Software developer

Early years

Zuckerberg began using computers and writing software in middle school. His father taught him AtariBASIC Programming
in the 1990s, and later hired software developer David Newman to tutor
him privately. Newman calls him a "prodigy", adding that it was "tough
to stay ahead of him". Zuckerberg took a graduate course in the subject
at Mercy College
near his home while still in high school. He enjoyed developing
computer programs, especially communication tools and games. In one such
program, since his father's dental practice was operated from their
home, he built a software program he called "ZuckNet" that allowed all
the computers between the house and dental office to communicate with
each other. It is considered a "primitive" version of AOL's Instant Messenger, which came out the following year.
According to writer Jose Antonio Vargas,
"some kids played computer games. Mark created them." Zuckerberg
himself recalls this period: "I had a bunch of friends who were artists.
They'd come over, draw stuff, and I'd build a game out of it." However,
notes Vargas, Zuckerberg was not a typical "geek-klutz", as he later
became captain of his prep school fencing team and earned a classics diploma. Napster co-founder Sean Parker,
a close friend, notes that Zuckerberg was "really into Greek odysseys
and all that stuff", recalling how he once quoted lines from the Roman
epic poem Aeneid, by Virgil, during a Facebook product conference.[14]
During Zuckerberg's high school years, under the company name
Intelligent Media Group, he built a music player called the Synapse
Media Player that used machine learning to learn the user's listening habits, which was posted to Slashdot[22] and received a rating of 3 out of 5 from PC Magazine.[23]

College years

By the time he began classes at Harvard, Zuckerberg had already
achieved a "reputation as a programming prodigy", notes Vargas. He
studied psychology and computer science as well as belonging to Alpha Epsilon Pi, a Jewish fraternity, and Kirkland House.[7][14][24] In his sophomore year,
he wrote a program he called CourseMatch, which allowed users to make
class selection decisions based on the choices of other students and
also to help them form study groups. A short time later, he created a
different program he initially called Facemash
that let students select the best looking person from a choice of
photos. According to Zuckerberg's roommate at the time, Arie Hasit, "he
built the site for fun". Hasit explains:

We had books called Face Books, which included the names and pictures
of everyone who lived in the student dorms. At first, he built a site
and placed two pictures, or pictures of two males and two females.
Visitors to the site had to choose who was "hotter" and according to the
votes there would be a ranking.[25]

The site went up over a weekend; but by Monday morning, the college
shut it down because its popularity had overwhelmed one of Harvard's network switches
and prevented students from accessing the Internet. In addition, many
students complained that their photos were being used without
permission. Zuckerberg apologized publicly, and the student paper ran
articles stating that his site was "completely improper."[25]
The following semester, in January 2004, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website.[26] On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.[27]
Six days after the site launched, three Harvard seniors, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com, while he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product.[28] The three complained to the Harvard Crimson and the newspaper began an investigation in response.
Following the official launch of the Facebook social media platform,
the three filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg that resulted in a
settlement.[29] The agreed settlement was for 1.2 million Facebook shares that were worth US$300 million at Facebook's IPO.[30]
Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard in his sophomore year to complete his project.[31] In January 2014, Zuckerberg recalled:

I remember really vividly, you know, having pizza with my friends a
day or two after—I opened up the first version of Facebook at the time I
thought, "You know, someone needs to build a service like this for the
world." But I just never thought that we'd be the ones to help do it.
And I think a lot of what it comes down to is we just cared more.[32]

