Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in the world. Mark Zuckerberg: biography of the founder of Facebook Zuckerman Facebook biography

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg

One of the most successful young businessmen in the world. But we want to tell you, not about money or wealth, but simply about a person - a young Genius. Date and place of birth - May 14, 1984, White Plains, New York, USA.

American programmer and entrepreneur in the field of Internet technologies, dollar billionaire, one of the developers and founders of the social network Facebook. Head of Facebook Inc.

Mark was born on May 14, 1984 and grew up in the New York suburb of Dobbs Ferry. He was the second of four children and only son in an intelligent family of a dentist and a psychiatrist. He was the second child and the only boy of 4 children in the family; his sisters are Randy (oldest), Donna and Ariel.

His interest in programming woke up almost in primary school. When Mark was 11 years old, he created the zuck.net network.

Mark's first computer, a Quantex 486DX based on an Intel 486, ran Windows 3.1. His father gave him a computer when Mark was nine.

AT school years was engaged in computer programming, developed a network version of the game "Risk".

Also at school, together with a friend, he wrote a program for the MP3-player Winamp, which allowed the computer to analyze the user's musical preferences and independently create playlists that are ideal for him in particular. given time. After placing the program on the Internet for free access, Microsoft was ready to pay for the "music box", but the creator evaded the deal under the pretext of "inspiration is not for sale."

Mark Zuckerberg did not complete his higher education: in 2002 he entered Harvard University, where he studied at the Faculty of Psychology until 2004. In parallel with this, Mark attended IT courses. He listed his area of ​​interest as "C, C++, Java, Visual Basic, VBscript, JavaScript, PHP and ASP". Zuckerberg has repeatedly described himself as a hacker by vocation.

On a summer night in 2003, when Mark Zuckerberg was suffering from insomnia in a Harvard dorm room, the future Internet mogul was dumped by his girlfriend, and he poured his resentment with a good portion of whiskey. “In my inflamed brain, the idea arose to make a website called Facemash,” Zuckerberg later recalled. “I decided to hack into the Harvard information base, get photographs of students from there and place sheep and cow faces next to each of them. And to make it funnier, I came up with a poll with the question "Which of them is sexier?". At 11 p.m., the process was in full swing, and a couple of hours later, Mark launched a site with photos of female students in pairs, calling for a vote on which of the two is more attractive.

Zuckerberg, of course, did not forget about his ex-girlfriend either: the first published text entry on his blog on the network was the sacramental phrase “Jessica A. (Jessica Alona) is a bitch.” After more than twenty thousand people visited Mark's website in a couple of hours, and the network collapsed, he appeared before a special commission on computer hacking at Harvard.

Together with Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskowitz, he began to create social network Facebook. financial assistance he was provided by a student of Brazilian origin, Eduardo Saverin.

By joining forces with friends, Zuckerberg creates a social network, originally called "The Facebook", allowing users to create profiles, upload photos and communicate with each other. After graduating from his second year, Mark quits his studies, devoting himself entirely to the site, and transfers the created company to Palo Alto, California. By the end of 2004, the Facebook social network already has 1 million users.

Zuckerberg does not distinguish between green and red colors well, blue is very good. That is why the latter is the main color of the site.

Sean Parker, one of the creators of the Napster file-sharing program, introduced Zuckerberg to Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal. An experienced businessman, after a fifteen-minute conversation, invested a red-haired youth for 500 thousand dollars. Zuckerberg wrote to the university an application for an indefinite academic leave, as another well-known Harvard dropout, Bill Gates, once did.

In 2005, venture capital firm Accel Partners invested $12.7 million in the network, then open only to Ivy League students. Zuckerberg's company is opening up to other colleges, high schools and international schools, and by the end of 2005, the number of subscribers exceeds 5.5 million.

His attempts to remove Saverin from the management of the company in 2005 became the subject of legal proceedings.

In 2006, the creators of Harvard Connection claim that Zuckerberg stole the idea from them and demand damages. Initially, the parties come to an agreement on compensation in the amount of 65 million US dollars, but the legal debate in the case will last until 2011.

