Mark Zuckerberg - biography, photo, personal life: founder of the Facebook network. 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 his youth 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 a good job (although on the condition that all rights to “Synapse” would 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 directory in which you could find photographs, telephone numbers and even addresses of your 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 numbers: 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 not Mark Zuckerberg who was furious. As a result, he got 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 for 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 opinion of other 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 connected 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 of Microsoft Corporation started his 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 Microsoft on its pages until 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 being held with representatives of cellular communication companies (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 an artistic form, the creation of Facebook is described in more detail. True, they are trying to make Zuckerberger white and fluffy, but this is the only drawback of this book.

Biography of Mark Zuckerberg, Success Story of Mark Zuckerberg

The creator of Facebook and person of the year Mark Zuckerberg, the launch of Facebook, the personal life and girlfriend of Mark Zuckerberg, the film “The Social Network”

Section 1. Mark Zuckerberg's childhood.

Section 3. Creation of Facebook.

Section 4. Claims against Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg is American programmer and entrepreneur in the field of Internet technologies, one of the developers and founders of the social network Facebook. CEO of Facebook, Inc.

Mark Zuckerberg's childhood

Businessman and co-founder of Facebook, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984 in Dobbs Ferry, New York, into a well-educated family. His father, Edward Zuckerberg, ran a dental practice near the family home. His mother, Karen, worked as a psychiatrist before the birth of her four children, Mark, Randy, Donna and Ariel.

Mark Zuckerberg showed an interest in computers at an early age, when he was about 12, he used Atari BASIC to create a messaging program he called "Zucknet". His father used the program in his dental office so the receptionist could tell him when a new patient came in without having to shout across the room. The family also used Zucknet to communicate within the home. Together with his friends, Mark Zuckerberg created computer games just for fun.

To support Mark's growing interest in computers, his parents hired private computer tutor David Newman to come to his home once a week and work with Mark. Newman later told reporters that it was difficult to keep up with the prodigy, who began attending graduate courses at nearby Mercy College at the same time.

Zuckerberg later attended Phillips Exeter Academy, an exclusive prep school in New Hampshire. There he showed talent in fencing, becoming captain of the school team. He also excelled in literature, graduating in classics. However, Zuckerberg remained fascinated by computers and continued to work on developing new programs. While still in high school, he created the first version of the Pandora music software, which he called Synapse. Several companies, including AOL and Microsoft, have expressed interest in buying the software and hiring the teenager before he graduates from high school. Mark Zuckerberg refused the offer.

After graduating from Exeter in 2002, Zuckerberg attended Harvard University. During his sophomore year at the Ivy League, he developed a reputation as a software developer on campus. It was during this time that he built a program called CourseMatch, which helped students select their subjects based on a selection of courses from other users. He also invented Facemash, which compares photos of two female students on campus and allows users to vote on which one is more attractive. Mark Zuckerberg's program became wildly popular, but was later shut down by school officials after it was deemed inappropriate.

An extremely entertaining personality, one of the youngest enterprising and talented businessmen, ranked among the wealthiest and most influential people on the planet. Today analysts predict a cloudless and successful future for Mark.

Mark Zuckerberg is a little over twenty years old, however, today he already occupies the minds of many advanced figures in the world of business and science.

Despite the fact that Mark Zuckerberg is the creator of one of the global technology enterprises Facebook, as well as its leader, the young businessman claims that finances and power practically do not bother him. On the contrary, he is attracted to intellectual activity, achievements in the technological field and other “smart” things.

Currently, Mark Zuckerberg owns a significant portion of the shares of the company he created, the value of which is approximately three billion dollars.

However, at one time this enterprise was just a good and promising Internet project. Today, Mark’s enterprise has grown into an extremely popular company that has already attracted a huge audience of 68 million people.

Experts never cease to puzzle over how such a young, but extremely highly developed, creature managed to achieve this phenomenon. The media's quest to learn as much as possible about Mark Zuckerberg himself 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. 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.

And yet, sometimes Mark appears in public and tries to communicate with the media. Not long ago he spoke briefly about himself, but there was too little information. Thus, Mark is reluctant to communicate with the press. It’s a completely different matter for people close to him or colleagues. In contact with them, he is incredibly charismatic, open and sociable.

My university performance was so-so: my passion for programming took up too much of my time. Sometimes preparing for exams required extraordinary solutions, such as the case 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.”

Mark Zuckerberg's girlfriend Priscilla Chan can certainly be considered one of the luckiest on the planet. Not much biographical information is known about Chan, but what we do know is that she met Zuckerberg while attending Harvard in 2004. This was the year that Mark came up with the concept of Facebook. He and his buddies, including Chan, packed up and moved to Palo Alto, California, to grow their business venture into an empire. He and his friends initially planned to return to college, but their business took off and they remained in California.