Facebook

Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dormitory room on February 4, 2004.[33][34] An earlier inspiration for Facebook may have come from Phillips Exeter Academy,
the prep school from which Zuckerberg graduated in 2002. It published
its own student directory, “The Photo Address Book,” which students
referred to as “The Facebook.” Such photo directories were an important
part of the student social experience at many private schools. With
them, students were able to list attributes such as their class years,
their friends, and their telephone numbers.[33]
Once at college, Zuckerberg's Facebook started off as just a "Harvard
thing" until Zuckerberg decided to spread it to other schools,
enlisting the help of roommate Dustin Moskovitz. They began with Columbia, New York University, Stanford, Dartmouth, Cornell, Penn, Brown, and Yale.[35]Samyr Laine, a triple jumper representing Haiti at the 2012 Summer Olympics,
shared a room with Zuckerberg during Facebook's founding. "Mark was
clearly on to great things," said Laine, who was Facebook's fourteenth
user.[36]
After Zuckerberg moved to Palo Alto, California with Moskovitz and some friends, they leased a small house that served as an office. Over the summer, Zuckerberg met Peter Thiel
who invested in the company. They got their first office in mid-2004.
According to Zuckerberg, the group planned to return to Harvard but
eventually decided to remain in California.[37][38]
They had already turned down offers by major corporations to buy the
company. In an interview in 2007, Zuckerberg explained his reasoning:
"It's not because of the amount of money. For me and my colleagues, the
most important thing is that we create an open information flow for
people. Having media corporations owned by conglomerates is just not an attractive idea to me."[34]
He restated these goals to Wired magazine in 2010: "The thing I really care about is the mission, making the world open."[39] Earlier, in April 2009, Zuckerberg sought the advice of former Netscape CFO Peter Currie about financing strategies for Facebook.[40] On July 21, 2010, Zuckerberg reported that the company reached the 500 million-user mark.[41] When asked whether Facebook could earn more income from advertising as a result of its phenomenal growth, he explained:

I guess we could..... If you look at how much of our page is taken up with ads compared to the average search
query. The average for us is a little less than 10 percent of the pages
and the average for search is about 20 percent taken up with ads.....
That's the simplest thing we could do. But we aren't like that. We make
enough money. Right, I mean, we are keeping things running; we are
growing at the rate we want to.[39]

In 2010, Steven Levy, who wrote the 1984 book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, wrote that Zuckerberg "clearly thinks of himself as a hacker". Zuckerberg said that "it's OK to break things" "to make them better".[42][43] Facebook instituted "hackathons" held every six to eight weeks where participants would have one night to conceive of and complete a project.[42]
The company provided music, food, and beer at the hackathons, and many
Facebook staff members, including Zuckerberg, regularly attended.[43]
"The idea is that you can build something really good in a night",
Zuckerberg told Levy. "And that's part of the personality of Facebook
now..... It's definitely very core to my personality."[42]Vanity Fair magazine named Zuckerberg number 1 on its 2010 list of the Top 100 "most influential people of the Information Age".[44] Zuckerberg ranked number 23 on the Vanity Fair 100 list in 2009.[45] In 2010, Zuckerberg was chosen as number 16 in New Statesman's annual survey of the world's 50 most influential figures.[46]
In a 2011 interview with PBS after the death of Steve Jobs,
Zuckerberg said that Jobs had advised him on how to create a management
team at Facebook that was "focused on building as high quality and good
things as you are".[47]
On October 1, 2012, Zuckerberg visited Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow to stimulate social media innovation in Russia and to boost Facebook's position in the Russian market.[48]
Russia's communications minister tweeted that Prime Minister Dmitry
Medvedev urged the social media giant's founder to abandon plans to lure
away Russian programmers and instead consider opening a research center
in Moscow. In 2012, Facebook had roughly 9 million users in Russia,
while domestic clone VK had around 34 million.[49]
Rebecca Van Dyck, Facebook's head of consumer marketing, claimed that
85 million American Facebook users were exposed to the first day of the
Home promotional campaign on April 6, 2013.[50]
On August 19, 2013, the Washington Post reported that Zuckerberg's Facebook profile was hacked by an unemployed web developer.[51]
At the 2013 TechCrunch Disrupt conference, held in September,
Zuckerberg stated that he is working towards registering the 5 billion
humans who were not connected to the Internet as of the conference on
Facebook. Zuckerberg then explained that this is intertwined with the
aim of the Internet.org project, whereby Facebook, with the support of
other technology companies, seeks to increase the number of people
connected to the internet.[52][53]
Zuckerberg was the keynote speaker at the 2014 Mobile World Congress
(MWC), held in Barcelona, Spain, in March 2014, which was attended by
75,000 delegates. Various media sources highlighted the connection
between Facebook's focus on mobile technology and Zuckerberg's speech,
claiming that mobile represents the future of the company.[54]
Zuckerberg's speech expands upon the goal that he raised at the
TechCrunch conference in September 2013, whereby he is working towards
expanding Internet coverage into developing countries.[55]
Alongside other American technology figures like Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook,
Zuckerberg hosted visiting Chinese politician Lu Wei, known as the
"Internet czar" for his influence in the enforcement of China's online
policy, at Facebook's headquarters on December 8, 2014. The meeting
occurred after Zuckerberg participated in a Q&A session at Tsinghua
University in Beijing, China, on October 23, 2014, where he attempted to
converse in Mandarin Chinese—although
Facebook is banned in China, Zuckerberg is highly regarded among the
people and was at the university to help fuel the nation's burgeoning
entrepreneur sector.[56]
Zuckerberg fielded questions during a live Q&A session at the
company's headquarters in Menlo Park on December 11, 2014. The founder
and CEO explained that he does not believe Facebook is a waste of time
because it facilitates social engagement, and participating in a public
session was so that he could "learn how to better serve the community".[57][58]

