Mark Eliot Zuckerberg is the genius who created the Facebook social network. His creativity and innovation made him the youngest billionaire on the planet at the age of 23.
Mark Zuckerberg’s full name is Mark Eliot Zuckerberg. He was born on the 14th of May 1984 in Dobbs Ferry, White plain, New York. His father, Edward Zuckerberg, is a dentist, while his mother, Karen Zuckerberg, is a psychiatrist. Edward and Karen have four children, and Mark is the second born. He has three sisters, Arielle, Randi, and Donna. Mark and his sisters grew up in New York. He is now the chief executive officer (CEO) of Facebook. The Social Network film had released in 2010, the journeying and birth of Facebook were showcased.
Zuckerberg’s lifestyle
Here is a glimpse of Mark’s billionaire lifestyle.
Mark Zuckerberg lives in a $7 million worthy estate. It is located in Palo Alto. The spacious estate is made up of a saltwater pool and five executive bedrooms. The estate is over 5000 square feet in size. Aside from this, he owns property in Hawaii, Tahoe, and San Francisco too.
The billionaire does not have a taste for opulence – cars, clothes, and travel. Marks spends around 50 to 60 hours a week at Facebook. He mostly does exercises and spends time with family. He usually exercises three days a week.
According to The Telegram, Mark wakes up at 8 a.m. He checks Facebook and WhatsApp first thing in the morning. He usually sets ambitious goals and eliminates nonessentials choices.
Priscilla Chan is the wife of Mark Zuckerberg. Priscilla Chan was his long-time girlfriend. They two had met in 2003 at a college frat party. Mark and Chan Zuckerberg got married on the 19th of May 2012. Priscilla is an American doctor and philanthropist. Her net worth is currently $50 billion.
Mark and Priscilla have two children. August Chan Zuckerberg and Maxima Chan Zuckerberg.
Dr. Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg have announced the birth of their daughter Maxima Chan Zuckerberg on December 1, 2015. On August 28, 2017, they announced the birth of their second daughter, August Chan Zuckerberg.
Aside from that, Mark and Priscilla care a lot about the community. They donate 99% of their Facebook shares. They own the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The initiative promoted world development, equality, and human potential. The shares they donate are worth $45 billion.
Mark Zuckerberg’s early life
Mark Zuckerberg developed an interest in programming at a very young age when he was in elementary school. He had figured out that the world is divided between users and programmers. By then, he was only 10 years old. He got his first PC when he was 10 years old – a Quantex 486DX on the Intel 486.
His father, Edward, taught him Atari BASIC Programming when he was 12 years old. He used Atari BASIC to create “ZuckNet.”
ZuckNet
Mark created ZuckNet messenger and made all transfer of messages easy between the computers at home and the dental office. Edward had installed ZuckNet on his dental office computer that helped him get information when a new patient arrived from the reception.
Aside from that, Mark also developed communication tools and games just for fun. Later, his father decided to hire a computer tutor, David Newman, for some private computer classes.
Mark’s high school life
In high school, Mark wrote an artificial intelligence media player synapse for MP3 playlists. He paid close attention to details about the user preferences and generated playlists by guessing certain tracks a user would want to listen to.
At that time, AOL and Microsoft got interested in the Synapse media player. They had attempted to acquire it. However, Mark politely put off the “thousands of dollars” offered by these technology giants.
Mark later studied at the Academy of Phillips Exeter in New Hampshire. He excelled in literature and science and later received a degree in classics.
Mark’s hidden talent in fencing. He showed great interest in fencing and also became the fencing team captain. Mark’s fascination with coding never ended, and he dreamt of developing new software.
Later in 2002, he graduated from Phillips Exeter and entered Harvard University.
Mark’s University life
When Mark had completed his second year at Harvard, he was known on campus as a software developer. He wrote a program called ‘CourseMatch’ which helped students choose their subjects based on the list of courses from other users.
In 2003, Mark had insomnia at the Harvard dormitory room. He had yet another light bulb moment and decided to create a site called FaceMash. Mark Zuckerberg hacked the Harvard database and accessed student’s profile pictures. The program selected two random pictures and put them next to each other on an opinion poll asking, “Who is hotter?”
FaceMash immensely succeeded as every Harvard student was visiting it. The program became so popular that the server crashed as the number of visitors on the site exceeds the limit, and Mark got in trouble for hacking the system. He received disciplinary action and realized that such things spiral huge interest in society.