According to Forbes magazine, as of 2011, Macra Zuckerberg's net worth is estimated at approximately $13.5 billion. He lives in a modest rented house in Palo Alto, California, with his girlfriend Priscilla Chan. Mark Zuckerberg studied Chinese every day in preparation for the couple's visit to China in December 2010. In March 2011, the couple finally changed their Facebook status to "dating."

On a summer night in 2003, when Mark Zuckerberg was suffering from insomnia in his Harvard dorm room, the future Internet tycoon had been dumped by his girlfriend and was drowning his grievances with a good dose of whiskey. “In my fevered brain, the idea arose to make a site called Facemash,” Zuckerberg later recalled. “I decided to hack the Harvard information database, get out photographs of students and place the faces of sheep and cows 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 eleven in the evening the process was in full swing, and a couple of hours later Mark launched a website with photographs of female students in pairs with a call to vote which of the two was more attractive.

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

Zuckerberg's drunken stunt causes predictable discontent - firstly, from the girls whose photographs were involved in the "battle of faces", and secondly, from the university administration, which was extremely outraged that Mark hacked into faculty servers to gain access to photo banks. As a result, the curly-haired botanist earned the reputation of a cynic and a seasoned programmer, and in the evening champagne was already uncorked in his room - the hero of the occasion made toasts to the success of projects related to the lives of real people.

Creation of Facebook

Based on the success of his previous projects, three of his fellow students - Divya Narendra, and twins Cameron and Tyler Winkelvos - offered him a job, the idea was to create a social network, which they called Harvard Connection. This site was designed to use student information from the Harvard University network to create a dating site for the Harvard elite. Zuckerberg agreed to help with the project, but soon dropped out to work on his own social network with friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin.

Zuckerberg and his friends created a site that allows users to create their own profiles, upload photos and communicate with other users. The group called the site Facebook, and they operated out of a Harvard University dorm room until June 2004. After his sophomore year, Zuckerberg dropped out of college to devote himself full-time to Facebook, and the company's office was moved to Palo Alto, California. By the end of 2004, Facebook had 1 million users.

In 2005, Zuckerberg's venture received a huge boost from Accel's venture partners. Accel invested $12.7 million in the network, which at the time was open only to Ivy League students. Zuckerberg's company then provided access to other colleges, schools and international schools, pushing Facebook membership to reach more than 5.5 million users in December 2005. Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook began attracting interest from other companies that wanted to advertise with the popular social hub. Unwilling to sell, Zuckerberg turned down offers from companies such as Yahoo! and MTV Networks. Instead, he focused on expanding the site, opening up his project to third-party developers and adding new features.

However, in 2006, the business tycoon faced the first big barrier in his entire biography. The creators of Harvard Connection claimed that Zuckerberg stole their idea and insisted that the software developer pay for the loss of their business. Zuckerberg claimed that the ideas were based on two very different types of social networks, but then lawyers found notes from Zuckerberg that he may have intentionally stolen intellectual property and pitched Facebook as an idea to his friends.

Zuckerberg later apologized for the incriminating messages, saying he regretted them. "If you're going to go to create a service that's influential and used by many, you have to be mature, right?" he told The New Yorker. "I think I've grown and learned a lot."

Although an initial settlement of US$65 million was reached between the two parties, the legal dispute continued into 2011 after Narendra and Winkelvos claimed they were misled about the value of their shares.

“The older I get, the more convinced I am that servicing voyeurs is the best way to make money” - using this policy statement, Zuckerberg managed to assemble around himself a team of the same hard-nosed nerds who were passionate about the ideas of dating services and building social networks.

About ten months before Zuckerberg's Facemash saga, one of the Harvard students, Hindu Narendra, had already come up with the idea of ​​a social network exclusively for Harvard students, many of whom suffered from emotional constriction. Well, in order to prevent strangers from getting into the network, Narendra suggested using a password with a Harvard email address.

Divya Narendra's partners are twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. The twins' father, Howard Winklevoss, was a successful financial consultant and invested a lot of money in his blond athlete sons - this way the problem with initial capital for the future network could be solved.

In a conversation with Mark, Narendra said that the project will be called Harvard Connection, and its participants will post their photos, personal information and useful links on the Internet. Zuckerberg's tasks included programming the site and creating special code that would allow the system to work as quickly as possible.

After a personal meeting with Narendra and the twins, Zuckerberg agreed to get involved in the work, but he was already quite skeptical about the potential of the new partners. “They didn’t have any ideas about how to advertise the future site and how to make money on it,” Mark later admitted. “Soon I began to show the guys in every possible way that we were not on the same path: as if I accidentally forgot my mobile phone charger, wasted time and dodged personal meetings in every possible way.”