“I get accused all the time of things I didn’t do,” Zuckerberg wrote on his personal website. “The Harvard Connection trio are trying to do just that and prove that I stole their non-existent ideas. But the fact is that the ideas of creating a social network for Harvard were in the air! I just 'breathed' them in the right way."

In 2007, Microsoft acquired a 1.6% stake in Facebook for a hefty $240 million, as well as the rights to advertise on the site until 2011.

In 2009, fate throws another challenge to Zuckerberg when Ben Mezrich's book Reluctant Billionaire breaks sales records. The author manages to sell the rights to screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, and the critically acclaimed The Social Network wins eight Academy Awards.

In 2010, the Times magazine named Mark "Person of the Year". That same year, Forbes placed it at number 35 on the 400 List, valuing the network at $6.9 billion.

On December 8, 2010, Mark Zuckerberg announced that he had joined The Giving Pledge, the philanthropic campaign of billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.

On May 19, 2012, Mark Zuckerberg married his longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan. Mark and Priscilla for a long time dreamed of replenishing the family, but the girl had miscarriages. On December 2, 2015, the couple had a daughter, Maxim Chan (Max). On August 28, 2017, another daughter was born. They named her August.

In May 2012, Facebook makes an initial public offering on the free market, raising US$16 billion, making the company the largest internet equity project in history.

Today, Facebook has over 1 billion users.

In 2012, Mark Zuckerberg flew to Russian Federation. After staying on its territory for three days, the young billionaire managed to complete many important missions. One of them was a meeting with the Prime Minister of Russia. Mark also gave a lecture for students of Moscow State University. To get to the meeting, you had to register. The number of applicants exceeded the capacity of the audience, so a lottery was held among those who signed up.

Name Facebook Zuckerberg came up by chance when I came across the school book The Photo Address Book, which featured photos and personal details of all students.

In May 2013, Facebook enters the Fortune 500 for the first time - and Zuckerberg, at age 28, becomes the youngest CEO included in the list.

Mark Zuckerberg met his wife Priscilla Chan at a student party at Harvard. They dated for nine years and finally legalized their relationship in 2012. The wedding ceremony took place in the circle of relatives and friends. Initially, the event was intended to celebrate the successful completion of studies. future wife and listing Facebook shares on the stock exchange. However, the couple gave an unexpected surprise and announced their wedding.

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife and children will donate 99 percent of the Facebook shares (today about $45 billion) they own to charity. The joyful spouses made such a statement after the birth of their daughter. The future should open opportunities for everyone, regardless of their social status and financial well-being.

Interestingly, Zuckerberg supported the Diaspora project, which was a direct competitor to Facebook. Mark allocated $100,000 for the development of an open source social network. The billionaire showed concern for the development of public schools in Newark. Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million to improve them.

According to GQ magazine, Zuckenberg is the most tastelessly dressed billionaire.

Born in the same year as the founder of the popular VKontakte in the CIS, Pavel Durov.

In October 2014, Zuckerberg spent $100 million to buy land on the north coast of Kauai, where he plans to build a 280-hectare family property.

In December 2014, Mark is ranked 14th in the Forbes Top 15 with a net worth of $33.6 billion.

Favorite form of clothing - sweatshirt. Almost as legendary as Steve Jobs' famous black turtleneck.

Facebook employees have been based in a new office in Palo Alto, California since 2009. And all thanks to the joint efforts of the design studios Studio O + A, Virginie Manichon, KPFF - Consulting Engineers, Air Systems Inc., Elcor Electric and Brightworks. The design of the main office fully reflects the essence of the company as a social network that brings people together. The 13,935-square-meter facility that once housed an Agilent Technologies manufacturing lab now employs more than 700 employees, formerly spread across ten separate offices in Palo Alto.

Source - Internet

Mark Zuckerberg is the most Interesting Facts from life American programmer updated: December 4, 2017 by: website

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

Zuckerberg is known around the world as a programmer, an entrepreneur who makes money from computer technology, and a well-known philanthropist. At the same time, the billionaire became famous thanks to the social network Facebook created by himself.

