Topic > The youngest billionaire Mark Zuckerberg

Elliot Zuckerberg is one of the founders of Facebook. He was born on May 14, 1984 and grew up in New York, Dobbs Ferry. He is the only male in his family. His father, Edward Zuckerberg, was a dentist and had his own dental center. His mother, Karen Zuckerberg, was a psychiatrist and worked before her children were born. Mark Zuckerberg studied at Phillips Exeter Academy. He showed excellent results in several subjects and activities, but still had an interest in planning and creating new programs. He has become famous in software development and some companies want him to join them. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Mark had an interest in programming as early as elementary school. His father taught him Atari Basic programming and thanks to him Mark used this program and created a messenger called "ZuckNet". When he created this messaging app, he was around 12 years old and it was considered his first and one of the most important successes. This program connected several computers and allowed them to transfer messages between each other using this app. Mark is good not only at creating this type of programs, but also at developing games. I saw a movie about him, which is called "Social Network" and was filmed in 2010. In this movie, he said that he developed games and gave them to Microsoft for free, because he was just doing it for fun. In high school, Zuckerberg worked for the Intelligent Media Group to build a music player, called Synapse Media Player. The device used machine learning to learn the listening habits of a user that was sent to Slashdot and scored a three out of 5 in PC Magazine. In 2002, after graduating from Phillips Exeter, Mark Zuckerberg entered Harvard University. His most successful years began at this university, while he lived in the dormitory. I will write about what his life was like at Harvard and how he created Facebook during his years of study through the film I saw about him. In this university there were many students from different rich families and Mark called them the cream of society. They joined various clubs, hobby groups and so on. Mark wanted to make a program to draw their attention to him. In 2003, one summer evening, after breaking up with his girlfriend, Mark was drunk and suffering from insomnia in his dormitory. He decided to create a program where you could find all the photos of students from different dormitories at Harvard. According to the film, he asked his friend to tell him about the algorithm he had used before. He hacked into Harvard's records, downloaded all the images, and using this algorithm, created a program called FaceMash. He had a lot of problems from the administrators. This program took two photos of female students, placed them side by side, and allowed the user to compare them by clicking on one of them. In just four hours, nearly 450 students clicked on this program, and due to the limit being exceeded, Harvard's server shut down. Mark Zuckerberg was accused of hacking and sure enough no one said "Great job!" to him and received a six-month academic distance. Although this was a problem for him, thanks to this program Mark noticed that these types of things generate enormous interest in society. History of Facebook After creating FaceMash, Mark was already known at Harvard and Divya Narendra, co-founder of Harvard Connection, and her two partners, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, decided to work with him to create a social network, which for Students from Harvard. In a conversation with Mark, Divya Narendra explained that they wanted to create aprogram where students could share their photos, personal information and some useful links. The only thing needed was to create a program and create special code that would allow the system to work as quickly as possible. After meeting them, Mark decided to join them and began working on Harvard Connection. While working on this, he discovered a fantastic idea for his social network. In February 2004, Harvard undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg and two of his roommates created Facebook as an alternative to the Harvard Directory. It differed from other sites because initially only Harvard students, who had a “.edu” email address, could register. The domain name was TheFacebook.com, now known worldwide as Facebook.com. Mark noticed that people were interested in who they knew in real life. Facebook allowed them to meet, communicate online and have fun together. It was something new. “Add me on Facebook” was the most used word at Harvard during the first few weeks. Within a month of the site's launch, nearly three-quarters of Harvard students had signed up. “Facebook spread rapidly and in June 2004; served approximately 30 universities and more than 150,000 users” (“Facebook Stares Down Success,” Fortune Magazine, November 28, 2005). Facebook Scandals However, Facebook has had many scandals after becoming famous among people. Twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and their friend Divya Narendra have accused Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their idea to create the site. As shown in the film, they claimed that in 2003 Mark Zuckerberg was hired to help them complete the social network Harvard Connection.com. According to them, Zuckerberg did not respond to their emails and always postponed interviews saying that he was busy and never processed the results of his work, but used the original source code to create Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has always maintained that he never used the same codes to create Facebook. He said he used the idea, improved it and created his own program, but he didn't take even one of the codes the partners gave him. In the same year, Narendra and the Winklevoss twins started their own network renamed ConnectU. Furthermore, they continued to push Mark Zuckerberg, complaining about the Harvard administration