Mark Zuckerberg

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Mark Zuckerberg

Zuckerberg in 2014

Born

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg

May 14, 1984 (age 32)

[1]

White Plains, New York, U.S.

Residence

Palo Alto, California, U.S.

Alma mater

Harvard University

Occupation

Computer programmer, entrepreneur, philanthropist

Years active

2004present

Known for

Co-Founder of Facebook

Home town

Dobbs Ferry, New York, U.S.

Salary

One-dollar salary

[2]

US $55.3 billion (October 2016)

[3]

Net worth

Title

Chairman and CEO of Facebook

Spouse(s)

Priscilla Chan (m. 2012)

Children

Maxima Chan Zuckerberg

Relatives

Randi Zuckerberg (sister)

Website

facebook.com/zuck

Signature

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) is an American computer programmer, internet
entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is the chairman, chief executive officer, and co-founder of social
networking website Facebook. His net worth is estimated to be US $55.3 billion as of October 2016,
ranking him as the 5th richest person in the world.
[4][5]

[3]

Together with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo
Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, he launched Facebook from
Harvard's dormitory rooms. The group then introduced Facebook to other campuses. Facebook
expanded rapidly, with one billion users by 2012. Zuckerberg was involved in various legal disputes
that were initiated by others in the group, who claimed a share of the company based upon their
involvement during the development phase of Facebook.
[6]

In December 2012, Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced they would give the majority
of their wealth over the course of their lives to "advancing human potential and promoting equality" in
the spirit of The Giving Pledge. On December 1, 2015, they announced they would give 99% of their
Facebook shares (worth about $45 billion at the time) to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
[7]

[8][9]

Since 2010, Time magazine has named Zuckerberg among the 100 wealthiest and most influential
people in the world as a part of itsPerson of the Year distinction.
[10][11][12]

Contents
[hide]

1Early life

2Software developer

2.1Early years

2.2College years

3Career

3.1Facebook

3.2Wirehog

3.3Platform, Beacon, and Connect

3.4Internet.org

3.5Legal controversies

4Depictions in media

4.1The Social Network

4.2Other depictions

5Use of other social networks

6Philanthropy

7Politics

8Personal life

9See also

10References

11External links

Early life
Zuckerberg was born in 1984 in White Plains, New York. He is the son of dentist Edward Zuckerberg
and psychiatrist Karen Kempner. He and his three sisters, Randi, Donna, and Arielle, were brought
up in Dobbs Ferry, New York, a small Westchester County village about 21 miles north of Midtown
Manhattan. Zuckerberg was raised Jewish and had his bar mitzvah when he turned 13. Afterward,
he became an atheist. Although a sworn atheist, he has a firm belief in karma and has previously
stated that Buddhism as a religion is amazing.
[13]

[14]

[15]

[15]

[16]

[17][18][19]

[20][21]

At Ardsley High School, Zuckerberg excelled in classes. He transferred to the exclusive private
school, Phillips Exeter Academy, in New Hampshire in his junior year, where he won prizes in
science (math, astronomy, and physics) and classical studies. On his college application, Zuckerberg
claimed that he could read and write French, Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek. He was captain of
the fencing team.
[18][22][23]

Software developer
Early years
Zuckerberg began using computers and writing software in middle school. His father taught
him Atari BASIC Programming in the 1990s, and later hired software developer David Newman to
tutor him privately. Newman calls him a "prodigy", adding that it was "tough to stay ahead of him".
Zuckerberg took a graduate course in the subject at Mercy Collegenear his home while still in high
school. He enjoyed developing computer programs, especially communication tools and games. In
one program, since his father's dental practice was operated from their home, he built a software
program he called "ZuckNet" that allowed all the computers between the house and dental office to
communicate with each other. It is considered a "primitive" version of AOL's Instant Messenger,
which came out the following year.
[24][25]

According to writer Jose Antonio Vargas, "some kids played computer games. Mark created them."
Zuckerberg himself recalls this period: "I had a bunch of friends who were artists. They'd come over,
draw stuff, and I'd build a game out of it." However, notes Vargas, Zuckerberg was not a typical
"geek-klutz", as he later became captain of his prep school fencing team and earned a classics
diploma. Napster co-founder Sean Parker, a close friend, notes that Zuckerberg was "really into

Greek odysseys and all that stuff", recalling how he once quoted lines from the Roman epic
poem Aeneid, by Virgil, during a Facebook product conference.
[15]

During Zuckerberg's high school years, under the company name Intelligent Media Group, he built a
music player called the Synapse Media Player that used machine learning to learn the user's
listening habits, which was posted to Slashdot and received a rating of 3 out of 5 from PC Magazine.
[26]

[27]

College years
By the time he began classes at Harvard, Zuckerberg had already achieved a "reputation as a
programming prodigy", notes Vargas. He studied psychology and computer scienceas well as
belonging to Alpha Epsilon Pi and Kirkland House. In his sophomore year, he wrote a program he
called CourseMatch, which allowed users to make class selection decisions based on the choices of
other students and also to help them form study groups. A short time later, he created a different
program he initially called Facemashthat let students select the best looking person from a choice of
photos. According to Zuckerberg's roommate at the time, Arie Hasit, "he built the site for fun". Hasit
explains:
[10][15][28]

We had books called Face Books, which included the names and pictures of everyone who lived in
the student dorms. At first, he built a site and placed two pictures, or pictures of two males and two
females. Visitors to the site had to choose who was "hotter" and according to the votes there would
be a ranking.
[29]

The site went up over a wee

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