Mark Zuckerberg University. How do Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan spend their $74 billion fortune? Another Mark Zuckerberg

You probably already know what Facebook is and there is no need to describe things that everyone knows? Therefore, I want to tell you the story of Facebook in my free version. More precisely, the history of the creation of Facebook and its development to the level of the largest social network on a global scale.

Yes, perhaps this is the most powerful social network in the world, which in a few years has transformed from a service for a small circle of friends into a global platform for communication. This word is now on the lips of every representative of the progressive young generation. Facebook is gradually becoming an integral attribute of our lives. And not by chance.

The history of the creation of Facebook began long before the final formulation of the very concept of “social network”. At the time of the birth of Facebook, there were no social networks in our usual sense. The history of the development of Facebook is at the same time the history of the development of social networks.

Everything new that appears on Facebook is copied by others and becomes the de facto standard. And that's why the Facebook story is getting so much attention. Using her example, we study the experience of building a completely new service, the experience of developing and implementing social services, and the experience of interacting with huge masses of users.

Now let's look at the history of the creation of Facebook a little more specifically and in more detail. To also taste the experience :)

Mark Zuckerberg

The founder and “developer” of Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg, a young man who dropped out of Harvard (precisely because of Facebook), with an unconventional view of how people communicate with each other.

The personality is quite contradictory. Some consider Zuckerberg a selfless genius who made all of humanity happy. Someone is an unscrupulous thief, thinking only about getting a lot of money. Someone is just lucky, who created a service, what is called “for himself”, which then “shot”. There are many opinions.

Personally, I consider Zuckerberger a typical Jew who clearly sees his goal and goes towards it, without looking at anyone and stopping at nothing. All history of Facebook development it confirms. What's the goal? Wait and see.

Start

The youngest billionaire of our time, Mark Zuckerberg, developed a passion for computers in the 6th grade. He began his thorny path with the famous programming language C++ and in early years developed the computer “Risk”. Then there was the program that Zuckerberg created for his father. With its help, employees of his company could communicate with each other.

Afterwards, Mark programmed a special application called “Synapse”, capable of automatically generating “playlists” of listeners based on their musical preferences. The program turned out to be so successful that such monsters as Microsoft and AOL turned their sophisticated eyes to it. The company immediately offered Mark Good work(albeit, provided that all rights to “Synapse” go to Microsoft). Already a sensible young man in his youth, Mark Zuckerberg refused.

He wanted more. And now we can say that he did the right thing then. By the way, the relationship between Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates does not end there, but more on that later.

Why Facebook "Facebook"

Many believe that it begins from the time of Harvard University, where Mark joined the faculty. A talented programmer with enormous potential at the Faculty of Psychology - it was a rather unconventional decision :-)

However, the story of Facebook's creation began a little earlier - at Phillips Exeter Academy, a private school with a rich tradition in New Hampshire. Or rather, not the creation itself, but the accumulation of the basis on which Facebook subsequently grew.

As a student of this school, Mark Zuckerberg received at his disposal the so-called “The Photo Address Book”. It was a kind of student reference book in which you could see photographs, telephone numbers and even the addresses of their classmates. The data in it was updated annually, so it was very convenient for every student.

Do you know what schoolchildren called this book among themselves? "The Facebook"! The reason is simple to the point of banality - the original name was too long to pronounce.

Upon entering Harvard, Mark discovered that there was no such service at the university. He took the initiative to create an online directory similar to “The Facebook” to management. And he received a refusal, which was based on the confidentiality of student data.

In narrow circles they say that this circumstance really infuriated the talented programmer. And he had no intention of backing down.

Facemash

One fine day (or night) Mark Zuckerberg hacked into the Harvard University database and created a simple website codenamed “Facemash”. The concept of this site was simple - visitors were offered photographs of female students and the opportunity to evaluate them on a certain “scale” of attractiveness. The site was only accessible within Harvard.

It is better to indicate what came out of this in numbers and figures: within 2 hours after the site was launched - 450 visitors and 22,000 photo views! Note that the visitors were fellow Harvard University students. Those. 450 direct acquaintances of the owners of posted photos in 2 hours!

As soon as information about such a “heroic” act reached the leadership of the educational institution, it was no longer Mark Zuckerberg who was furious. In the end he received serious problems, and the site was successfully closed. But if anyone thought that this stopped Mark, then he is deeply mistaken.