It all ended with Narendra and the Winklevoss brothers still managing to pull Zuckerberg out of his lair, after which Mark announced that the ideologists of the Harvard Connection could look for a new programmer. At the same time, the future creator of Facebook did not say a word about what he had been doing for the past two months. And, of course, Zuckerberg concealed that three days before the meeting with his “colleagues” he registered the online domain TheFacebook.com, now known to the whole world as Facebook.

A social network called TheFacebook (later “The” was removed) was launched on February 4, 2004. After Zuckerberg and his partner Eduardo Saverin realized that there were already 4,000 registered users, they concluded that the duo would need the services of new programmers. One of them was Mark’s roommate, short-haired athlete Darren Moskowitz, who opened the Facebook service for students at Columbia University, Stanford and Yale.

Around the same time, the division of the company’s property took place: 60% belonged to Zuckerberg, 35% was controlled by Saverin, and 5% went to newcomer Moskowitz. Another roommate of the friends in the dorm, Chris Hughes, became a Facebook press officer. Zuckerberg described his position as “founder, master and enemy of the state.”

Tracking Facebook's progress, the Harvard Connection trio posted angry rebukes of Zuckerberg on their website. Their own Internet project, ConnectU, was not a success, and the angry guys were left scratching their heads over how Mark managed to create Facebook code in a matter of weeks.

In order to protect himself from the three angry “right holders of the idea,” Zuckerberg plucked up the impudence and wrote a letter to Harvard management, where he portrayed himself as an innocent lamb who suffered from pushy blackmailers. The message had considerable resonance, and even two honest girls from the Harvard Black Women's Association came out in support of the injured computer genius Zuckerberg.

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

At first, Facebook operated only within Harvard. Some time later, registration was open to all students and schoolchildren. The main condition was the presence of a postal address in the.edu zone, which indicated that the person belonged to the educational sector.

I must say that at first this tactic worked great. The project attracted attention, but at the same time its audience was of a fairly high quality. When registering, you had to fill out a detailed profile, and in addition to your email address in educationalzone.edu, the creators also required you to add your real photo. All profiles in which people used avatars were deleted.

On May 28, 2004, Zuckerberg already boasted two hundred thousand users from thirty colleges across the country. “Harvard students were communicating with each other long before Mark entered this educational institution,” Jeff Jarvis, head of the interactive journalism program at New York University, sums up Zuckerberg’s activities. “Mark simply helped this communication: thanks to his brainchild, it became easier to organize parties and pick up girls.” According to Jarvis, Facebook is the most elegant service in terms of design among all existing ones; In addition, it allows you to find friends with similar interests with incredible ease and accuracy.

It would be a sin not to use such advantages in the interests of advertising, and Zuckerberg set out to turn the student site into a global world network. After packing his bags, Mark headed to California. Remembering the route of his spiritual father Bill Gates, Zuckerberg landed in Palo Alto, the Mecca of modern Internet technology, in the summer of 2004.

Together with his main partner Saverin, who remained in his native New York, Mark invested more than $20,000 in the development of Facebook. Thanks to these investments, Zuckerberg's troops (the future tycoon himself, Darren Moskowitz and two very young guys in the wings) occupied an entire house on Jennifer Way, in one of the quiet cul-de-sacs of Palo Alto.

When Zuckerberg was asked about this period of his life, he replied: “I usually woke up in the bedroom, looked into the kitchen and went to code. I had a girlfriend at the time, but when she suddenly disappeared, I wasn't particularly upset. After all, I always had Facebook to throw a good party.”

Zuckerberg and his friends practically did not leave their refuge, programming new services, drinking beer and listening to Green Day and Infected Mushrooms. According to the testimony of his friends at the time, Mark was not far from his image as a Harvard botanist. “It was like college,” recalls Stephen Hegarty, who joined Zuckerberg’s team that summer. “When Mark wasn’t programming, he was watching period films like Gladiator or hanging out in the kitchen, constantly quoting the comedy Wedding Crashers with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn.”

At the same time, one of the future Facebook programmers, Sean Parker, one of the creators of the file-sharing program Napster, began to visit Zuckerberg’s house. Sean is a handsome young man who was considered by many to be a role model for the repressed Zuckerberg. Sean was the first to make contact, telling Mark that he was a heavy user of Facebook and would like to meet him in person. After lunch together at a Chinese restaurant, Sean moved to Jennifer Way and programming for the social network continued with renewed vigor.

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.

“Even when our stakes got really high,” Parker recalled, “Zuckerberg continued to negotiate in his pajamas and flip-flops. Now I understand that Mark acted absolutely deliberately in fooling around in this way. It never occurred to me that he had an ironclad business acumen. Well, then it happened that Mark Zuckerberg decided to screw us all at once.”