An interesting fact is that millions of Facebook users do not know why its interface is painted in Blue colour. The fact is that Mark Zuckerberg simply does not distinguish half of the colors, but the color of the sky is the main one in the palette young man.

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 sought to find out what the guy's height, weight, age is. How old is Mark Zuckerberg - the question, of course, is quite easy, because this information is in the public domain.

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

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 his weight is computer genius stopped at 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 a 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 studied well at school, but also independently figured out such a programming language as Atari BASIC. At the same time, Mark practically did not know how to 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 elementary school he went to the boarding house 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. The employees of the mega-giant offered the guy to become their employee, even before he graduated from high school, but he proudly refused.

Guy got higher education at Harvard, but it was related to psychology. Since light hand Mark at the university, the CourseMatch program appeared, which allows the exchange of knowledge in certain academic disciplines.

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

On the basis of 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 its popularity in a matter of days, as students from other US campuses joined it.

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 possibilities 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 did not leave any time for love or romance with girls. The guy did not like to attend parties and get acquainted with the fairer sex. It just so happened that Priscilla became Zuckerberg's first girlfriend, love and wife.

Family and children of Mark Zuckerberg

The family and children of Mark Zuckerberg are very unusual, they are used to constantly supporting each other. Little Mark Eliot was born into a family of doctors, and they were not just doctors, but a whole medical dynasty. The Zuckerberg family was large, pious, she observed all the old Jewish traditions and raised the kids in strictness.

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

Father: Edward Zuckerberg– Until 2012, he had a private dental practice. It was his father who revealed ten-year-old Mark's penchant for computer graphics and programming. He gave the boy the first personal computer, while he himself demonstrated what exactly can be done with it.

Soon father and elder sister they realized how much the little child prodigy overtook them in computer literacy and could no longer compete with him in this area.

Mother: Karen Zuckerberg- Worked as a qualified psychiatrist.

Mark had three more sisters who were his very own. 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, but recently it was announced on the social network that Priscilla was pregnant again.

Mark claims that the ultrasound showed that another daughter should be born. Zuckerberg said he was ready for the sake of the baby to go to maternity leave. At the same time, he posted his photos and childhood photos of his wife and sisters on Facebook, indicating that having a little man is a great happiness.

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

Daughter of Mark Zuckerberg - Maxima Chan Zuckerberg

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

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

Mark loves to mess around with the girl, constantly posting his innovative ideas online that help make life easier for parents. He constantly dresses Maxima in the characters of his favorite TV series, which, finally, appeared at the box office.

A girl from infancy is taught to swim, 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. Traditionally, one of the richest businessmen in the world 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 are doing great, and their star dad is already going on maternity leave a couple of times - in September and December. He is going 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, because he was not going to fall in love or start a family. At the same time, in 2002, in line for the bathroom at Harvard University 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 from Mark decisive action, so I was very glad when the guy proposed 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. A woman gives a lot of time and effort to charity aimed at the development of medicine and pedagogy.

Earned $ 74 billion. He is the fifth richest man in the world, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index. However, he has absolutely no desire to show off, especially when we are talking about cars, clothes and travel.

Membership in philanthropic campaigns such as The Giving Pledge and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative oblige former student Harvard guide most of his fortune for charitable purposes.

What else does the family couple spend their billions on?

In May 2012, eight years after the company was founded, Facebook debuted on the New York Stock Exchange. At the time, it was the largest technology IPO in history. Since then, Zuckerberg's net worth has increased by an average of $9 billion annually.

Despite his status as one of the richest tech moguls, the billionaire, who lives with his wife Priscilla and their two daughters, leads a fairly low-key lifestyle.

Like many other inhabitants of Silicon Valley, Zuckerberg. Despite the businessman's love for casual style, the design of his signature gray t-shirts and sweatshirts is created by famous brands. They are reported to cost a lot more than they look. Sometimes the price tag is hundreds and even thousands of dollars.

Zuckerberg is known for choosing relatively inexpensive cars. He has been seen driving an Acura TSX, a Volkswagen hatchback and a Honda Fit. All these cars cost no more than $30,000.