Creation of Facebook

February 4, 2004 can be remembered by various events. For example, on this day at the Sotheby’s auction, the most avid collectors competed for the right to own the stunning sculpture “The Great Dancer” by Edgar Degas. And on the same day, the social network “The Facebook” was launched in a small dorm room at Harvard University. Launched quietly, modestly and without fanfare.

In addition to Zuckerberger, the “starting” lineup included three more students: Eduardo Saverin (as Facebook’s first financier), Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes (as assistant programmers).

So it began modern history of Facebook. The initial promotion and formation of the starting audience was carried out using good old SPAM. This is one of the most striking examples in when SPAM gave phenomenal results.

Winklevoss brothers, take one

A huge number of scandals always gather around any brilliant idea. And the history of the creation of Facebook was no exception.

Exactly 6 days after the launch of Facebook, three Harvard University seniors (Brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, as well as their friend Divya Narendra) accused Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their idea, on the basis of which, according to them, he created Facebook.

They claimed that back in 2003 they recruited Mark Zuckerberg (inspired by the “success” of his Facemash story) to create their service HarvardConnection.com. They convinced everyone and everything that a number of their personal ideas and developments, which they shared with Mark, were brazenly borrowed by the latter when creating Facebook.

The details of this scandal are not particularly interesting, and the information about it is very contradictory. Let's focus on the main points and that will be enough.

Offended high school students complained to the university leadership, and also convinced the editors of the university newspaper “Harvard Crimson” to publish an exposing article. This was facilitated by the appeal of another student, John Thomson, who claimed that Zuckerberg used his idea at Facebook.

The story of litigation and mutual claims lasted for several years. Facebook ended up paying $65 million in compensation: $20 million in cash and $45 million in Facebook stock.

My opinion coincides with the opinions of others reasonable people, who believe that Zuckerberg stole, if not completely, then a significant part of the idea from the Winklevoss brothers. And since they did not enter into any contracts with Zuckerberger when they were hired, the history of the creation of Facebook is associated with the name of Mark Zuckerberger, and not the Winklevoss brothers.

History of Facebook development

Initially, The Facebook focused exclusively on Harvard University. In the first month of the social network's existence, about half of Harvard students registered with it.

But already in March 2004, “The Facebook” went beyond the walls of Harvard and connected students from Stanford, Columbia University and even Yale to its network. Mark Zuckerberg targeted universities in the so-called Ivy League, which included all the elite schools. Then, most of the largest educational institutions in the US and Canada were gradually connected to Facebook.

Any development is impossible without active investments. At the time of its creation, “The Facebook” existed on the sheer enthusiasm of fellow students and small financial investments from Eduardo Saverin (whom Zuckerberg would later cunningly “throw away”, forcing him out of the company and leaving him high and dry) to pay for server services.

But the hour came when Facebook became so big that it demanded maximum attention. And in order for the history of its development not to be interrupted, more significant finances were required. Mark Zuckerberg leaves for Silicon Valley and settles in Palo Alto. There he meets Sean Parker, who went down in Internet history thanks to the creation of the file-sharing network Napster, which was notorious for numerous scandals and lawsuits with record companies. After Napster closed, Parker dreamed of working for a company that would change the world with its ideas.

Facebook exactly met Parker’s “demand.” And Zuckerberger needed Parker because of his numerous acquaintances with the financial tycoons of Silicon Valley. As a result, at a certain point in Facebook's history, Parker and Zuckerberg were developing the company together.

Sean Parker convinced Zuckerberg of the need to grow the project and attract third-party funding, for which he promised solid support.

The first investor in Facebook was Peter Thiel, one of the founders of the famous PayPal. His investment amounted to $500 thousand. Thanks to this, in less than six months, The Facebook collected its first million users. From this point in its history, the company has been actively involved in venture investment issues.

In 2005, for just $200,000, the social network's domain name brought a small change. The prefix “the” disappeared and just “Facebook” appeared. After this, the social network ceased to be positioned as aimed exclusively at students. Anyone could register to communicate with their friends. A new stage has begun in the history of Facebook.

Facebook and the world

For example, the monopolist Yahoo! offered $900 million for the entire project. And he received another refusal from Zuckerberg.