Platform, Beacon and Connect

On May 24, 2007, Zuckerberg announced Facebook Platform,
a development platform for programmers to create social applications
within Facebook. Within weeks, many applications had been built and some
already had millions of users. It grew to more than 800,000 developers
around the world building applications for Facebook Platform.[citation needed]
On November 6, 2007, Zuckerberg announced Beacon, a social
advertising system that enabled people to share information with their
Facebook friends based on their browsing activities on other sites. For
example, eBay
sellers could let friends know automatically what they have for sale
via the Facebook news feed as they listed items for sale. The program
came under scrutiny because of privacy concerns from groups and
individual users. Zuckerberg and Facebook failed to respond to the
concerns quickly, and on December 5, 2007, Zuckerberg wrote a blog post
on Facebook,[61] taking responsibility for the concerns about Beacon and offering an easier way for users to opt out of the service.
In 2007, Zuckerberg was named by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Technology Review's TR35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35.[62] On July 23, 2008, Zuckerberg announced Facebook Connect, a version of Facebook Platform for users.

Internet.org

In a public Facebook post, Zuckerberg launched the Internet.org
project in late August 2013. Zuckerberg explained that the primary aim
of the initiative is to provide Internet access to the 5 billion people
who are not connected as of the launch date. Using a three-tier
strategy, Internet.org will also create new jobs and open up new
markets, according to Zuckerberg. He stated in his post:

The world economy is going through a massive transition right now.
The knowledge economy is the future. By bringing everyone online, we'll
not only improve billions of lives, but we'll also improve our own as we
benefit from the ideas and productivity they contribute to the world.
Giving everyone the opportunity to connect is the foundation for
enabling the knowledge economy. It is not the only thing we need to do,
but it's a fundamental and necessary step.[53]

Legal controversies

ConnectU lawsuits

Harvard students Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra
accused Zuckerberg of intentionally making them believe he would help
them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com (later called ConnectU).[63] They filed a lawsuit in 2004, but it was dismissed on a technicality on March 28, 2007. It was refiled soon thereafter in federal court in Boston. Facebook countersued in regards to Social Butterfly, a project put out by The Winklevoss Chang Group, an alleged partnership between ConnectU and i2hub. On June 25, 2008, the case settled and Facebook agreed to transfer over 1.2 million common shares and pay $20 million in cash.[64]
In November 2007, confidential court documents were posted on the website of 02138,
a magazine that catered to Harvard alumni. They included Zuckerberg's
social security number, his parents' home address, and his girlfriend's
address. Facebook filed to have the documents removed, but the judge
ruled in favor of 02138.[65]