However, Zuckerberg is willing to spend money on real estate. In May 2011, he bought a 1,500-square-meter house in Palo Alto for $7 million. Later, he supplemented it with "custom made". AT next year he real estate around his home, having spent more than $30 million on four mansions. Zuckerberg plans to reconstruct these houses, adapting them to his taste.

He also owns a townhouse in Mission District, San Francisco. He bought a 1,600 square meter house in 2013 and started renovating it. Improvement of the greenhouse, redesign of the kitchen and other works cost him more than $1 million.

In 2014, the billionaire purchased a 160-hectare sugar cane plantation and 158-hectare white-sand Pila Beach on the island of Kauai. All this cost him $ 100 million. Zuckerberg said that he and his wife bought this land because they want to "keep natural beauty this place."

It seems that Zuckerberg rarely travels for pleasure. But when that happens, Facebook doesn't skimp. In 2015, Zuckerberg's security and transfer cost the company about $5 million.

The costs will likely be even higher this year as Zuckerberg travels through the summer from state to state. As part of his tour, the CEO dined with his family in Ohio, met with former drug addicts, worked on the Ford assembly line, met with military personnel, and even fed a calf.

All these moments were documented by the photographer who Zuckerberg took during his travels.

Zuckerberg participates in the Giving Pledge program along with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and more than 100 billionaires who have pledged to give most of their wealth to charity. He plans to sell 99% of his Facebook shares during his lifetime.

Zuckerberg has complete control over the future of Facebook through his exclusive voting shares. Facebook's share price has risen 50% since April 2016, and Zuckerberg has said he plans to speed up the sale of shares for funding. He plans to sell between 35 million and 75 million securities over the next 18 months, totaling between $6 billion and $12 billion.



Part of the proceeds will go to the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative - charitable organization, which he founded with his wife in 2015. It focuses on solving serious problems such as "personalized learning, healing diseases and building strong communities."

The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative is addressing both local and global problems. Last year, Zuckerberg and Chan in research into the treatment of the world's most dangerous diseases. In early 2017, the fund collaborated with the construction startup Landed. The couple has pledged $5 million to help 60 California teachers buy real estate.

31.10.2010 - 0:37

In 2010, the country released the film "The Social Network", dedicated to the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. The film is based on the novel Billionaires Reluctantly by Ben Mezrich. alternative history creating Facebook. Zuckerberg himself said: Real story the creation of Facebook looked like this: we just sat at computers for six years and did programming. It would be too boring a plot for a movie"...

First computer

It is rather unusual, speaking about the biography of one of the most famous and rich people of the 21st century, to name the date of his birth - only 1984. But this is true - Mark Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984. This event took place in a fairly respectable area of ​​New York, Dobbs Farry. His parents belong to one of the most respected and highly paid classes in the USA - doctors: his mother is a psychiatrist, his father is a dentist. However, the career did not prevent the Zuckerbergs from having four children - Mark has an older sister and two younger sisters.

It was the large number of the family that made Mark make his first programming feat - at the age of 11 he created a home mini-network in which he could exchange messages with his parents and sisters.

A year before, he received his first computer, the 486th Quantex DX, as a gift for his 10th anniversary, and immediately became seriously interested in the new "toy". I must say that before that he had completely different hobbies - the boy was interested in antiquity and even studied Latin and Greek language. But computer languages ​​turned out to be much more attractive. Later, Mark said that people are divided into two types: users and programmers. The former, having received a computer, use it, the latter begin to change it and use it to find simple solutions for complex tasks.

Zuckerberg himself, of course, belongs to the latter. I must say that many of his peers around the world also mastered and are mastering the wisdom of communicating with computers. But for some reason, most of them did not go beyond the usual shooters and walkers. And Mark tried to understand all the intricacies of the rapidly developing IT industry, and in various fields, including in the protection and, accordingly, hacking of computers. Still, Mark did not choose a crooked hacker path, although, as we will see later, he sometimes used skills in this "industry".

Young hacker

In the 9th grade, Mark created a rather unusual program "Synapse". She collected data about what kind of music a person listens to on his computer, what kind of compositions and at what time of the day he prefers. And then, based on this data, she created a playlist, playing exactly those tunes that the music lover himself might have chosen at that moment.