Here Bill Gates appears again in the history of Facebook, who buys 1.6% of Facebook shares for $260 million. From that moment on, the founder and ideological inspirer Microsoft Corporation has opened its own personal page on the social network. But if you think that Mr. Gates limited himself to this, then you are deeply mistaken.

After purchasing the shares, he entered into an agreement with Facebook, under the terms of which the social network posted on its Microsoft pages up to 2011

In 2008, Mark Zuckerberg became the youngest billionaire in world history - his fortune was estimated at $1.5 billion.

Among Facebook shareholders you can also find Russian investors. In 2009, Digital Sky Technologies, which is controlled by Yuri Milner, Grigory Finger and Alisher Usmanov, acquired 1.96% of preferred shares for $200 million. Later, Russian investors bought another 3% stake. To date, the participation of Digital Sky Technologies is 10%.

The social network Facebook is actively developing and implementing its own API, which allows you to connect numerous applications (games, informers, calendars, etc.). And on September 30, 2010, Facebook entered into an agreement with the telecommunications corporation Skype, so integration of the two giants is expected in the near future.

Facebook representatives say that in 2011 the social network will have its billionth user registered. And enormous efforts are being made to achieve this mark.

Today you can view Facebook in 68 languages. Promotion to many regions of our planet is complicated by low-speed Internet. And serious steps are being taken in this direction - the creation of a light version of the social network called “Facebook Zero”. Negotiations are also held with company representatives cellular communication(including Beeline and MTS) about the possibility of viewing pages from mobile phones.

In the current 2011, the history of Facebook promises to be no less interesting. Just look at the next lawsuit by the Winklevoss brothers, who again decided to “shake” the wallets of the founders of the social network. This time the brothers' financial appetite has increased significantly. Specific amounts have not been announced, but according to some reports, demands of $500 million or more can be expected.

Perhaps the insatiable millionaire brothers should direct their efforts towards realizing their main dream - being included in the Olympic rowing team at the Games in 2012? In any case, now the whole world is waiting to see how the brothers’ next bold attempt will end.

Conclusion

History of Facebook creation clearly confirms one simple thought - everything is only in your hands. You can, of course, look for a guy who will do everything, and all you have to do is make a profit. Only in this case there is a very high chance of flying like the Winklevoss brothers.

Or you don’t have to wait for the weather by the sea and bring YOUR ideas to life WITH YOUR OWN hands. Even if it’s clumsy, even if you learn from your mistakes in the process, but in this case you definitely won’t have to regret that someone turned out to be faster than you. After all, it is much more profitable to gain the necessary knowledge than to miss the “right of the first night” :-)

As for the development of Facebook, I think the idea itself has reached its peak. Further growth is only possible purely quantitatively. And then only for a while. And then something new will definitely appear on the Internet and Facebook will become “one of.”

If the history of Facebook interests you and you “don’t have the strength to hold on anymore,” then I advise you to read the book « » . In it in a kind of artistic form creation of Facebook described in more detail. True, they are trying to make Zuckerberger white and fluffy, but this is the only drawback of this book.

Mark Zuckerberg is an enterprising young businessman whose biography arouses keen interest among young people and the older generation. His name is associated with the creation of the world's largest social network, Facebook, whose number of users exceeds 1.3 billion. A prominent polyglot and inventive programmer has become the “best” in many areas. Zuckerberg is a dollar billionaire with an official salary of $1.

Mark Eliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in the New York suburb of White Plains, into an intelligent Jewish family of doctors. Parents, Edward and Karen Zuckerberg, still practice medicine today: their father in the field of dentistry, and their mother in psychiatry. The family of the youngest billionaire on the planet is large; four children grew up in it: Marc Eliot, elder sister Randy and two younger ones, Ariel and Donna.

The founder of Facebook was brought up in religious strictness, but upon becoming an adult, he declared that he was an atheist and did not adhere to the traditions of Judaism.

The boy's interest in computer programming arose at the age of 10, when his father gave him a PC, on which he showed his son the elementary and basic elements of the Atari BASIC programming language. The future hacker became interested in programming and in high school he created the first primitive computer games. School friends who knew how to draw helped Mark Zuckerberg create ideas for graphics programs.

