New Delhi: In a short span of less than a decade, Mark Zuckerberg has gone from his Harvard college dorm to running a business with 1.11 billion users, with net worth estimated at $13.3 billion as of March 2013. Few CEOs of such an age would have done what Zuckerberg's performance record. Mark's first company Intelligent Media Group built Synapse Media Player, a music player using artificial intelligence to learn the user's listening habits. Both Microsoft and AOL tried to buy Synapse from him for several million dollars and recruit Zuckerberg to their companies, but Zuckerberg turned the offer down and instead went to Harvard College in September 2002.
Zuckerberg created Facebook while attending Harvard with fellow classmates Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin. He launched popular social networking site Facebook on February 4, 2004 from his Harvard dormitory room. Initially, the site connected students on one college campus but soon after he decided to expand Facebook to other schools. Zuckerberg moved to Palo Alto, California, with Moskovitz and friends to establishing an office in a house for the Facebook business.
In a recent SEC filing, Zuckerberg said he now owns 29.3 percent of Facebook's Class A shares, roughly 20 per cent of Facebook. With a market cap of about $68 billion, Zuck's stake is worth about $13.6 billion. Given that Zuckerberg also owns other types of shares, harder to track. So his total stake is worth more than that.
Mark Zuckerberg was named the Person of the Year by Time Magazine in 2010. The announcement of the award included the description: More than half a billion people on the planet live in a world created by Mark Zuckerberg. The good news is, their friends all live there too.
Since Facebook's IPO in May 2012, lots of news stories have been published discussing the company's fluctuating share price, issues with privacy and controversial monetization changes have been rife. Facebook's critics have treated each story as a sign that Facebook is losing its relevance and popularity.
Zuckerberg, who hasn't declared a party affiliation, also held his first political fundraiser on Feb. 14, when he welcomed New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a 50-year-old Republican seeking a second term, to his Palo Alto, California, home. The 29-year-old billionaire pledged $100 million to help Newark schools during a 2010 appearance on Oprah Winfrey's television show, alongside Booker and Christie. His big early 2013 exploit was the launch of Facebook's Graph Search, which allows users to comb their friend network based on shared interests and experiences.
Let's take a look at Mark Zuckerberg in various moods.
Pic 1.
