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Glimpses of Inspiration
A sneak-peek into the lives of Great Achievers

Mark Zuckerberg’s Journey with Facebook!

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an

internet entrepreneur and
philanthropist   of American origin.
Zuckerberg is the co-founder of
Facebook, Inc. He is also the
chairman, chief executive officer
and controlling shareholder of
Facebook’s namesake social
networking website. Zuckerberg is
the co-founder and board member
of ‘Breakthrough Starshot’, the solar sail spacecraft development project. 

Childhood and Early Life

Mark Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York. His father,
Edward Zuckerberg is a dentist, and mother Karen is a psychiatrist. Zuckerberg and
his three sisters, Randi, Donna and Arielle, grew up in a small village of Westchester,
County Dobbs Ferry, New York. 

Mark Zuckerberg was a brilliant student in school and won prizes in mathematics,
astronomy, physics, and classical studies. He attended Ardsley High School and then
Phillips Exeter Academy. Zuckerberg could read and write several languages; Hebrew,
French, ancient Greek and Latin. Zuckerberg had started using computers and writing
software when he was in middle school. While at high school, Zuckerberg worked with
Intelligent Media Group, a music company, to build a music player, called the Synapse
Media Player.

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In 2002, Mark Zuckerberg graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy with the
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“reputation as a programming prodigy”. Thereafter, he went to Harvard University to
study Psychology and Computer Science.

Early Career

Mark Zuckerberg along with his

roommates launched Facebook on
February 4, 2004, in their dormitory
room. Facebook was initially launched
as a “Harvard thing”, but later
Zuckerberg spread it to other
educational institutions. 

Mark Zuckerberg’s first business venture was a company that he started with some
friends in Palo Alto, California in Silicon Valley. They leased a small house that served
as an office.

Career Heights

Facebook gained quick and immense popularity within six years of its launch.
Zuckerberg went on record stating that the company had achieved a 500 million-user
mark as on July 21, 2010.

Two years down the line in 2012, Zuckerberg visited Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister
of Russia in Moscow. The objective of the visit was to boost the presence of Facebook
in Russia and lookout for new talent.

Zuckerberg played host to visiting Chinese politician Lu Wei at the Facebook

headquarters in 2014. Lu Wei was known as the “Internet czar” for his tremendous
influence in the enforcement of China's online policy. 

‘Facebook Platform’

On May 24, 2007, Mark Zuckerberg rolled out ‘Facebook Platform’, three years after
the launch of Facebook. The Facebook platform is a platform where developers can
create social applications within Facebook using the set of services, tools, and
products provided by the social networking service. It was an instant hit!

Beacon


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A few months later in 2007,

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Zuckerberg launched Beacon, a
social advertising system. Facebook
users could share information with
their Facebook friends regarding
their browsing activities and
shopping on other websites using
Beacon. But Beacon faced security
issues and Zuckerberg had to offer
Facebook users the option of
unsubscribing to the service. Eventually, Facebook agreed to shut down the Beacon
service in October 2009.

Mark Zuckerberg launched another version of Facebook Platform for the Facebook
users ‘Facebook Connect’ in 2008.

Internet.org

Climbing the ladder of success, Mark Zuckerberg launched the Internet.org project in
2013. The aim of this project was to provide Internet access to the two-thirds of the
world (nearly five billion people) who did not use the internet when the project was
launched.

Zuckerberg was committed to the concept of net neutrality, and towards this end had
met PM Narendra Modi, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Alphabet & Google CEO
Sundar Pichai at Silicon Valley, where discussions on how to effectively establish cost-
friendly internet access to the less developed countries were held. Zuckerberg even
changed his Facebook profile picture as a gesture of his support to Digital India which
is aimed at connecting rural India to the internet.

Facebook Goes Public

Mark Zuckerberg converted the

company into a public enterprise in May
2012 but retained the majority of the
shares. At 23 years of age, he was the
world's youngest self-made billionaire in
2007!

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Facebook had announced on October 28, 2021 that it had changed its company name
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to Meta at the conference on Facebook Connect Augmented and Virtual Reality. The
move reflects the growing ambitions beyond social media of Zuckerberg's company,
which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.

Interestingly, the name Meta is a reference to Metaverse - the integration of social

media with virtual and augmented reality. It will become the focus of the next chapter
in the company's history.

However, the social media platform will still be known as Facebook. There will not be
any overall effect or change in user experience due to the rebranding of the company.

Setbacks!

