Who is Mark Zuckerberg?

By Reuters | Updated: 5 June 2012 00:30 IST

Highlights

Hacker, Dropout, CEO - Mark Zuckerberg is all of these. Best known for creating Facebook, he turns 28 today.

Hacker, Dropout, CEO - Mark Zuckerberg is all of these. Best known for creating Facebook, a social network, with over 901 million users around the globe, he is one of the world's youngest billionaires.

Born into a New York family in 1984, Mark turns 28 today. Zuckerberg began using computers and writing software as a child in middle school itself. It was his father who taught him Atari BASIC programming in the 1990s.

He enjoyed building computer softwares since his early teenage years and had created ZuckNet, a crude version of AOL's Instant Messenger, to help in his father's dental practice. When other kids were busy playing computer games, Mark would create them.

By the time he joined Harvard University in September 2002, he was already known to be a programming prodigy and Microsoft, AOL had already tried to purchase his creation - Synapse Media Player and hire him. But, he decided against joining either of the companies and went to Harvard.

Facebook got its start in the messy Harvard dorm room of Zuckerberg in the early 2004. Known as TheFacebook.com in those days, the site has grown from being just for Harvard students to over 901 million users.

Mark currently lives in Palo Alto, California with his girlfriend Priscilla Chan, a fellow student from Harvard whom he began dating in 2003, and a white Hungarian Puli dog named Beast.

He describes his personal interests as "openness, making things that help people connect and share what's important to them, revolutions, information flow, minimalism", on his Facebook page.

A movie based on Mark Zuckerberg and the founding years of Facebook, The Social Network was released on October 1, 2010, and stars Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg. It won the Golden Globe award for Best Picture in January 2011.

Here is a timeline from his early Harvard years, when he created Facemash.

October 28 2003 - Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard psychology sophomore, writes "Facemash," a website that asked users to judge students' attractiveness based on their dorm-directory photos. The authorities -- and many students -- were not amused.

February 4 2004 - Zuckerberg launches Thefacebook.com, a social network that allows users to create basic profiles including personal information and photos.

February 10 2004 - Harvard students Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narenya send Zuckerberg a cease-and-desist letter, accusing Zuckerberg of independently developing thefacebook.com while he was hired to work on their social networking project, HarvardConnection.

June 2004 - Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder and venture capitalist, invests $500,000 in Facebook.

May 26, 2005 - Accel Partners, the venture capital firm headed by investor Jim Breyer, invests $12.7 million in Facebook, valuing the company at roughly $100 million.

October 24, 2007 - Microsoft Corp announces that it purchased a 1.6 percent share of Facebook for $240 million, giving the company a total implied value of around $15 billion.

April 7, 2008 - Facebook settles with the founders of "ConnectU", the Winklevoss twins and Divya Narendra, for a purported $65 million, according to promotional material later published by ConnectU's lawyers.

May 26, 2009 - Russian investor Yuri Milner's Digital Sky Technologies invests $200 million for a 1.96 percent stake, bringing Facebook's value down to $10 billion.

June 3, 2010 - Zuckerberg sweats profusely as he takes questions about Facebook's privacy policy while onstage at the All Things Digital conference. The episode, which the Twittering classes dubbed a "Nixon Moment," renewed questions about Zuckerberg's viability as the CEO of a company rumored to go public soon.

June 30, 2010 - In one of the more bizarre twists in Facebook's history, New York businessman Paul D. Ceglia files suit against Zuckerberg, claiming he had struck a deal with the founder in 2003 for half of Facebook's revenue and rightfully owned 84 percent of the company. Three successive lawyers withdrew from his legal team within a period of four months in late 2011. The litigation remains ongoing.

October 10, 2010 - Columbia Pictures releases "The Social Network," a film about Facebook's beginning, directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin.

January 2, 2011 - Facebook raises $500 million from Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technologies in a deal that valued the company at $50 billion.

January 2011 - Goldman controversially markets as much as $1.5 billion worth of Facebook shares to its private investors, but withdraws the offer from American clients on January 18 following intense media coverage and scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The offer was withdrawn because of accusations that it ran afoul of regulations prohibiting share-placement sponsors from aggressively promoting a deal to potential investors.

November 29, 2011 - Facebook agrees to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived users on what information it would keep private. The incident underscored how user concerns about privacy were spurring top-level government scrutiny of Silicon Valley.

January 25, 2012 - Trading of Facebook shares is halted on the secondary market as rumors of an impending IPO gain steam.

February 1, 2012 - Facebook files its Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission seeking to raise $5 billion in a highly anticipated IPO.

Edited by NDTV Staff from original story by Reuters

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Further reading: Birthday, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, Profile

Who is Mark Zuckerberg?

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