Microsoft, the brainchild of another computer genius, became interested in this program and offered the young programmer a huge amount for it. But here for the first time he showed the oddities of his character, refused money and distributed "Synapse" for free.

Then he surprised his friends again. All the same "Microsoft", immediately after Mark graduated from school, offered him a well-paid job, but he did not accept the invitation and went to study at Harvard, and chose for himself not the field of computer technology, but psychology.

However, at Harvard, he immediately gained a reputation as a tough hacker and programmer. Mark managed to hack into a server with an information base and photos of all students and arranged a kind of online beauty contest for Harvard girls. After that, the administration almost kicked him out of the university, but at the same time noted in its conclusion that Zuckerberg has exceptional abilities.

In the film "The Social Network" Mark Zuckerberg is presented as a person who does not get along well in communicating with people, in other words, a sociopath with some mental disabilities. Many writers of articles about the young billionaire depict him as some kind of appendage to the computer, which avoids all human pleasures. But apparently this is not the case in reality. This is evidenced by the numerous photos of Mark on the network, including on his personal Facebook page. He is always smiling, surrounded by friends and buddies, beautiful girls, enjoys food, travel, etc.

His mental usefulness and ability to communicate normally with people is also evidenced by the fact that when creating Facebook, he immediately found himself a lot of like-minded people and assistants - which is basically impossible for a sociopath.

Throughout 2003, Indian-American Divia Narendra and brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss worked on the creation of the ConnectU project, a site for students to meet and communicate.

In the fall, they invited Mark to cooperate with them. He agreed, but on January 11, 2004 he suddenly registered a domain called "TheFacebook.com" (later he got rid of the article), and on February 4 he launched his new project. I must say that he was helped to create Facebook by his friends - Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskowitz, Andrew McCollum and Christopher Hughes.

In 2007, they started litigation against him, at the request of the court, an examination of the source codes was carried out in order to detect plagiarism, but its results are classified.

In 2009, the plaintiffs did succeed, and Zuckerberg paid them $65 million. However, at that time for him it was already a frivolous amount - Facebook turned out to be a very successful project, and Zuckerberg was an utterly rich man - now his fortune is estimated at almost $ 7 billion.

Abandoned billionaires

But in 2004, success was still a few steps away. Facebook required a significant investment. Everyone invested - Zuckerberg and Saverin and other creators of the social network.

However, a really serious investor was found in the summer of 2004, when Zuckerberg and his friends went to the Mecca of programmers - the city of Palo Alto in California. Here he met Sean Parker, the founder of the Napster pirate file sharing service. He brought him together with Peter Thiel, the founder of the PayPal payment system, and the enterprising Thiel, seeing the benefits of the project, provided the young geniuses with 500 thousand dollars.

After that, a team of strong programmers was assembled, and Facebook turned into a powerful worldwide network.

However, Zuckerberg quarreled with his first companions. After long conversations with the offended Eduardo Saverin, the writer Ben Mezrich wrote his book Reluctant Billionaires: An Alternative History of the Creation of Facebook, which is based on the film The Social Network.

The grievances of former friends of Zuckerberg seem a little strange - each of them has Facebook shares and is also a billionaire.

Zuckerberg's personal life

Zuckerberg's supporters claim that the offended Saverin tarnished the bright image of the founder of Facebook, and Mezrich's book and the film based on it are lies, because the writer did not even talk to Zuckerberg himself.

They say that the "real Mark" is presented in another book, The Facebook Effect, written in June this year by writer David Kirkpatrick after long conversations with the founder of the social network. In it, the young billionaire is shown in a completely different light - he does not chase profit, minds his own business and dreams of making the world a better place.

On his Facebook page, Zuckerberg himself states: "I'm trying to make the world more open by helping people find each other." His interests are: "openness, doing things that help people find each other and share what is important to them, revolutions, information flow, minimalism."

He recently voiced himself in the cult series In the series, which aired just the other day, Lisa and Nelson are looking for an investor for their project and meet Zuckerberg. He casually informs young entrepreneurs that many billionaires once dropped out of universities - by the way, the founder of Facebook, Harvard, never graduated ... He went through his universities on the Internet and proved the success of such training.