and The Harvard Crimson newspaper. Initially, Mark Zuckerberg did not know what would happen and urged journalists not to publish articles on this topic. He showed them all the documents, which were proof of what he had done for Harvard Connection, printed out the answers, wrote them down and explained that those developments were not related to Facebook. However, very unexpectedly, another Harvard student – ​​John Thomson – in personal conversations began to say that Zuckerberg had stolen one of his ideas for Facebook. The newspaper subsequently decided to publish these complaints, greatly offending Mark Zuckerberg. All these conversations were also shown in the film. Zuckerberg took revenge on The Harvard Crimson. According to Silicon Alley Insider, in 2004, he broke the mailboxes of two journalists from The Harvard Crimson, using Facebook. It discovered users who were involved in the newspaper and browsed their data (i.e. history) by entering incorrect passwords. Zuckerberg's expectations were met: two newspaper employees randomly tried to access Facebook with the passwords of their inboxes. Silicon Alley Insider wrote that Zuckerberg was lucky: he had the opportunity to read conversations about him between the editorial team and Harvard Connection. Twins Winklevoss and Narendra file lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg,but the court rejected their request. They didn't give up and started another lawsuit. This time the court examined the sources of the code to understand whether they were actually stolen or not. However, the truth was not yet clear and was not described in the film either. The results of the exam were not declared. In 2009, Zuckerberg agreed to pay $45 million ($20 million in cash and the rest in Facebook stock) to ConnectU to settle the case. At that point ConnectU had fewer than 100,000 users, Facebook had about 150 million users. The Winklevoss twins still did not calm down and appealed again to the US Court of Appeals, but were refused a new trial. According to Jerome Falk, the court participated in the consideration of the settlement agreement and determined that the members of the case had no right to continue the proceedings. In the consultant's opinion, the decision was illegal because Mark Zuckerberg had been misinformed about the company's value in a 2008 case. On May 17, 2011, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss filed another lawsuit against Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg in the United States Supreme Court. This was the twins' last attempt to have the court reconsider the case. However, both in the stories and in the film, there was no information about the end of the tribunal. However, Mark probably paid some money to close the case or agreed to their cooperation on Facebook. The registration of many users was unexpected for Mark and his partner, investor and friend, Eduardo Saverin. After noticing that the number of people registering on Facebook was increasing day by day, they decided to hire new programmers. One of them was Mark's neighbor, Darren Moskowitz, who opened the Facebook service to students at Columbia University, Stanford and Yale. At that point, Mark decided to drop out of college and move to California to focus on Facebook full time. (Cassidy, “Me Media.”) Around the same time after the IPO, Zuckerberg owned 503.6 million shares. Now Zuckerberg controls almost 60% of the company's votes, 35% – Eduardo Saverin, and 5% went to the newcomer Moskowitz. Another friend of Mark's, Chris Hughes, was assigned as Facebook's press officer. (Mark Zuckerberg, “Success story of Facebook Founder,” astrumpeople.com) Some time later, registration was opened to all students. The main thing was the availability of an email address in the .edu zone, which also indicated the person's belonging to the education sector, without depending on the type of university. “The site has expanded to more than 800 university networks across the United States” (Facebook, “Company Timeline,” Facebook Newsroom). It must be said that at first it worked well. The project attracted public attention. When a user signed up, they had to add detailed information about themselves, and in addition to their email address in the .edu zone, they were required to add an actual profile picture. If people used different images instead of the real ones, their profiles were deleted. Facebook became more popular and grew rapidly, that's why Mark already needed new investors. To finance it, Mark received the first investment from Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal. He invested $500,000 and this amount was sufficient for Facebook's purposes. However, Facebook evolved rapidly and more investors were needed for its further development. In May 2005, Facebook raised another $12.7 million from Accel Partners and Thiel at a $100 million valuation. Eleven months later, the company secured another $27.5 million from Greylock Partners, Meritech Capital Partners, Accel and Thiel for a valuation of around $500.million dollars. (Cassidy, “Me Media.”) In 2005, all students had access to Facebook at every college and university in the United States. However, Mark realized that not only students, but also all people besides students were interested in this social network. For this reason, in September 2006 he decided to make registration accessible to all and from there the "Facebook epidemic" began. In 2007 the most important thing happened on Facebook. Microsoft has acquired a 1.6% stake in Facebook for a whopping $240 million. On this basis, several analysts have suggested that Facebook's total value has reached $15 billion. Quite good results for the company, whose revenues did not exceed $200 million a year. After the deal, Bill Gates created a Facebook account. He spent several hours a day communicating via Facebook with everyone, but after a while he decided to close his account for some time, because there were too many people willing