In 1996, 12-year-old Mark Zuckerberg created the first full-fledged software product called “ZuckNet”, which made it possible to communicate over local network family members. After graduating from elementary school, Zuckerberg decided to develop his talent as a programmer and entered the prestigious boarding school Phillips Exeter Academy, where the emphasis was on programming and studying the ancient Greek language.

For his thesis, the programmer created a program for recognizing the musical tastes of Internet users - “Synapse”, which Microsoft later wanted to buy from a young hacker for $2 million. The management of a giant IT company offered the young programmer to become an employee until he graduated from school, but the guy refused and from rewards, and from collaboration, stating that “inspiration is not for sale.”

In 2002, unexpectedly for everyone, Mark Zuckerberg entered Harvard to study psychology. My mother influenced the decision. But at the same time as psychology, he improved in programming, for which he attended additional courses in computer science, continuing to create his own programs. While still in his second year at university, he created a program for students called “CourseMatch,” thanks to which students shared their experiences with each other in the disciplines they were studying.

Mark Zuckerberg's second project was Facemash, which allowed students to vote for their favorite photos of Harvard students. To create this project, a hacker hacked into the university database, for which he almost got kicked out of the university: students complained about the use of personal photos without permission. Despite the ban on further development of Facemash, the programmer did not abandon the idea of ​​​​making Harvard more open, so he invented an alternative project with password-protected user albums.

"Facebook"

The story of Zuckerberg's creation of the most popular network is as follows. Based software“Facemash” Mark Zuckerberg created a communication masterpiece in the form of the social network “Facebook”, which expanded the communication of Harvard students over the local network. Fellow students Chris Hughes, Eduardo Saverin and Dustin Moskowitz helped him with this. The guys literally put together a new site in a week, which became tens of times more popular than Facemash.

In a matter of days, the Facebook project outgrew the boundaries of the Harvard campus, joining Ivy League universities in Boston, New York, Massachusetts and Canada. Stanford and Columbia University soon joined.

The idea of ​​the social network was for users to post photographs and information on their pages - from scientific interests to gastronomic preferences, due to which in as soon as possible Interest groups have appeared online, expanding every day.

Soon, the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, realized that considerable investment was needed to develop the project. Therefore, following the example of , he dropped out of Harvard, and invested all the money his parents set aside for his studies ($85 thousand) in his brainchild. In the summer of 2004, the programmer moved to Palo Alto and registered his project as entity, becoming general director"Facebook".

Later, Mark Zuckerberg managed to attract wealthy investors to the project, who helped him develop the social network to a global level. Among the hacker's assistants were the cult figure of the American Internet and the creator of the Napster file-sharing program Sean Parker, the co-founder of the PayPal payment system Peter Thiel, who invested half a million dollars in the business, and the creator of the first business social network LinkedIn, Reed Hoffman.

In 2005, Mark Zuckerberg purchased the Facebook.com domain for $200 thousand. At that time, the social network had over 5 million users, the number of which grew every day, which allowed Facebook to remain the seventh most popular American site. Thus, Mark interested the sharks of the IT business, who offered Mark Zuckerberg to sell the project. But the proposals did not continue - Mark flatly refused to sell Facebook, continuing to develop the network at record speed.

Mark Zuckerberg's finest hour came in 2007, when Microsoft valued the project at $15 billion, acquiring a 1.6% stake in the company for $240 million. In 2008, the programmer opened the company's international headquarters in Dublin, and in 2009 publicly announced first profit. From that moment on, the social network Facebook opened the platform codes to everyone who wanted to create new applications for the project, thanks to which about 140 new applications are uploaded to the site every day.

In 2015, Facebook became the second most visited site in the world, and Mark Zuckerberg became the youngest dollar billionaire with an official salary of 1 dollar. The programmer won titles most influential person on the planet and a super successful businessman under 40 years old.

Personal life

The personal life of the red-haired and short (1.66 meters tall) billionaire Mark Zuckerberg does not correspond to ideas about richest man on the planet. He leads a secretive lifestyle, does not boast of wealth and does not waste money.

In 2012, Mark married his longtime girlfriend, whom he met in 2002 at a Harvard student party. At the end of 2015, the couple had a daughter, Max, which became the happiest moment in the life of the couple who dreamed of a child.

