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Mark Zuckerberg

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Mark Elliot Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg in a photograph from his Facebook profile.
Born (1984-05-14) May 14, 1984 (age 40)
United States Dobbs Ferry, New York, USA
OccupationComputer programmer

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. As a Harvard College student he founded the online social networking website Facebook with the help of fellow Harvard student and computer science major Andrew McCollum as well as roommates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. He now serves as Facebook's CEO.

Early life

Zuckerberg was born and raised in Dobbs Ferry, Westchester County, New York to a Jewish family. He began programming computers in sixth grade. Zuckerberg attended Ardsley High School and transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy in his junior year.

In 2003, Zuckerberg and his friend Adam D'Angelo (now Facebook's CEO and CTO) launched the Synapse Media Player. The player received high acclaim in its ability to predict songs to play based on the user's previous selections. Several software companies, including Microsoft, expressed interest in the player, though no formal deals were made.[1]

College years

Zuckerberg attended Harvard University and was enrolled in the class of 2006. He was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. At Harvard, Zuckerberg continued creating his projects. An early project, Coursematch, allowed students to view lists of other students enrolled in the same classes. A later project, Facemash.com, was a Harvard-specific image rating site similar to Hot or Not. A version of the site was online for four hours before Zuckerberg's Internet access was revoked by administration officials. The computer services department brought Zuckerberg before the Harvard University Administrative Board, where he was charged with breaching computer security and violating rules on Internet privacy and intellectual property.[2]

The school alleged that Zuckerberg had hacked into Harvard house websites to harvest images of students without their permission, for profit.[citation needed] Zuckerberg stated that he thought that information should be free and publicly available. The action taken by the board, if any, was not made public. In 2004, Zuckerberg created Facebook and took a leave of absence from the college. A year later he dropped out.

Facebook

Main article: Facebook
File:Facebookphotos.jpg
The photos feature on Facebook is the most popular photo application on the web according to ComScore.

Zuckerberg re-launched the site as the online social utility Facebook on February 4, 2004, for all Harvard students. The website spread across the Harvard campus and within a couple of weeks over half of all undergraduates had registered. Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes had joined Zuckerberg to spread the website. Within two months, Facebook expanded to allow students from the rest of the Ivy League. The network first expanded to allow other university students to join. It became something of a network phenomenon, spreading rapidly to other places, despite competition from similar local websites. As the website's popularity rose and advertising revenue grew, Zuckerberg left Harvard to run Facebook full time.

In late 2004, Zuckerberg, McCollum and Adam D'Angelo (the friend who worked on Synapse, at Caltech at the time) created the peer-to-peer file sharing program, Wirehog. [3] Wirehog was linked to Facebook and allowed friends to share files, such as photos, between computers. The program stayed in private beta and has since disappeared.

Zuckerberg became the target of criticism on September 5, 2006, with the Facebook emergence of the News Feed, a list of the doings of friends that was seen by some as unnecessary and a tool for cyberstalking. Three days later, Zuckerberg responded in an open letter to the Facebook community, apologizing for the sudden unwelcome feature, providing new privacy options, but ultimately defending the feature and his belief in free information flow. Zuckerberg contended that the feature was a good asset to use between friends, and the privacy settings allow for information to be blocked from users who are not friends with the person.

Zuckerberg currently works at Facebook's headquarters in Palo Alto, California.

Zuckerberg, during his f8 conference, showed how much he was doing his speeches in the style of Steve Jobs.

ConnectU Controversy

Zuckerberg's Harvard classmates, Divya Narendra, Cameron Winklevoss, and Tyler Winklevoss, claim they hired him to finish the code on their website, ConnectU and that he stole their idea, design, business plan, and source code. They filed a lawsuit in 2004 claiming a breach of contract. It seeked monetary damages as well as the shut down of Facebook.[2] They claim he stole the idea, design, business plan, and source code of their site.

Since its original filing in Massachusetts the lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice due to technicality on March 28, 2007, but was never ruled on. It was refiled soon thereafter in U.S. District Court in Boston, and a preliminary hearing was scheduled for July 25, 2007.[3]

References

  • Grynbaum, Michael M. (2004-06-10). "Mark E. Zuckerberg '06: The whiz behind thefacebook.com". The Harvard Crimson. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=503336
  3. ^ http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,135041-c,webservices/article.html
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