With some computer know-how and a good idea, you can go from freshman college guy to billionaire CEO of a worldwide internet sensation in the blink of an eye. Mark Zuckerberg accomplished exactly that - he started out as a freshman at Harvard with a lot of pet projects floating around. But he hit the jackpot with Facebook.com, now in an epic Pepsi vs. Coke type battle of "what social networking site is more popular" with Myspace. Zuckerberg was born in 1984 in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Throughout high school, he always showed an interest in collecting popular data and compiling it to suit a user's needs. He tinkered with mp3 players to tailor the music selections based on what the user was listening to - kind of like TiVo on a small scale. Once he entered Harvard, he hung around the dorms creating databases of the school's enrollment, linking students through classes. He also created a rating system based on this information, much like popular dating sites. But these projects didn't last long - Harvard brought the hammer down on Zuckerberg after finding out he had hacked into the school's private directories to obtain the information. But these were only Zuckerberg's "formative months," in a sense. His next project would take him to a whole new level in the game. Using his extensive knowledge of computer programming, Zuckerberg started Facebook in February 2004 - a social networking site exclusive to students at Harvard. His friend Dustin Moskovitz helped him spread the sensation to other college campuses, and Facebook became a sort of college-only database of students. Seizing on its popularity, Zuckerberg and Moskovitz finished their year at Harvard and moved to Palo Alto, California to start a business. They grew Facebook into an internet sensation over the next few years, eclipsing Myspace in ingenuity and design. Today Zuckerberg serves as the CEO of Facebook in Palo Alto, and has declined billion-dollar offers to sell his companies to esteemed companies such as Google. |
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