to chat with him. He was physically unable to chat with all of them. However, Gates provided a major public relations campaign for Facebook around the world. This is of particular importance for Microsoft, given that until 2011 it had an exclusive advertising agreement with the social network. Facebook day after day The main key characteristic that Zuckerberg acquired was his creativity. He is a person who can easily draw conclusions from what he hears. According to the film I saw, I decided so. Once his friend came to him and asked him about a girl he liked and he didn't know whether she had a boyfriend or not. Next, Mark decided to add the “Relationship” part to Facebook. In 2005, Facebook added photo sharing features, which allowed all users to share their photos with their friends. In 2006, Facebook also added the News Feed, which showed what your friends were doing. For example, if someone shared a photo or became a friend of another person, or updated a status, each of their friends saw this news on their main Facebook page. In 2011, Mark added “Facebook Timeline” which showed all the information about a person. If someone wanted to know something about one of his friends, he would go into his timeline and see all the activity, which he would add to his Facebook. When Facebook began to be a part of our lives, privacy issues were considered more essential. Facebook has created tools that allow users to manage their privacy. Users may limit the visibility of their status updates, photos and personal information. They too could group their friends together and, when sharing information, choose which group of people would see them. By 2009, Facebook had changed some privacy tools, allowing people to see others' photos, status updates, activities, and even their friends list, which was previously private on a per-user basis. Because of these problems, Facebook did not pay any fines in 2009, but was warned of a $16,000 per day fine for future offenses. In 2007, Facebook also allowed businesses to create their own pages and entice Facebook users to “like” them. After liking a page, users can see the company's updates, images and videos in their News Feed. It helped a company advertise its products and attract public attention. In May 2019, Facebook created sponsored posts, where the page owner could pay to spread their content to a wider audience. These posts were called “Sponsored” andthe original poster could see how many people saw this post. Facebook Acquisitions Mark Zuckerberg is a great entrepreneur who always knows how to choose the best for his company. His strategy is known throughout the world. Instead of competing with a company, it prefers to buy it and make it part of Facebook. In April 2012, it made Instagram a part of Facebook, paying $1 billion in cash and stock. It was an iOS application developed by Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom. After acquiring Instagram, the application is now also available on the Android operating system. In March 2014, Facebook completed the acquisition of Oculus Rift for $2 billion. Oculus Rift is a virtual reality hardware designed by the Oculus VR Company led by Palmer Freeman Luckey. In October 2014 Mark Zuckerberg completed the purchase of WhatsApp for 22 billion dollars. Facebook paid $4.59 billion in cash and 177,760,669 shares of the company's stock. WhatsApp is an instant messaging application founded by Jan Koum and Brian Acton in 2009. How Facebook makes money In 2013, Facebook's revenue amounted to $7.87 billion and net profit was estimated at $1.5 billion of dollars. The growth rates were also dramatic: turnover had increased six-fold in three years. Facebook's basic income is obtained through sponsored advertising on the social network's pages. The number of users is growing day by day and they spend a lot of time on Facebook, the time spent on the site is converted into income. 85% percent of the revenue the company received last year was earned thanks to this advertising. There is a game famous among Facebook users called Farmville, developed by Zynga. This game is played via Facebook. To earn points in Farmville, you need to purchase some virtual goods, such as vegetables, fruits and so on. These purchases make up the remaining 15% of earnings. Although it seems unimportant, virtual goods are a widely used business and Facebook reports approve of it. The company calculated that in 2010 the income obtained through virtual products reached $7 billion, and in 2014 it was estimated at $15 billion. In early January 2013, Facebook began managing inbox messages. As everyone knows, Facebook helps people meet new friends. To write to a person you don't know you would have to pay 1 dollar. After paying this money, your message will be sent directly to this person's inbox, instead of others. Later, Mark Zuckerberg decided that some people are worth more than a dollar. For example, if you want to send a message directly to Zuckerberg's inbox, you would have to pay $100. This is another way to increase revenue. Nowadays, Facebook is the widely used social media and almost everyone already has an account in this social networking site. Everyone uses Facebook to stay connected with family, friends, colleagues and also to meet new people on Facebook. Plus, it's easy to find people who have the same interests as you by seeing their profiles, and you can easily connect with them using private messages and video chats. In fact, nowadays people use Facebook to date a person who is regarded as you. Facebook for Business Facebook is one of the most famous websites and many people from all over the world use this networking site. It allows people to promote their business among different nationalities and make their brand famous among them. Actually, nowadays, we can say that almost all companies have a Facebook page and this makes them gain many customers or even suppliers from that. Facebook Video Chat Facebook has a partnership with Skype..