How the idea of Facebook developed
Divya Narendra, one of the students at Harvard University, spoke to Mark Zuckerberg about creating a social networking platform for Harvard students. The majority of them were suffering from emotional stiffness. Moreover, Divya Narendra suggested using the Harvard email address as the main username. Divya’s partners were twins Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss. The twins’ father was a successful financial consultant who could raise initial capital for the future network.
The initial idea brought to the table was to create a Harvard Connection, which would allow the members to post photos, useful links, and personal information on the internet. Mark was to program and generate a special source code that would allow the system to work smoothly. Mark agreed to the proposal, and as he worked on Harvard Connection, he thought of another idea – to create his own social network. Harvard Connection was later named ConnectU.
TheFacebook.com
On the 4th of February 2004, Mark registered the domain name TheFacebook.com which only functioned within Harvard. Later, Mark and his partner Eduardo Saverian realized that 4,000 users already registered on Facebook. They considered that they needed the services of new programmers after this. Darren Moskowitz, Marks’s neighbor, opened the Facebook service to Columbia University students, Stanford, and Yale students.
After the IPO (Initial Public Offerings), Mark owned 503.6 million shares. At the moment, Mark controls 60% of the company’s votes while Eduardo Saverian controls 35%, and Moskowitz owns 5%. Chris Hughes, another friend of Mark Zuckerberg, was assigned as the Press Attache of Facebook.
Later on, all students could register on Facebook as long as they have an email address in the .edu zone to indicate they belonged to the education sector. The project was a success as it attracted a lot of users. Moreover, users were requested to upload real profile pictures or else their profiles would get deleted.
Facebook later expanded beyond the .edu zone as it became more popular. Mark searched for potential investors. Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, was one of the first investors who allocated $500,000. The amount of sufficient to jumpstart the project, and it began to evolve rapidly.
More than 1 million people joined Facebook in less than one year, and Mark realized he needed more investments for further development. $12.7 million was invested by Accel Partners and $27.5 million by Greylock Partners.
All universities and educational institutions within the United States were able to access Facebook by 2005. As interested in Facebook grew exponentially, Mark decided to enable registration to the public.
The beginning of Facebook’s success
The idea that friends and family could communicate online drew a lot of attention as everyone was fascinated by this technology and the Facebook fan base began to grow rapidly.
Once Facebook attained the 50 million user mark, massive companies offered huge amounts of money to buy the project. Actually, $900 million was offered to Mark Zuckerberg by Yahoo! But he declined the offer as he was not satisfied with the sum.
The lawsuit hurdle Facebook had to face facebook faced a number of scandalsok. Starting with Divya Narendra, Cameron Winklevoss, and Taylor Winklevoss accusing Mark Zuckerberg of stealing the idea exactly six days after the Facebook site was launched. According to the three, Mark apparently did not provide quality work for HarvarConnectin.com social network and instead used the source code to create Facebook.com.
During the same year, the three launched their network and renamed it ConnectU whilst continuously accusing Mark Zuckerberg and attacking him. They also complained to The Harvard Crimson newspaper and Harvard administration.
Mark had defended himself. He showed his work for HarvardConnection and clearly explained that it is not related to Facebook. However, John Thomson, a Harvard student, accused Mark of stealing the ideas. The newspaper went ahead to publish the matter on the 28th of May 2004, and Mark was very offended by the whole situation.
How Mark reacted to the scandal
Mark was unhappy with the publication and broke the two journalists’ mailboxes from The Harvard Crimson using FacebookMark discovered those involved in the newspapers. He browsed their history log of incorrectly entered passwords on Facebook.
Two employees of the newspaper tried to log into Facebook using their mailbox passwords. He got a chance to read the correspondence about him between HarvardConnection and the editorial office.
The twins and Divya Narendra went ahead to file a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg, but the court rejected their claim. But they did not stop there. They filed another lawsuit.
The second lawsuit
The twins and Narendra filed another lawsuit against the mark, and the court tried to understand their claims. The court had analyzed the code course to understand where they were stolen. However, they did not get a clear picture.
Later in 2009, Mark agreed to pay a lump sum of $45 million to ConnectU as part of the court settlement. Mark paid $15 million as Facebook shares. The rest of the $20 million in cash. The case was then closed.
The latest lawsuit
The twins were still not satisfied. On the 17th of May, 2011, they filed a lawsuit against Mark to the United States Supreme Court to consider reopening the case.