The first to fall was the head of Mark's closest partner, Eduardo Saverin, who was accused of trying to freeze Facebook's bank account. All he could do was give a series of revealing interviews, to which Zuckerberg, of course, did not react in any way.

Already in November 2004, the number of Facebook users exceeded a million, and Mark himself voiced the network’s simple philosophy: “We will do everything to ensure that our site does not allow you to leave your monitor.” So, in general, this is what happened: numerous primitive toys like “vampires” or modern Tamagotchis from the Haikoo Zoo tied people to Facebook seriously and for a long time. Music lovers, whose favorite bands were represented on Zuckerberg’s social network, became even more hooked on the service.

Already in the spring of 2005, about thirteen million dollars had been invested in the Facebook project, although Zuckerberg himself continued to play the role of a wayward, eccentric nerd. In particular, he had two types of business cards: one was engraved with only the owner’s first and last name, and the inscription on the other read: “I’m the CEO, bitch.” With the same infantile impudence, Mark avoided interviews that could shed light on his relationships with former accomplices and present him as a living person.

The faster Facebook's capital grew, the fewer friends Zuckerberg remained with. Harvard friend Chris Hughes now works for Barack Obama, lead programmer Adam D'Angelo left the company in May of this year, Eduardo Saverin began a lawsuit against Mark, and Dustin Moskowitz went on indefinite leave.

Lawsuits against Facebook

The first of the legal cases related to the social network and its creator began just six days after the launch of TheFacebook. Three Harvard seniors - brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and their partner Divya Narendra - said in the Harvard Crimson newspaper that Mark stole their ideas. Allegedly, they hired a programmer to work on their website HarvardConnection.com and provided him with the source code for their ConnectU project, and he misled them for about a month, using their ideas to write his own code. The trial itself was initiated later, but in the end the dispute was settled - Zuckerberg paid the plaintiffs $65 million so that they would calm down and no longer file lawsuits.

The second lawsuit was more serious because it was related to one of the founders of Facebook. Eduardo Saverin, in fact, is the first sponsor of the project and its business manager, as well as a close friend of Zuckerberg. Saverin filed a lawsuit and in January 2009 the court confirmed his right to 5% of the campaign shares (more than $1 billion).

However, twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who accused Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their idea for the social network Facebook, filed another lawsuit.

The Winklevoss twins said the $65 million they were paid in 2008 to end their legal battle in the case was not enough because their former friend lied about the real value of Facebook.com. The brothers claim that Zuckerberg is involved in securities fraud and are demanding more substantial compensation.

Facebook vehemently denies the Winklevoss's claim, and its legal filing claims that the twins themselves miscalculated the company's value, and their claims of fraud are based on an important omission - "they mistakenly believe that their nemesis will voluntarily provide them with his financial statements and information About company". Zuckerberg's lawyers insist that the Winklevoss brothers never demanded that their client provide them with official documents about the site's income.

The feud between the twins and Zuckerberg takes on an even sharper hue against the backdrop of the wealth that has been showering golden rain on the founder of the global social network over the past few years. Forbes estimates Zuckerberg is one of the 35 richest Americans with a personal net worth of $6.9 billion, thus ahead of Apple founder Steve Jobs.

The “the” from the site’s name disappeared in 2005 after the company acquired the Facebook.com domain for a whopping $200,000. In the fall of 2005, the number of Facebook users already numbered more than 5 million active customers. In September of the same year, the opportunity to register became available to US high school students, although at that time they needed to receive an invitation from one of the already registered participants. Then the circle expanded to employees of some companies, for example, Apple and Microsoft.

September 26, 2006 was one of the most important milestones in the history of the project: the site opened registration for everyone who has a working e-mail address. The only age limit left is 13 years. 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 2007, the most important event for Facebook happened. Microsoft acquired a 1.6% stake in Facebook for an impressive sum of $240 million, as well as the rights to place its advertising on this resource until 2011. Based on this, many analysts have suggested that Facebook's total value is $15 billion. Not a weak result for a company whose revenues did not exceed 200 million a year. After the deal, a rather interesting event occurred. Bill Gates himself signed up for Facebook. At one time, he devoted several hours a day to communicating via Facebook with everyone who wanted to, but then decided to delete his account, since there were too many of those who wanted to. He simply did not physically have time to communicate with them. However, Gates provided serious PR for Facebook around the world. This is especially important for Microsoft given that it has an exclusive agreement with the Zuckerberg network under which it is Facebook's primary advertising partner.