Until 2015, the multi-billionaire lived exclusively in rented homes, without forking out for his own. Having learned about his wife’s pregnancy, Mark Zuckerberg built a cozy family nest for a comfortable life for his long-awaited first-born. The home cost Zuckerberg $7 million. The home of the Facebook founder is located in the historical center of Silicon Valley - the city of Palo Alto, a 10-minute drive from Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park.

Mark Zuckerberg now

In 2016, computer hackers of the OurMine group announced the hacking of the billionaire’s accounts on the social networks Twitter and Instagram"and declassified the password used by the founder of Facebook. If the hackers' claims are true, then Mark Zuckerberg's password is simple even by 2012 standards: "dadada."

Control over the accounts was returned to the owner, and traces of hacker activity were removed.

In May 2017, billionaire. Years later, Mark Zuckerberg returned to the university to give the commencement address and receive his diploma. The ceremony was attended by the parents and wife of the Facebook creator.

In June 2017, Mark Zuckerberg announced a new record: the number of accounts on Facebook reached two billion.

Condition assessment

The fortune of 33-year-old Mark Zuckerberg in 2017, according to Forbes, was $69.5 billion. This means that he became richer than the founders of Google and Larry Page.

At the same time, the young billionaire does not consider himself a person obsessed with the thirst for enrichment. He is a member of dozens of charities and the Giving Pledge group, whose members pledge to donate half of their wealth to charity.

At the end of 2015, Mark Zuckerberg announced his intention to donate 99% of his Facebook shares to charity, giving money to the development of the field of personalized learning for children in the world, to improve the healthcare sector and modernize the ways of communication between people.

Quotes

• “Calm down. Breathe. We hear you." That's the title of a blog post Mark wrote in 2006 in response to growing user concerns about Facebook's new News Feed design.
• “I don’t understand why they trust me.” This is an early quote that a number of American publications attribute to the 19-year-old Zuckerberg, who had just launched his social network. Mark wonders why strangers so easily leave their email and physical addresses, their photos, etc. in the public domain.
• “I did a lot of stupid things when I was in college, and I don’t want to apologize for them. Some accusations are true, some are not. I started doing this when I was 19 and a lot has changed since then. We went from creating a service in a dorm to a network that is used by 500 million people.” This is, in fact, Zuckerberg's response to the accusations associated with the previous quote.
• “The real story is pretty boring. What I mean is that we just sat at computers for six years and wrote code.” Mark Zuckerberg - about the film "The Social Network".
• “Our mission is to make the world more open and sociable. We accomplish this by empowering people to share anything and communicate with anyone, no matter where they are.” Quote from Zuckerberg's 2012 TC Disrupt speech.
• “We made a lot of mistakes when creating this option, but we made even more mistakes trying to fix its consequences. We simply didn't live up to expectations with this release and I apologize for that. And although I was disappointed by our miscalculations, we are grateful for all your feedback." This is what Zuckerberg said about advertising network"Beacon", which notified users' subscribers about their purchases without their knowledge. And which, accordingly, caused a wave of indignation and even legal disputes.
• “Games, music, movies, TV, news, online shopping - all these models will be completely rethought in 5 years. Really successful business ideas will appear. We feel we have a role to play in this reform and benefit in proportion to what we put into it.” Zuckerberg on Facebook's impact on other industries during a speech after the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco in 2010.
• “The idea behind the Social Graph is that if people around the world mapped out the connections they had with everyone they knew, the result would be a graph like this. That's what we're trying to do at Facebook. Once the foundation is created, you can start making services, games, etc. Many have characterized the Social Graph as something we own or control. But that's not true." Mark Zuckerberg on launch social search own development in January 2013.
• “It’s simple: we don’t create services to make money. We make money to create better services."
• “Look, Facebook has always been a controversial company. This is not the first fall and rise we have experienced.” The CEO of the social network on the sharp drop in shares after Facebook went public.
• “I bought an iPhone this week. I had to take four chargers over the weekend to keep it working wherever I went, and another phone so I could make calls.” Quote from 2010. Mark for a long time was a BlackBerry user.
• “This is one of the most serious, if not the most serious, strategic mistake of ours,” about the fact that native mobile applications for the network were not released for a long time.
• “We are not going to release a phone. It is strategically wrong for us to create an integrated system. For example, we will sell 10 million units, this is 1% of all users. Who will need us? - about long-running rumors about a branded smartphone from Facebook.
• “When people write about us and praise us, it’s important to stand up in front of the company and remind them: ‘Don’t believe it.’” When people write nasty things about us, it’s important to come forward and say the same.” First public speaking Zuckerberg after the IPO.
• “I'm afraid I'll be forced to do things that aren't what I do best.” Quote from a speech given to participants of the Y Combinator incubator.