“The Social Network”
Aaron Sorkin was the screenwriter of “The Social Network.” The movie was based on the book “The Accidental Billionaires,” 2009. Ben Merch was the author of the book. The movie received eight Academy Award nominations.
Mark Zuckerberg’s story was captured in the movie. However, Mark was not happy about it.
Jessie Eisenberg had played Mark’s character.
Zuckerberg felt that the movie was inaccurate.
Mark Zuckerberg told The New Yorker reporter that “It’s interesting what stuff they focused on getting right; like, every single shirt and fleece that I had in that movie is actually a shirt or fleece that I own.”
In addition to that, he had also said: “So there’s all this stuff that they got wrong and a bunch of random details that they got right.”
Bill Gates’ interest in Facebook
Microsoft bought a 1.6% equity stake in Facebook for $240 million in 2007. At that time, Facebook’s value spiked to $15 billion. Bill Gates then created his Facebook account.
Even though Bill Gates closed his account later because so many contacted him, he made significant PR campaigns for Facebook worldwide. This is because Microsoft had an advertising agreement with Facebook until 2011.
Mark gets entitled as Time’s ‘Person of the year’ – 2010
Mark was named the TIME magazine’s person of the year in 2010. He was only 26 years old then.
Richard Stengel, TIME magazine’s editor in chief, explained the choice. He said that “The social network created by Mark Zuckerberg connected almost every 10th person on the planet”.
“Today, Facebook is the third-largest country in the world that knows about its citizens as much as no government on the planet does.”
Furthermore, the magazine praised Mark Zuckerberg for making a massive impact on the world with his ingenious technological innovation. By then, there were almost 500 million active users on Facebook.
In addition to that, Forbes magazine listed him as the youngest billionaire. In 2015, Mark Zuckerberg became the 7th on the billionaire list. Zuckerberg had a net worth of $40.3 billion at that time.
How Facebook generates income
Dating back to 2013, Facebook’s net income was $1.5 billion. Comparing the performance in 2013 to that of 2010, we can say that the company had a six-fold turnover increment. Clearly, Facebook was rapidly growing.
Facebook was earning through advertisements and converted 8.5% revenue from it. They had an earning of 15% from purchases that were made through the social network. Most of the items purchased were virtual goods such as fruits and vegetables. Moreover, fans purchase Farmville, a popular game that Zynga developed.
Mark began testing the private messaging service in January 2013. Facebook began charging $1.00 for private messaging to friends on a user’s friend list. Just like a mail, the message would directly to the inbox folder. However, to inbox the ‘famous’ people, Facebook charged ten folds that. For example, to get to Mark Zuckerberg’s inbox, one had to pay $100. This was a clever strategy Mark came up with to generate even more money.
By 2014, the global market of selling goods through Facebook raised from $7 billion to $15 billion.
Instagram, Whatsapp, and oculus rift draws Mark Zuckerberg’s attention
It is no secret that Mark is an overachiever, and he did not stop with Facebook. He cleverly strategized to add other apps under Facebook’s roof.
Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom developed Instagram as an iPhone Application at that time. Mark seemed quite interested in their idea. In April 2012, he decided to obtain the app. They had designed the app to share photos. Mark Zuckerberg later bought it for $1 billion. The payment was in the form of both shares and cash.
Oculus Rift, on the other hand, is virtual reality hardware. It was engineered by Oculus VR Company head Palmer Freeman Luckey. In March 2014, Mark bought the company in exchange for 23 million Facebook shares and $400 million in cash. Furthermore, he also agreed to give $300 million in incentives if Oculus Rift hits the milestones he targeted to achieve in the future.
Brian Acton and Jan Koum had initially founded Instagram in 2009. This was after they resigned from Yahoo!. They decided to apply for a job at Facebook, butut; unfortunately, it did not work out as planned.
Mark Zuckerberg had bought Whatsapp in October 2014. He had $22 million for it. He paid $4.59 billion in cash and 177,760,669 shares in the company. WhatsApp was definitely a treasure chest as the returns right now are immense.
WhatsApp had become encrypted and got launched for PCs, MAC, and windows in 2017.
In 2018, Facebook faced several scandals. Apparently, Facebook allowed a Russian company to look into user data beyond the stop date. Cambridge Analytica was accused of improperly gaining access to sensitive user information of as many as 87 million Facebook users. Hence, Mark Zuckerberg was before the congress. He was questioned about the social media platform’s relationship with third-party developers.
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