In 2005, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook faced legal trouble when Eduardo Saverin,
one of the co-founders of Facebook, filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg accusing him of
using Facebook’s money on personal expenses. However, the case was settled out of
court in 2019. 

In June 2009, Pakistani Deputy Attorney General Muhammad Azhar Sidiqque initiated
a criminal investigation into Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, co-
founders of Facebook, after a contest named “Draw Muhammad” was hosted on
Facebook. Facebook website was also temporarily blocked in Pakistan till the time
social networking giant removed the contest from its website.

Another blow was the accusations made by Israeli Cabinet Minister Gilad Erdan
against Zuckerberg blaming him for aiding the deadly attacks by Palestinians against
Israelis in 2016.

Achievements

• As early as in 2010, Vanity Fair

magazine had placed Mark
Zuckerberg at No# 1 position on its
Top 100 “most influential people of
the Information Age” list of 2010.
The same year, Zuckerberg stood at
No# 16 in the annual survey
conducted by New Statesman of the
world's 50 most influential figures.


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• Since 2010, Mark Zuckerberg has been ranked among the 100 wealthiest and most
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influential people in the world by Time magazine, as a part of its ‘Person of the Year’
award.

• Business Insider had declared Zuckerberg among the “Top 10 Business Visionaries
Creating Value for the World” in 2016 owing to the fact that Zuckerberg and his wife
Priscilla Chan pledged to give away 99% of their wealth, estimated at $55.0 billion,
during their lifetime by signing ‘The Giving Pledge’ in 2015.

• Harvard University gave an honorary degree to Zuckerberg at its

366th  commencement ceremony in 2017.

• In 2016 itself, Zuckerberg was ranked 10th on the list of “The World's Most Powerful
People” compiled by business magazine Forbes.

• As of 2019, Zuckerberg was the only person under 50 to feature in the Forbes list of
the “10 richest people” in 2019. He also happens to be the only person under 40 to
find a mention in the list of the “Top 20 Billionaires”.

Films

The film, The Social Network (2010) is

based on Zuckerberg and the initial
years of Facebook. It went on to win the
Golden Globe Award for Best Picture in
2011. 

Zuckerberg appeared (unknowingly) in

the climax of the documentary film,
“Terms and Conditions May Apply” released in 2013.

In 2018, Epic Rap Battles of History released a rap battle between Mark Zuckerberg
and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Philanthropy

Mark Zuckerberg has established the 'Startup:Education' foundation. He has

apparently donated $100 million to improve education in Newark, New Jersey and
the rest of the U.S. Zuckerberg had signed “The Giving Pledge” in 2010, in which he
promised to donate at least half of his wealth to charity.

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Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan had declared in 2015 that they would
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eventually donate 99% of their Facebook shares to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Zuckerberg also announced a donation of 18 million Facebook shares to the Silicon

Valley Community Foundation in 2013.

In fact, The Chronicle of

Philanthropy had placed Zuckerberg
and his wife at the top of its annual
list of ‘50 most generous
Americans’ for 2013, since the
couple had donated roughly $1
billion to charity.

A year later in 2014, the couple

donated US$25 million towards
combating the Ebola virus disease.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative had announced a donation of $600 million to Biohub in
San Francisco in 2016. Biohub facilitates easy interaction and collaboration
between scientists at University of California [San Francisco], University of California
[Berkeley] and Stanford University.

Personal Life

Mark Zuckerberg is married to Priscilla Chan. The couple had met while studying at
Harvard. They had tied the knot on 19 May 2012. Mark and Priscilla are blessed with
two daughters, Maxima Chan Zuckerberg and August Chan Zuckerberg.

Mark Zuckerberg happens to be a member of the advisory board of China's Tsinghua

University business school since 2014.

Quotes by Mark Zuckerberg

• “I’m here to build something for the

long-term. Anything else is a
distraction”.

• “I think as a company, if you can get

those two things right having a clear
direction on what you are trying to do 

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and bringing in great people who can execute on the stuff then you can do pretty
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well”.

• “We look for people who are passionate about something. In a way, it almost
doesn’t matter what you’re passionate about. What we really look for when we’re
interviewing people is what they’ve shown an initiative to do on their own”.

• “I believe that over time, people get remembered for what they build, and if you
build something great, people don’t care about what someone says about you in a
movie… they care about what you build”.

• “Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am
most proud of in my life”.

Did You Know?

• Facebook Messenger became the third application not owned by Google on Play
Store to cross 5 billion downloads in 2021. 

• Mark Zuckerberg continues to feature at #5 on the Forbes Billionaires list in 2021.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Journey with Facebook!

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