Mark ZuckerbergBy: Bethany Johnson7th Block

CREATOR OF FACEBOOK

The Facts

Born on May 14, 1984 in White Plains, New York to Edward and Karen Zuckerberg

Grew up in Dobbs Ferry, New York

Jewish family

His dad is a dentist and his mom is a doctor

Education & Social Life

Zuckerberg started his high school education at Ardsley High School in Ardsley, New York, but he found that this school wasn’t challenging him enough so he transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy, a boarding school in Exeter, New Hampshire

After graduating high school, he attended Harvard University but dropped out after his sophomore year

Started programming in middle school and he was very interested in creating communication programs and games

Created a communication program to help the workers in his dad’s office and a computer version of the game Risk

He also created a music program called Synapse which used artificial intelligence to learn about the user’s listening habits

Because of Synapse, Microsoft and AOL tried to recruit Zuckerberg and buy his program but he decided to go to Harvard instead

While at Harvard he joined the jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi and was known for reciting lines from epic poems such as The Illiad

An actual facebook is a student directory that is published by a school every year with pictures of all students faculty and staff

These facebooks were a very common thing among most colleges and prep schools

Where did the name come from?

How it began and bumps along the wayOn October 28, 2003 Zuckerberg was blogging about a girl who had dumped him when he got the idea to create Facemash

Facemash was a Harvard version of Hot or Not. It compared two people and the users voted on which one was “hotter”

Zuckerberg hacked into Harvard’s computer network to obtain the pictures of students from the different dorm’s online facebooks

The site was shut down a few days later by the Harvard administration and Zuckerberg faced expulsion but the charges were dropped

Later that semester he expanded on his initial site by uploading images for an art history final and allowing comments on the images so the students could share their notes. The professor said it had the best grades of any final he had ever given

Inspired by an article in The Harvard Crimson about the Facemash incident, Zuckerberg started writing code for a new site

On February 4, 2004 he launched thefacebook.com

Within 24 hours the site had between 12 and 15 hundred members

Membership was originally restricted to Harvard students but gradually expanded to most colleges in the US and Canada

In 2004 the company incorporated and moved to Palo Alto, California. Sean Parker, who had been advising Zuckerberg became the company’s president

The company bought the domain name facebook for $200,000 in 2005 dropping the the from the name

On September 26, 2006 Facebook opened to everyone over the age of 13 with a valid e-mail address

Soon after facebook was first created, three Harvard seniors accused Zuckerberg of stealing their idea for the site. Their site was going to be called HarvardConnection.com.

Zuckerberg had originally planned to help them with their site but he already had facebook in the works when they wanted him to make HarvardConnection

A few month after thefacebook.com was launched they launched their site which they called ConnectU instead of HarvardConnection

In September 2004 ConnectU sued Zuckerberg for allegedly stealing their idea. In February 2008 they agreed to settle the suit but in June of the same year ConnectU appealed the settlement accusing facebook of trading its stock without disclosing material information. This appeal is ongoing.

The very first investor in Facebook was technically Zuckerberg’s friend from Harvard, Eduardo Saverin. He ivested $15,000 to pay for the first servers

Although Saverin was the really the first, the person who gets the most credit for being the first investor is Peter Theil, former PayPal CEO, who invested $500,000 in June 2004

The Financial Side

Zuckerberg Today

Zuckerberg has a net worth of $4 billion

He is the youngest billionaire in the world at the age of 25

212 richest person on the Forbes richest people list

What type of business is Facebook?

Facebook is a privately owned and operated social network site owned by Facebook Incorporated.

Facebook’s Mission

Zuckerberg created Facebook as a way for people to share information and access information. If they have the ability to do this they are able to connect more with the people around them and understand more of what is going on in their world.

Interesting FactsMicrosoft wanted to invest in Facebook but was originally turned down. Now they own 1.6% of the company’s shares

Facebook has over 500 full time employees and is worth about $15 billion

On November 30, 2007 the 11th richest man in the world, Li Ka-shing, invested $60 million dollars in the company

There are over 250 million registered users on Facebook

Over 1 billion photos and 10 million videos are uploaded to Facebook each month

The age group that uses Facebook the most is 35-45 years

EVOLUTION OF FACEBOOK

Bibliography

"Mark Zuckerberg Bio, Founder of Facebook." FounderBios.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Apr 2010. <http://founderbios.com/mark-zuckerberg.php>.

Carlson, Nicholas. "At Last--The Full Story of How Facebook Was Founded." Bussiness Insider. N.p., 03/10/2010. Web. 6 Apr 2010. <http://www.businessinsider.com/how-facebook-was-founded-2010-3#we-can-talk-about-that-after-i-get-all-the-basic-functionality-up-tomorrow-night-1>.

"The World's Billionaires #212 Mark Zuckerberg." Forbes.com. N.p., 03/10/2010. Web. 6 Apr 2010. <http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/10/billionaires-2010_Mark-Zuckerberg_I9UB.html>.

Vogelstein, Fred. "Facebook's MArk Zuckerberg Open's Up." CNN.com. N.p., 07/01/2009. Web. 6 Apr 2010. <http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/biztech/06/30/wired.facebook.zuckerberg/index.html>.