Mark Zuckerberg is a co-founder and CEO of Facebook. Zuckerberg attended Harvard University in the early 2000s. While still at Harvard, he and his roommates and friends launched Facebook. He became a billionaire in 2007 at 23 years old and in 2012 Facebook reached one billion users.
The Beginning
Zuckerberg began writing software in middle school. His father began teaching him BASIC programing in the early 1990s on an Atari 2600. Soon, it was evident that Zuckerberg was a natural and his father pushed him in programming. In high school, Zuckerberg took a graduate programming course at Mercy College near his home in Dobbs Ferry, New York. He also created a messaging network between the computers at his house and at his father’s dental office.
Harvard
In his sophomore year at Harvard, Zuckerberg wrote programs called CourseMatch and Facemash. CourseMatch allowed students to better make class choice decisions by showing what other students had decided. Facemash allowed students to choose the most attractive person out of a group of several photos. Facemash was quickly blocked on Harvard’s network due to its overwhelming popularity and complaints about use of photos without consent.
The next semester, Zuckerberg wrote another program. This time it really paid off. In February of 2004 he launched The Facebook, only about a month after starting the script. Shortly after the launch Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard to devote his time to Facebook.
Facebook began as a Harvard social network. Before long, Zuckerberg and his colleagues spread the network to other colleges and moved to Palo Alto. In California they leased a house they used as an office, took on investors, and turned down many buyout offers from large corporations.
Facebook is obviously a great idea due to is mass popularity with over a billion users. The website allows users to connect with and keep track of family, friends, casual acquaintances, and strangers all over the world. What Facebook is needs know more explanation since 71% of online adults use Facebook according to a recent Pew Research poll.
I watched the movie about Facebook, but I never knew about his early childhood before College. It is awesome that Zuckerberg made a program for his Dad’s office, and took college programming classes before Harvard. I wonder what would have happened to him if his father didn’t push him to program.
Although I am not a fan of how arrogant Mark Zuckerberg is, it is difficult to not respect the man who made the biggest social network of all time. He definitely has an interesting story that was well portrayed in his movie, The Social Network.