Mark Eliot Zuckerberg is a young programmer who managed to make a decent fortune from his hobby. He managed to find a place for literally everything: career, love and conscious fatherhood.

Zuckerberg is known around the world as a programmer, entrepreneur who makes money in computer technology, and a famous philanthropist. At the same time, the billionaire became famous thanks to the social network Facebook he created with his own hands.

An interesting fact is that millions of Facebook users do not know why its interface is colored blue. The fact is that Mark Zuckerberg simply cannot distinguish between half the colors, but the color of the sky is the main color in the young man’s palette.

Height, weight, age. How old is Mark Zuckerberg

The youngest businessman, computer scientist and hacker in the world has always attracted the attention of the public, who were eager to find out what the guy’s height, weight, and age were. How old is Mark Zuckerberg is, of course, a pretty easy question, because this information is publicly available.

It is worth noting that the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, was born in 1984, so his age was thirty-three years old. At the same time, the zodiac sign - Taurus - gave Mark such character traits as hard work, patience, endurance, calmness, practicality, stability, and intelligence.

The eastern horoscope gave Zuckerberg the sign of the sociable, lucky, charming, resourceful, intuitive, talkative Rat.

Mark Zuckerberg's height is one meter and sixty-six centimeters, and the computer genius's weight is eighty-four kilograms.

Biography and personal life of Mark Zuckerberg

The biography and personal life of Mark Zuckerberg are simply unique, they are incredibly similar to the strange fairy tale. Mark Eliot Zuckerberg was born in the American town of White Plains, located near New York.

Already at the age of ten, the boy not only did well at school, but also independently understood a programming language such as Atari BASIC. At the same time, Mark practically could not draw, so he created computer games using graphics provided by friends.

At the age of twelve, the guy created a home social network that allowed members of the Zuckerberg family to communicate. After graduation junior school he went to a boarding school for future programmers, Phillips Exeter Academy. Before leaving it, Mark wrote thesis, which Microsoft decided to buy from the young genius for two million dollars. Employees of the mega-giant offered the guy to become their employee, even before he graduated from school, but he proudly refused.

The guy received higher education at Harvard, but it was related to psychology. It was with Mark’s light hand that the CourseMatch program appeared at the university, which allows you to exchange knowledge in certain academic disciplines.

By the way, Mark was an excellent hacker, as he repeatedly hacked databases, including those of his native university. This was done in order to launch a project through which you could vote for one of the students, while Facemash was created in order to make Harvard more transparent.

Based on the above program, the Facebook project was created in collaboration with Hughes, Moskowitz and Saverin, which was supposed to unite people all over the world. It was created in a week and gained popularity in a matter of days as students from other US campuses joined in.

The guy left his studies and invested money for his studies in the development of a social network; already in 2004 he became the CEO of his own company, Facebook. Mark found investors and continued to develop the capabilities of his project.

Since 2015, Zuckerberg has managed to become the richest and most popular businessman in the world, whose age does not exceed forty years.

Mark's personal life was incredibly boring, because he was head over heels in love with programming, which left no time for love or romance with girls. The guy did not like to attend parties and meet representatives of the fairer sex. It just so happened that Priscilla became Zuckerberg's first girlfriend, love and wife.

Family and children of Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg's family and children are very unusual; they are used to constantly supporting each other. Little Mark Eliot was born into a family of doctors, and these were not just doctors, but a whole medical dynasty. The Zuckerberg family had many children, was devout, they observed all the ancient Jewish traditions and raised their children in strictness.

The guy's ancestry was a complex interweaving of various nationalities, including Poles, Jews, Germans, and Austrians. Mark is the second child and the only boy in the family.

Father: Edward Zuckerberg– had a private dental practice until 2012. It was his father who discovered ten-year-old Mark’s inclination towards computer graphics and programming. He gave the boy his first personal computer, and he himself demonstrated what exactly could be done with it.