If we talk about the atmosphere in the company itself, then until now it corresponded to the image of a technical startup. No dress code, flexible working hours, a founder who wears sandals - many of these things are still relevant on Facebook. However, since Sharyl Sanberg from Google came to the company, the situation has changed somewhat. Discipline in the company has become much stricter. Facebook is starting to transform itself from a startup into a corporation.

Facebook's latest breakthrough was the development of its API, which allowed thousands of developers around the world to write programs for the social network. Quite quickly the project began to acquire small applications of varying degrees of usefulness. Various informers, calendars, organizers. But the main thing was the small games that simply flooded Facebook.

The interesting thing is that many developers have already made serious money thanks to this platform. And Facebook, unlike Apple (the situation with the iPhone), does not take any money from them.

As for earning models, the company is trying to try different options.

Selling advertising is not everything. So, for some time now, on Facebook, each network member can order another completely real product that can be obtained in a regular store. This is a simple gift that you can give without leaving the cash register. What is needed for this? Pay for the goods, select a recipient. He will receive a special ID, which he will have to present in one of the stores that cooperate with Facebook.

Another interesting way Facebook makes money is through paid groups for businesses. In general, many companies were creating their own groups on Facebook from the very beginning, but then the administration of the resource introduced a number of serious restrictions that complicated the interaction of the group’s audience with its creators. In particular, one of these restrictions was the limit on 1200 messages per day that the group administrator can send. What if it consists of millions? Then the company will have to purchase a subscription to a paid group. The possibilities here are extremely wide, there are no numerous restrictions of ordinary groups, and in general everything is done so that companies can communicate productively with clients. There is even an opportunity to style the page to match your corporate style.

The influential American magazine Time gave the cover of its January issue to 26-year-old billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, calling him “Person of 2010.”

Last year, Lady Gaga, James Cameron, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and others competed for the title of “Person of the Year 2010”. However, Time magazine chose its hero – the founder of the social network Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. “The social network created by Mark has connected almost every tenth inhabitant of the planet,” Time editor-in-chief Richard Stangel explained his choice. In his opinion, “today Facebook is the third largest country in the world, which knows as much about its citizens as no government on Earth knows.”

According to Time, no one person has had a greater impact on the world over the past year than the current laureate. His popularity is so high that this year even the film “The Social Network” was released, in which Jesse Eisenberg brilliantly played the main role of the creator of Facebook. Previously, US Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama became “people of the year” according to Time magazine.

Galina Galkina: Did you meet Mark before you played him?

Jesse Eisenberg: No - I didn't know him before filming the movie and I still haven't met him. But my cousin works at Zuckerberg’s company, and he told me about him.

Galina Galkina: And what did he tell you?

Jesse Eisenberg: Don't expect sensations. Mark is modesty itself. He is completely unpretentious in everyday life. He is the epitome of what we call a geek. He lives by the interests of Facebook.

Galina Galkina: Did your brother tell you how Mark reacted to the film?

Jesse Eisenberg: Mark, I think, called it "fiction."

Galina Galkina: What do you think about this?

Jesse Eisenberg: Ben Mezrich did a ton of research when he wrote his novel The Social Network, which became the basis for the film. However, Mark Zuckerberg did not give him an interview. So it's not surprising that he has a similar reaction to the film.

“Each of us thinks of ourselves as the hero of our own story.”

Galina Galkina: What definition would you give to your character now?

Jesse Eisenberg: I ​​think that Mark Zuckerberg - at least my character, not the real person - is an innovator, but his goal is not personal gain. What I know about the real Mark Zuckerberg is that he is a very humble person. Even after the number of visitors to his website has exceeded 500 million, he continues to live a very modest lifestyle. He is not interested in luxury goods, nor is he interested in money. He is, above all, passionate about his site. Mark considers Facebook to be much more important than he is. The drama of this story is that he treats the site as a goal of paramount importance, so his relationship with his associates breaks down.

Being a deutanopic, Zuckerberg distinguishes between red and green much worse than blue, Facebook's main color.

In the second episode of the 22nd season of the animated series The Simpsons, Zuckerberg voiced himself.

In January 2011, an unknown hacker hacked Mark's Facebook page.

There is a 4th registered user in the Facebook database (the first three are test ones).

Mark Zuckerberg is a fan of the American band Green Day.

According to men's magazine GQ, Mark is considered the most tastelessly dressed resident of Silicon Valley.

Back in college, Mark was noticed by Microsoft employees after he wrote the Synapse program, which allowed the computer to independently compose a sequence of musical hits for its owner.