Saverin lawsuit

A lawsuit filed by Eduardo Saverin
against Facebook and Zuckerberg was settled out of court. Though terms
of the settlement were sealed, the company affirmed Saverin's title as
co-founder of Facebook. Saverin signed a non-disclosure contract after
the settlement.[66]

Pakistan criminal investigation

In June 2010, Pakistani Deputy Attorney General Muhammad Azhar Sidiqque launched a criminal investigation into Zuckerberg and Facebook co-founders Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes after a "Draw Muhammad"
contest was hosted on Facebook. The investigation named the anonymous
German woman who created the contest. Sidiqque asked the country's
police to contact Interpol to have Zuckerberg and the three others arrested for blasphemy.
On May 19, 2010, Facebook's website was temporarily blocked in Pakistan
until Facebook removed the contest from its website at the end of May.
Sidiqque also asked its UN representative to raise the issue with the United Nations General Assembly.[67][68]

Paul Ceglia

In June 2010, Paul Ceglia, the owner of a wood pellet fuel company in Allegany County, upstate New York,
filed suit against Zuckerberg, claiming 84% ownership of Facebook and
seeking monetary damages. According to Ceglia, he and Zuckerberg signed a
contract on April 28, 2003, that an initial fee of $1,000 entitled
Ceglia to 50% of the website's revenue, as well as an additional 1%
interest in the business per day after January 1, 2004, until website
completion. Zuckerberg was developing other projects at the time, among
which was Facemash, the predecessor of Facebook, but did not register the domain name thefacebook.com
until January 1, 2004. Facebook management dismissed the lawsuit as
"completely frivolous". Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt told a reporter
that Ceglia's counsel had unsuccessfully sought an out-of-court
settlement.[69][70]
On October 26, 2012, federal authorities arrested Ceglia, charging
him with mail and wire fraud and of "tampering with, destroying and
fabricating evidence in a scheme to defraud the Facebook founder of
billions of dollars." Ceglia is accused of fabricating emails to make it
appear that he and Zuckerberg discussed details about an early version
of Facebook, although after examining their emails, investigators found
there was no mention of Facebook in them.[71] Some law firms withdrew from the case before it was initiated and others after Ceglia's arrest.[72][73]

Depictions in media

The Social Network

A movie based on Zuckerberg and the founding years of Facebook, The Social Network was released on October 1, 2010, and stars Jesse Eisenberg
as Zuckerberg. After Zuckerberg was told about the film, he responded,
"I just wished that nobody made a movie of me while I was still alive."[74]
Also, after the film's script was leaked on the Internet and it was
apparent that the film would not portray Zuckerberg in a wholly positive
light, he stated that he wanted to establish himself as a "good guy".[75] The film is based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, which the book's publicist once described as "big juicy fun" rather than "reportage".[76] The film's screenwriter Aaron Sorkin told New York magazine,
"I don't want my fidelity to be the truth; I want it to be
storytelling", adding, "What is the big deal about accuracy purely for
accuracy's sake, and can we not have the true be the enemy of the good?"[77]
Upon winning the Golden Globes award for Best Picture on January 16, 2011, producer Scott Rudin thanked Facebook and Zuckerberg "for his willingness to allow us to use his life and work as a metaphor through which to tell a story about communication and the way we relate to each other.”[78] Sorkin, who won for Best Screenplay, retracted some of the impressions given in his script:[79]

"I wanted to say to Mark Zuckerberg tonight, if you're watching, Rooney Mara's
character makes a prediction at the beginning of the movie. She was
wrong. You turned out to be a great entrepreneur, a visionary, and an
incredible altruist."

