Millions of people log on to Facebook everyday. It is the 7th most popular website on the internet. Still, many don’t know the man responsible for this internet phenomenon. Mark Zuckerburg was born on May 14th 1984 in Dobbs Ferry, NY, a suburb of New York City. He has always been known to be technologically savvy and as evidenced by a project in high school in which he developed a smart MP3 player that learned the music preferences of the user. He was accepted into Harvard as a part of the class of 2006 and became a member of the prestigious Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. He continued his interests in computer programming and came up with programs such as Coursematch and Facemash.com the latter of which was shut down by university administration after only 4 hours. He started Facebook in February 2004 as a way to communicate with other Harvard University students. After only a couple of weeks, 2/3 of Harvard students had profiles and in the coming months participation was expanded to other schools in the surrounding areas. In the summer of 2004, Zuckerburg took a leave of absence from school to focus on his growing project and moved to California with a few friends. He was able to secure investors and set up official offices in Palo Alto, California in August of 2004. The site grew incredibly fast and soon was expanded to include colleges all over the world as well as companies and even geographic regions. Advertisers soon saw ample opportunity to market their products and services and Zuckerburg took them up on offers to pay for advertising space. Today, it is estimated that the site makes over $1 Million per week from advertisers and sponsor groups. Mark Zuckerburg was able to take a small networking site and turn it into one of the Internet’s biggest money makers in only 2 years. His dedication to his work serves as a reminder that any of us can achieve our goals if we have the foresight and perseverance. |
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