Sources

Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia, WikiPedia

forbes.ru – Forbes

novostimira.com.ua – News of the World

allreport.ru – A little bit about everything

peoples.ru – People

spaceincome.com – Spaceincome

constructorus.ru – Success Constructor

Mark Zuckerberg known throughout the world as the creator of the very first social network Facebook and as a successful entrepreneur whose fortune is estimated at several tens of billions of dollars. Despite his young age - 33 years old, Mark Zuckerberg's biography is already full of interesting events and facts.

The content of the article :

Biography

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg ( Mark Elliot Zuckerberg) was born in the small town of White Plains, located near New York, on May 14, 1984 into a Jewish family of doctors. His mother Karen Zuckerberg is a psychiatrist, and his father Edward Zuckerberg is a dentist. In addition to Mark, they have three more children: daughters Ariel, Randy and Donna.

Since school, Zuckerberg began programming, but this was not his only hobby. He also took classes in fencing, mathematics, and several languages. After finishing elementary school, Zuckerberg transferred to an elite school " Phillips Exeter Academy“, where there was an emphasis on programming.

At the age of 12 he created his first program " ZuckNet“, which was a local chat in which members of his family could communicate with each other. And for his final work in the last year of school, Mark developed an Internet application “ Synapse", which recognized people's musical preferences.

The project was successful, and Microsoft even wanted to buy it for $2 million and hire him, but the graduate refused this offer.

Having entered Harvard University in the Faculty of Psychology in 2002, the future billionaire continued to study various programming languages, and over time, together with a team of other students, which included Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes, he began to develop.

After 12 years, Mark Zuckerberg still received a Harvard diploma

In 2004, Zuckerberg launched the first version of the social network Facebook, which immediately began to be popular among Internet users.

Mark Zuckerberg's wife

Mark Zuckerberg with Priscilla Chan

Zuckerberg married on May 19, 2012 Priscilla Chan, whom I met while studying at Harvard. Interestingly, initially all the guests were invited to a party on the occasion of Priscilla receiving her medical education.

Arriving at the private house where the couple lived, they learned that in fact a wedding ceremony was about to take place. Also, according to Wikipedia, it was on this day that Facebook launched an IPO, and the billionaire sold part of the shares of the social network.

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife do not like to appear in public, spending most of their time in their home. The family also donates a large amount of money to charity.

Last year, Mark and Priscilla founded their own foundation, which funds the development of drugs for various diseases. Until 2026, the organization will allocate a total of approximately $3 billion.

The couple had their first daughter on December 2, 2015, who was named Maxine, and two years later, on August 28, the couple had another daughter - August.

Mark Zuckerberg with his wife

Mark Zuckerberg regularly posts photos on his Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/zuck/) of how his family spends time: walking, celebrating holidays or doing various things in their private home.

Mark Zuckerberg's net worth

Mark Zuckerberg's net worth is currently estimated to be around at 70 billion dollars. It’s not hard to guess that almost all of his business is based on.

Zuckerberg earned his first capital in the first year of the social network’s existence, when he was able to attract large investors. With the development of his project, Mark simultaneously increased his income.

Already in 2010, a talented programmer became the youngest billionaire on Earth, and Forbes estimated his fortune at $4 billion. That same year the magazine Time awarded Mark Zuckerberg the title " Person of the Year". Since then, over seven years, his capital has increased 17.5 times.

However, despite their large incomes, neither the billionaire nor his wife were ever seen squandering money or spending heavily. On the contrary, the family lives quite modestly in their house in Palo Alto.

Instead of an expensive Mercedes, Mark drives an ordinary Volkswagen Golf, which an ordinary average worker can afford. As mentioned above, Zuckerberg and Chan donate a considerable part of their income to various foundations, and not so long ago the creator of Facebook even stated that during his life he plans to spend 99% of the money he earns on charity.

Zuckerberg currently owns 24% of Facebook and is the company's CEO. This year, Forbes magazine included Mark among the five richest people on the planet.

Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook launched on February 4, 2004. The creator himself describes the process of working on the social network without much color. According to him, every day, after classes at Harvard, he met with his team of students, and together they wrote program code for the future site. And then they tested the developments.

When the social network was brought into working order, its first version was launched. Zuckerberg almost immediately began looking for investors who would help develop the project in the future, but for now hewas in search, Facebook was funded from his personal pocket. In order to seriously pursue his brainchild, Mark dropped out of university and invested all the money he had saved for further studies into a social network.

Within a few months, the list of investors included such well-known Internet personalities as Reid Hoffman— creator of a business network Linkedin, Peter Thiel— co-owner PayPal, and Sean Parker- file hosting developer Napster. By the beginning of the next year, the total investment in Facebook was several million dollars.

In 2005, the total number of registered users of the social network reached five million users! This gave Facebook the seventh spot on the list of the most popular sites in America.

Such success of a rapidly developing resource could not help but attract the attention of large IT companies that wished to purchase it. Zuckerberg received several offers, but he refused all of them.

