MARK ZUCKERBERG

'Mark Elliot Zuckerberg' (born May 14, 1984) is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. As a Harvard College student he founded the online social networking website Facebook with the help of fellow Harvard student and computer science major Andrew McCollum as well as roommates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. He now serves as Facebook's CEO.

Contents

Early life

College years

Facebook

Sale Rumors

News Feed

Facebook Platform

ConnectU Controversy

Facebook Origins Controversy

References

External links

Early life

Zuckerberg was born to a Jewish family and raised in Dobbs Ferry, Westchester County, New York. He began programming computers in sixth grade. Zuckerberg attended Ardsley High School and transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy in his junior year.
In 2003, Zuckerberg and his friend Adam D'Angelo (now Facebook's CTO) launched the Synapse Media Player. The player received high acclaim in its ability to predict songs to play based on the user's previous selections. Several software companies, including Microsoft, expressed interest in the player, though no formal deals were made.^[1]

College years

Zuckerberg attended Harvard University and was enrolled in the class of 2006. He was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. At Harvard, Zuckerberg continued creating his projects. An early project, Coursematch, allowed students to view lists of other students enrolled in the same classes. A later project, Facemash.com, was a Harvard-specific image rating site similar to Hot or Not. A version of the site was online for four hours before Zuckerberg's Internet access was revoked by administration officials. The computer services department brought Zuckerberg before the Harvard University Administrative Board, where he was charged with breaching computer security and violating rules on Internet privacy and intellectual property.[2]
The school alleged that Zuckerberg had hacked into Harvard house websites to harvest images of students without their permission, for profit. Zuckerberg stated that he thought that information should be free and publicly available. The action taken by the board, if any, was not made public. In 2004, Zuckerberg created Facebook and took a leave of absence from the college. A year later he dropped out.

Facebook

Main articles: Facebook

Sale Rumors

It has been reported that Yahoo!, Viacom and others have tried to purchase Facebook. Zuckerberg initially had agreed to sell for $1 billion in cash, to Yahoo!.But when Terry Semel, the then CEO of Yahoo tried to renegotiate the deal for $ 800 Million, Zuckerberg walked out.

News Feed

On September 5, 2006, Facebook launched News Feed, a list of what friends were doing on the site. Zuckerberg became the target of criticism as some saw News Feed as unnecessary and a tool for cyberstalking. Three days later, Zuckerberg responded in an open letter to the Facebook community, apologizing for the sudden unwelcome feature, providing new privacy options, but ultimately defending the feature and his belief in free information flow. Zuckerberg contended that the feature was a good asset to use between friends, and the privacy settings allow for information to be blocked from users who are not friends with the person. News Feed is now one of the main ways people use Facebook.

Facebook Platform

On May 24, 2007, Zuckerberg, during his f8 conference, announced the launch of Facebook Platform, a development environment for building social applications within Facebook. His speech was done in the style of Steve Jobs.^[2]
After the launch of Facebook Platform, Zuckerberg and Facebook became the target of more press, including a cover story by Newsweek^[3] in August.

ConnectU Controversy

Zuckerberg's Harvard classmates, Divya Narendra, Cameron Winklevoss, and Tyler Winklevoss, claim they hired him to finish the code on their website, ConnectU and that he stole their idea, design, business plan, and source code. A lawsuit was filed in 2004 claiming a breach of contract, missapropriation of trade secrets, copyright infringement, in addition to other claims. Zuckerberg claims there was no contract and that he was not a partner. They are seeking monetary damages.^[4] ConnectU has maintained that it is not their intention to shut down Facebook.
Since its original filing in Massachusetts the lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice on March 28, 2007, but was never ruled on. It was refiled soon thereafter in U.S. District Court in Boston, and a preliminary hearing was scheduled for July 25, 2007.^[5] At the hearing, the judge told ConnectU parts of their complaint were not sufficiently plead, and gave them the ability to refile an amended complaint.

Facebook Origins Controversy

Emails verified by the NYTimes suggest that Zuckerberg might have taken many ideas for Facebook from Aaron J. Greenspan's houseSYSTEM website.
^[6]

References

★ Mark E. Zuckerberg ’06: The whiz behind thefacebook.com, , Michael M., Grynbaum, The Harvard Crimson,
1. [1]
2. http://developers.facebook.com/videos.php
3. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20227872/site/newsweek/
4. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=503336
5. http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,135041-c,webservices/article.html
6. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/technology/01facebook.html?em&ex=1188878400&en=eb170ad900a125e0&ei=5087%0A

External links

★ BigSight Profile

★ FastCompany: Hacker. Dropout. CEO.

★ Current Magazine interview with Mark Zuckerberg

★ NNDB page for Mark Zuckerberg

★ Part of Business 2.0's List of "10 people who don't matter" for refusing a $750 million buyout offer

★ 'BusinessWeek' graphic: "The Bad Boy: Mark Zuckerberg"

★ New Yorker Article about Facebook

★ Synapse Media Player from Softpedia

★ Mark Zuckerberg talks about online personas at The Commonwealth Club video