Soon, the father and older sister realized how much the little prodigy had surpassed them in computer literacy and could no longer compete with him in this area.

Mom - Karen Zuckerberg– worked as a qualified psychiatrist.

Mark had three more sisters growing up, who were his most best friends. It was Randy, Ariel and Donna who supported their older brother in all his endeavors and were happy for him.

Mark Zuckerberg's children are his joy and pride. While the programmer has a two-year-old daughter growing up, it was recently announced on a social network that Priscilla is pregnant again.

Mark claims that the ultrasound showed that another daughter was about to be born. Zuckerberg said he was ready to go on maternity leave for the sake of the baby. At the same time, he posted his photographs and childhood photographs of his wife and sisters on Facebook, pointing out that having a loved one is a great happiness.

Mark is madly worried only about the fact that his beloved Priscilla will again give birth to a baby as difficult as her first daughter.

Daughter of Mark Zuckerberg - Maxima Chan Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg's daughter, Maxima Chan Zuckerberg, is a long-awaited and beloved girl who was born in 2015. The happy dad announced the birth of his beloved princess through his own social network Facebook.

Maxima is a long-awaited baby, as she gave birth after three miscarriages from her mother. After the birth of the baby, Mark and Priscilla began to develop her in every possible way, using innovative developments.

Mark loves to tinker with the girl, constantly posting his innovative ideas online that help make life easier for parents. He constantly dresses Maxima as characters from his favorite TV series, which have finally appeared in theaters.

The girl is taught to swim from infancy, she loves animals, and especially her dog Bist. The baby's first word was “dog.”

Daughter of Mark Zuckerberg - Augusta Chan Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg's daughter, Augusta Chan Zuckerberg, was born at the end of August 2017. One of the richest businessmen in the world traditionally announced the birth of another princess through his social network, specifying that he welcomes the baby and is already thinking about her future, which will be bright.

Mom and baby feel great, and their star dad is already planning to go on maternity leave a couple of times - in September and December. He plans to take care of little Augusta on his own while his Priscilla gains strength after giving birth.

Mark Zuckerberg's wife - Priscilla Chan

Mark Zuckerberg's wife, Priscilla Chan, appeared in the guy's life absolutely by accident, since he did not intend to fall in love or start a family. At the same time, in 2002, in line at the Harvard University bathroom after a party, Mark met Priscilla.

The girl appreciated the guy’s computer humor and believed that he could create his own social network. Priscilla never demanded decisive action from Mark, so she was very happy when the guy proposed marriage to her in 2012.

This event was timed to coincide with the day when Facebook shares began to break all records on the stock exchange. The most interesting thing is that after five months of preparation, the wedding took place in the backyard of the house.

Priscilla Chan graduated from Harvard as a pediatrician, translator, and physician. The woman devotes a lot of time and effort to charity aimed at the development of medicine and pedagogy.

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 a new system of information exchange, 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 Mark Zuckerberg

Mark was born on May 14, 1984 in White Plains in southeastern New York. He was the second of four children and only son in an intelligent family of a dentist and a 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 intricacies perfectly and, while still in 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

In the inner computer network Harvard had a section where students posted their photos 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. From those wishing to conduct comparative analysis there was no lights out. 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 of active development, as a rule, they 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 lucky, can 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 to the university for an indefinite leave of absence, just as another famous Harvard dropout, Bill Gates, once did.

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. Under the Californian summer heat at 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 this is 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 look at his 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 into the mailboxes of two journalists of 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, the decision was illegal, since Mark Zuckerberg provided false data about the value of the company during the proceedings in 2008.

On May 17, 2011, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss brought a lawsuit against the owner of the social network Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, to the US Supreme Court. 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. The favorite look is 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.

Aspirations of means mass media learning 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 others 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 so that they work with their souls, completely devoting themselves to their work. 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 amount of talk about this being a billion-dollar deal had any 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 the new Google, and Zuckerberg 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. Most common characteristic The brand that sounds 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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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 his father played a huge role in Mark’s future fate. 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, which received the ambitious name “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 higher education and 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. After all, he is a man of action and devotes most of his time to his work. Behavior worthy of a humble talent, which Mark Zuckerberg certainly is.