The real turning point year was 2007, when Microsoft acquired a 1.6% stake in the company for $240 million. Thus, the social network began to be valued at $15 billion. This made it possible to sell the assets of the social network for huge amounts of money and receive large investments for the development of the project.

Having reached a new level, Zuckerberg opened an office in Dublin and began working on expanding the functionality of the site. In 2009, the company announced its first profit. At the same time, access to the program code was opened on the Facebook website, thanks to which any user can now create an application for a variety of purposes and upload it to the network.

Since then, the social network has been developing rapidly. In 2015, the site became the second most visited site in the world, second only to the search engine. Google. At the moment, the average monthly traffic to the resource is 2 billion people.

In terms of revenue, the company's annual profit is approximately $10.2 billion and its annual turnover is $27.6 billion. Facebook.Inc also owns a service for publishing photos Instagram, as well as messenger whatsapp.

Some interesting facts about Facebook statistics

1. In August 2015, the service reached one billion visitors per day;
2. Every day, social network users upload approximately 300 million images to their pages;
3. The number of daily video views is approximately 9 billion;
4. In the first seven years of the social network's operation, its various pages were opened 1 trillion times;
5. People give 6 billion likes every day;
6. On March 13, 2010, the social network was visited by more people than the Google search engine;
7. In 2017, Facebook's total stock value reached $500 billion.

In 2017, the company did a lot of work to develop Facebook. Along with Instagram, the social network has added the ability to leave stories that disappear from users’ feeds after a certain period of time. A service has appeared that tracks victims after natural disasters. Perhaps this will save many lives in the future.

Since the beginning of summer, the company has been considering a way to introduce a paid view of news, which will be activated after the user opens a certain number of posts. Along with the introduction of paid viewing of content, Facebook.Inc also plans to start paying active users for publishing various useful materials.

And the priority at the moment for Zuckerberg and his team is to create artificial intelligence that will recognize the current mood of users based on the material they view, pages, videos, images and the frequency of use of certain emoticons.

Mark Zuckerberg's rules for success

Many people wonder: what is the secret of Mark Zuckerberg’s success? However, there is most likely no concrete answer. The billionaire himself is in no hurry to reveal any secrets, so one can only guess by analyzing the work he has done over the past 15 years.

1. Zuckerberg has always been goal-oriented, putting his principles above all else. He tries to make the most of all the opportunities available to him and gain as much knowledge as possible. All this turned him into a purposeful and educated person who thinks sensibly and soberly assesses the situation.
2. Zuckerberg owes a significant share of his success to the people who have been working on his team all this time. The billionaire is excellent at selecting personnel and motivating employees to bring maximum benefit.
3. Some of Mark's valuable qualities are modesty and generosity. Zuckerberg never tries to stand out from others or attract attention. And constant donations to various charitable foundations speak of his desire to help people.
4. Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg is the only billionaire who does not have his own business secret, but simply tries to devote himself fully to his work and not make mistakes.

Film "The Social Network"

In 2009, director David Fincher announced the development of a film based on the period in the life of Mark Zuckerberg and his team, when they were developing the first version of Facebook while studying at university. Responsible for writing the script Aaron Sorkin, and the book “ Billionaires against their will«.

The film was supposed to show the first months of development of the social network and show how Zuckerberg gathered into one team of individuals who laid the foundation for the work of the first version of Facebook. It’s clear that the script contained some assumptions and deviations from the real story to make it more interesting for the viewer to watch the movie.

Several candidates were considered for the role of Zuckerberg, including Andrew Garfield (he still took part in the film and played Eduardo Saverin) And Shia LaBeouf, but in the end I got it Jesse Eisenberg. Also played in “The Social Network” Justin Timberlake, playing the role Sean Parker.

The film was released on October 28, 2010. The film was well received by audiences and, with a budget of 40 million, grossed $225 million. The average critics' rating on Kinopoisk is 7.7 points.

The plot takes viewers back to 2003, when, while still a student at Harvard, Zuckerberg assembled his first team and began work on the future social network Facebook.

Over time, they manage to achieve stunning success, but it turns out that not all of the main characters were ready for the popularity that befell them. The film also tells the story of how Zuckerberg became the youngest billionaire on the planet.

• Three Oscars: for best editing, soundtrack and screenplay;
• Four Golden Globes: best film, screenplay, soundtrack, direction;
• Three British Academy Awards: Best Editing, Screenplay and Directing;
• Winning the French Cesar Award for Best Foreign Film.

Mark Zuckerberg himself did not comment on the film in the first months after its release, deliberately ignoring questions from the press. He only said that in the movie the story was a little distorted, and in reality the process of creating Facebook was more boring, without any “plot twists.”

