 Facebook social network and look at the key points of 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 turned to two world-famous 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.



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