Mark Zuckerberg
On May 14th 1984 Mark Zuckerberg was born. Currently he is only 29 and he is one of the 5 founders of the biggest social networking sites – Facebook. In 2013 his net worth was estimated at $16.8 billion US.
Early Days
In middle school he began to write software and use computers. He learned Atari basic programming and a tutor he had considered a “prodigy.” At high school Mark excelled in his classes he won prizes in astronomy, physics, and mathematics. While he was still in high school, he took a college graduate program in computer programming. He built a program called Zucknet where the computer at home could communicate with his father’s computer at his dental practice. He also used his creativity to build computer games often out of ideas his friends would draw for him. When he eventually went to go to college, he claimed to be able to read and write in Latin, French, Hebrew, English and Greek. His overall knowledge and intelligence helped him excel at college, where he would often recite poems such as the epic ‘The Iliad’.
In college he was already known as a “programming prodigy” due to the work he had done in high school. There he wrote a program he called CourseMatch that helped students make decisions about the courses they wanted to take based upon the choices of others.
In college the students had books called “Facebooks.” They had the pictures and names of people that lived in the student dorms. Mark build a website, where there were two pictures of males and two of females. People that visited the site had to choose which person was hotter. This site went up over one weekend and it was called Facemash. However, the college shut it down because the popularity of it kept students from getting onto the Internet. Also some students didn’t like the idea of their pictures being used and Zuckerberg was forced to apologize for his actions.
Here Facebook Comes
In 2004 he began writing a new website which he called TheFacebook. He had several students help him with TheFacebook including Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, and Dustin Moskovitz. The site was initially just a Harvard site but soon expanded to other colleges and universities. By 2005 “TheFacebook” was known just as Facebook. The site opened up to anyone over age 13 in 2006. By 2007 the site had over 100,000 businesses listing their companies on Facebook and creating pages. By 2011 it became the largest digital photograph host and had over 350 million accessing the site over mobile phones.
Facebook IPO
On May 18th 2012 Facebook made its IPO (initial public offering), offering 421 million shares to private investors at the price of $38. This set the value of the whole company at $104 billion, which made Facebook the biggest business going public till then. Almost everybody wanted to buy a piece of the booming social miracle, so rising almost $16 billion from the market was like a walk in the park. However, things didn’t went well for investors. Just two weeks after the IPO, the market price of the shares fell dramatically by 27% to $27.72 per share. During the next months the price even further, reaching level around $19 . All this didn’t made investors really happy, some of whom lost around 50% of their investments for a few months. More than 40 lawsuits were filled the first week after the IPO. The price has recovered in 2013 and currently it’s around $41.
Legacy
Mark Zuckerberg was named to the 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world list put out by Time magazine in 2010. Zuckerberg who is also Jewish, is listed as one of the most influential Jews in the world as well. His net worth is estimated at 16.8 billion in 2013 and currently he is the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of the social company. There is no doubt that Facebook has changed the way we communicate online and today it remains a very popular site thanks to this young entrepreneur.
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