Mark Zuckerberg is an enterprising 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 2 billion. A prominent polyglot and inventive programmer became the best in many areas. Zuckerberg is a dollar billionaire with an official salary of $1.

Childhood and youth

Mark Eliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984 in the New York suburb of White Plains into an intelligent Jewish family of doctors. Mark's zodiac sign is Taurus. 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 have grown up in it: Marc Eliot, elder sister Randy and two younger ones, Ariel and Donna.

“Everything should be simplified as much as possible, but no more.”

The history of the creation of the popular project was not ignored by filmmakers. shot the full-length film “”, where he played the main character. Zuckerberg spoke negatively about the film, the plot of which he called implausible.

Personal life

The personal life of the red-haired and short (height 171 cm) billionaire Mark Zuckerberg does not correspond to ideas about the richest man on the planet. He leads a secretive lifestyle, does not boast of wealth and does not waste money.

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Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla

He has a modest car - a Volkswagen Golf GTI, which Mark drives himself. For casual wear, the programmer prefers jeans and gray T-shirts. This commitment to minimalism allows the entrepreneur to devote more time and attention to those things that interest him.

In 2012, Mark married longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan, whom he met in 2002 at a Harvard student party. Chinese by nationality, she was distinguished by her perseverance in achieving her goal - to realize her parents' American dream and get a decent education in the United States. In order to enter a prestigious university, the girl even took up tennis, although she had never been particularly keen on sports.

Read also 6 celebrities who hid their pregnancies until the last minute

The young people maintained their relationship even after their life paths diverged for a while. Priscilla continued her studies, while Mark settled in the capital of Silicon Valley.

In the first years after the wedding, the newlyweds tried unsuccessfully to become parents: Priscilla experienced 3 miscarriages. But 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. After 2 years, his wife, who was named August.

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Mark Zuckerberg and Morgan Freeman

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, and the programmer made the purchase on his own, without resorting to the services of an agent.

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. In the billionaire's mansion there are no extra servants, the function of a butler

Mark Zuckerberg was born in one of the largest cities in the world - New York. The boy grew up in a large family: in addition to his mother, who was a psychiatrist, and his father, who worked as a dentist, he was surrounded by three sisters as a child. He became involved with technological progress already while studying in elementary school and was fascinated by programming. He was able to devote as much time as possible to his main hobby after the appearance of the first computer - this happened when he was a sixth grader. Soon he managed to independently create a computer game, and then an entire program for recognizing the musical tastes and preferences of listeners.

Microsoft offered Mark $2 million for this invention, but the young man refused the reward. In addition to programming, Zuckerberg managed to practice fencing and master ancient languages, in which he showed serious interest. Mark received his higher education at the prestigious Harvard, where he entered in 2002.

Facebook founder career

During his years at the university, Mark gained serious popularity due to a random idea - he created a website on which he posted photographs of Harvard students and made it possible to vote for those he liked. In a matter of hours, the number of visitors to the site increased by hundreds, and soon among the registered users there were not only students from Harvard, but also Stanford and Yale. This is how the prototype of the world famous social network Facebook emerged, which was launched on February 4, 2004.

However, Mark also had ill-wishers, they were Divya Naredra and the Winklevoss twins, who initially put forward ideas to the university leadership about the possibility of additional communication between Harvard students. Zuckerberg was supposed to be involved in programming the future site, but it was never possible to implement the idea with such a composition. Therefore, after the creation of Facebook, Mark was accused of stealing other people's plans, but he categorically denied this, because the ideas about the social network were vague and unclear. Only he himself managed to put them into practice in the right way.

For further development of the project, which was not long in coming, Zuckerberg needed additional financial investments. We managed to get them again completely by accident - the famous programmer Sean Parker introduced Mark to successful businessman Peter Thiels, who decided to invest $500 thousand in Facebook. From then on, Mark began to focus exclusively on his social network and improve it; he even quit studying at Harvard for this. The success of Facebook after Thiels' help was obvious: already in the year of its creation it counted more than 1 million people as users. Zuckerberg earned $1.5 billion from this popular site, making him the youngest billionaire in human history.

In 2010, Mark became “person of 2010” according to the American Time magazine.

Personal life of Mark Zuckerberg

He spends most of his time working on Facebook. But romantic relationships are also present in his life - since 2002, he dated Priscilla Chan, whom he met while studying at Harvard. On May 19, 2012, Mark took .

They managed to surprise everyone they knew with their decision to get married and first announced to their loved ones that they were going to celebrate Priscilla receiving her doctorate in medicine. As soon as the guests arrived at their house, it was announced to them that in fact a wedding would take place here.

Photo: GettyImages/Fotobank.ru