However, according to the Western media, the billionaire is modest in everyday life, sleeps on a mattress that just lies on the floor, rides a bicycle to his office, dresses almost beggarly, walks in sandals on his bare feet and is only interested in work.

However, he still does not forget about his personal life - for several years now he has been dating a Chinese woman, Priscilla Chen, whom he met all in the same, already historic, year 2004 at Harvard - in the toilet queue.

In May 2012, Mark and Priscilla got married, and the invited guests did not even suspect that they were invited to the wedding ceremony until it began.

  • 5225 views

Mark Zuckerberg- American IT specialist, programmer, dollar billionaire, philanthropist, entrepreneur and leader FacebookIncorporated. Fame brought him participation in the creation of the most visited social network in the world - Facebook (Facebook).

short biography

Mark Zuckerberg ( full nameMark Elliot Zuckerberg) was born May 14, 1984 near New York in the town of White Plains, USA. His father - Edward Zuckerberg, dentist. His mother is Karen Zuckerberg, a psychiatrist.

In a family of 4 children, Mark was the second child and the only boy. Already at 10 little Zuckerberg Jr. realized that the whole world connected with computers is divided into 2 types: users and programmers.

When at the age of ten he was presented with the first computer, he did not leave it for hours:

Users work on the computer, and programmers use it to change the world!

Mark Elliot decided that he wanted to be a programmer, and a couple of months after starting to master the PC, he delved into smart books on programming.

Zuckerberg's early successes

Reading books on topics of interest to him has borne fruit- already in high school he wrote his first programs. One of them became a computer incarnation board game risk.

However, Zuckerberg himself has always considered himself a hacker, and not all of his software wisdom at school could be called correct.

Microsoft offer

He would not want to immediately, in his own words, create something global, but would be happy to make "a bunch of cool little things." One of these little things was a smart mp-3 player - Synapse. He wrote it for personal use.

This player, having carefully studied the owner's preferences and found out what kind of music, at what time of the day and how often, he listens, was able to generate playlists on his own, "guessing" which tracks the owner would like to hear right now.

The unusual program became interested even in Microsoft andAOL. However, the young programmer turned down the giants' offers to buy Synapse, and then politely turned down their invitations to cooperate.

Versatile young man

Despite the fact that programming occupied the main place in the life of Mark Zuckerberg, he skillfully spent the remaining time to completely different classes: he did well in mathematics and natural sciences. He was actively engaged in fencing.

He was fond of the history of antiquity and one of summer holidays fully spent in school ancient Greek. And at the university Harvard - from 2002 to 2004) chose a rather unexpected, although understandable discipline - psychology. True, he did not graduate from the university.

The Beginning of Facebook's Success

There was a section on Harvard's internal computer network where students posted their photos and personal information. The photographs were so-so - the usual face and profile, tense facial expressions.

It occurred to Mark Zuckerberg to frolic: he made the program, which chose two random faces and offered to compare who is sexier. From those wishing to comparative analysis there was no retreat.

By the evening of the first day, four thousand people had viewed the site.
When the number of visitors exceeded 20,000, the server crashed due to overload.

Mark appeared before a commission on computer hacking. He received disciplinary action, but, apparently, already then he noticed that this kind of thing arouses great interest among the people.

"The Facebook"

February 4, 2004 Mark Elliot launched a social network called « TheFacebook», which was conceived as a communication site for Harvard students. "The Facebook" has become popular among students mainly because of the convenience of self-organization into groups, courses and hangouts that already exist offline in universities.

By opening “The Facebook” one could find out where acquaintances live this year, which girls are pretty and which are not, who ... All this strongly resembles what Facebook is like today.

After the launch of the site, Zuckerberg told the press that Facebook was written in just a week, and this idea just matured in his head and was quickly implemented, "on the spot." Fortunately, fellow students also helped - together with Mark, they were also involved in launching the project Eduardo Severin, Dustin Moskowitz, AndrewMcCollum and Christopher Hughes.

Have questions?

Report a typo

Text to be sent to our editors: