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Quick Facts
- NAME: Mark Zuckerberg
- OCCUPATION: Entrepreneur, Computer Programmer, Philanthropist
- BIRTH DATE: May 14, 1984 (Age: 29)
- EDUCATION: Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard University
- PLACE OF BIRTH: White Plains, New York
- Full Name: Mark Elliot Zuckerberg
- AKA: Mark Zuckerberg
- ZODIAC SIGN: Taurus
Best Known For
Mark Zuckerberg is co-founder and CEO of the social-networking website Facebook, as well as one of the world's youngest billionaires.
Videos see all videos
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Bill Gates - Mini Biography (3:42)
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Steve Jobs - Mini Biography (3:39)
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Mark Zuckerberg - Mini Biography
Mark Zuckerberg was a computer programmer by the age of 12. While a sophomore at Harvard, he co-founded Facebook out of his dorm room. Facebook is now the world's largest social network, making Zuckerberg a billionaire.
Bill Gates - Mini Biography
Bill Gates and his partner Paul Allen built the world's largest software business, Microsoft. He became one of the richest men in the world and a major philanthropist through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Steve Jobs - Mini Biography
Steve Jobs met Steve Wozniak while in high school and in 1976, they started Apple Computers. Jobs oversaw the development of revolutionary products like the iPhone and iPad.
Bill Gates - Schoolboy to Businessman
As a teenager, Bill Gates became obsessed with computers.
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Play NowMark Zuckerberg. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 07:28, May 25, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/mark-zuckerberg-507402.
Mark Zuckerberg. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/mark-zuckerberg-507402 [Accessed 25 May 2013].
"Mark Zuckerberg." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 25 2013, 07:28 http://www.biography.com/people/mark-zuckerberg-507402.
"Mark Zuckerberg," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/mark-zuckerberg-507402 [accessed May 25, 2013].
"Mark Zuckerberg," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/mark-zuckerberg-507402 (accessed May 25, 2013).
Mark Zuckerberg [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 25] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/mark-zuckerberg-507402.
Mark Zuckerberg, http://www.biography.com/people/mark-zuckerberg-507402 (last visited May 25, 2013).
Mark Zuckerberg. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/mark-zuckerberg-507402. Accessed May 25, 2013.
Synopsis
Born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York, Mark Zuckerberg co-founded the social-networking website Facebook out of his college dorm room. He left Harvard after his sophomore year to concentrate on the site, the user base of which has grown to more than 250 million people, making Zuckerberg a billionaire. The birth of Facebook was recently portrayed in the film The Social Network.
Quotes
"With a generation of younger folks who have thrived on the success of their companies, there is a big opportunity for many of us to give back earlier in our lifetime and see the impact of our philanthropic efforts."
"If you're going to go on to build a service that is influential and that a lot of people rely on, then you need to be mature, right? I think I've grown and learned a lot."
"Understanding people is not a waste of time."
Early Life
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York, into a comfortable, well-educated family, and raised in the nearby village of Dobbs Ferry. His father, Edward Zuckerberg, ran a dental practice attached to the family's home. His mother, Karen, worked as a psychiatrist before the birth of the couple's four children—Mark, Randi, Donna and Arielle.
Zuckerberg developed an interest in computers at an early age; when he was about 12, he used Atari BASIC to create a messaging program he named "Zucknet." His father used the program in his dental office, so that the receptionist could inform him of a new patient without yelling across the room. The family also used Zucknet to communicate within the house. Together with his friends, he also created computer games just for fun. "I had a bunch of friends who were artists," he said. "They'd come over, draw stuff, and I'd build a game out of it."
To keep up with Mark's burgeoning interest in computers, his parents hired private computer tutor David Newman to come to the house once a week and work with Mark. Newman later told reporters that it was hard to stay ahead of the prodigy, who began taking graduate courses at nearby Mercy College around this same time.
Zuckerberg later studied at Phillips Exeter Academy, an exclusive preparatory school in New Hampshire. There he showed talent in fencing, becoming the captain of the school's team. He also excelled in literature, earning a diploma in classics. Yet Zuckerberg remained fascinated by computers, and continued to work on developing new programs. While still in high school, he created an early version of the music software Pandora, which he called Synapse. Several companies—including AOL and Microsoft—expressed an interest in buying the software, and hiring the teenager before graduation. He declined the offers.
Time at Harvard
After graduating from Exeter in 2002, Zuckerberg enrolled at Harvard University. By his sophomore year at the ivy league institution, he had developed a reputation as the go-to software developer on campus. It was at that time that he built a program called CourseMatch, which helped students choose their classes based on the course selections of other users. He also invented Facemash, which compared the pictures of two students on campus and allowed users to vote on which one was more attractive. The program became wildly popular, but was later shut down by the school administration after it was deemed inappropriate.
Based on the buzz of his previous projects, three of his fellow students—Divya Narendra, and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss—sought him out to work on an idea for a social networking site they called Harvard Connection.
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