On January 29, 2011, Zuckerberg made a surprise guest appearance on Saturday Night Live, which was being hosted by Jesse Eisenberg. They both said it was the first time they ever met.[80]
Eisenberg asked Zuckerberg, who had been critical of his portrayal by
the film, what he thought of the movie. Zuckerberg replied, "It was
interesting."[81]
In a subsequent interview about their meeting, Eisenberg explains that
he was "nervous to meet him, because I had spent now, a year and a half
thinking about him ..." He adds, "Mark has been so gracious about
something that’s really so uncomfortable ... The fact that he would do SNL
and make fun of the situation is so sweet and so generous. It’s the
best possible way to handle something that, I think, could otherwise be
very uncomfortable."[82][83]

Disputed accuracy

Jeff Jarvis, author of the book Public Parts, interviewed
Zuckerberg and believes Sorkin made up too much of the story. He states,
"That's what the internet is accused of doing, making stuff up, not
caring about the facts."[84]
According to David Kirkpatrick, former technology editor at Fortune magazine and author of The Facebook Effect:The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World, (2011),[85]
"the film is only "40% true ... he is not snide and sarcastic in a
cruel way, the way Zuckerberg is played in the movie." He says that "a
lot of the factual incidents are accurate, but many are distorted and
the overall impression is false", and concludes that primarily "his
motivations were to try and come up with a new way to share information
on the internet".[84]
Although the film portrays Zuckerberg's creation of Facebook in order
to elevate his stature after not getting into any of the elite final clubs at Harvard, Zuckerberg himself said he had no interest in joining the clubs.[14]
Kirkpatrick agrees that the impression implied by the film is "false".
Karel Baloun, a former senior engineer at Facebook, notes that the
"image of Zuckerberg as a socially inept nerd is overstated..... It is
fiction....." He likewise dismisses the film's assertion that he "would
deliberately betray a friend".[84]

Use of other social networks

Zuckerberg created an account with Google+ soon after the social
network was unveiled, saying he sees it as a "validation for his vision"
of online social networking.[90] By July 2011, Zuckerberg had become the most followed user on Google+, outranking Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.[91] As of March 6, 2012, his ranking has dropped to 184 on the service, behind Page and Brin.[92] His public profile is minimal with one photo and a bio that reads "I make things".[93]
Zuckerberg has maintained a private account on Twitter under the
username "zuck", although as of November 2014, the account's status is
suspended.[94] In 2009, he revealed that the public account "finkd" also belonged to him.[95]

Philanthropy

Zuckerberg donated an undisclosed amount to Diaspora, an open-source personal web server that implements a distributed social networking service. He called it a "cool idea".[39]
Zuckerberg founded the Start-up: Education foundation.[96][97] On September 22, 2010, it was reported that Zuckerberg had donated $100million to Newark Public Schools, the public school system of Newark, New Jersey.[98][99] Critics noted the timing of the donation as being close to the release of The Social Network, which painted a somewhat negative portrait of Zuckerberg.[100]
Zuckerberg responded to the criticism, saying, "The thing that I was
most sensitive about with the movie timing was, I didn't want the press
about The Social Network movie to get conflated with the Newark
project. I was thinking about doing this anonymously just so that the
two things could be kept separate."[101] Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker stated that he and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had to convince Zuckerberg's team not to make the donation anonymously.[101]
On December 9, 2010, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and investor Warren Buffett signed a promise they called "The Giving Pledge
", in which they promised to donate to charity at least half of their
wealth over the course of time, and invited others among the wealthy to
donate 50% or more of their wealth to charity.[102]
On December 19, 2013, Zuckerberg announced a donation of 18 million Facebook shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation,
to be executed by the end of the month—based on Facebook's valuation as
of then, the shares totaled $990 million in value. On December 31,
2013, the donation was recognized as the largest charitable gift on
public record for 2013.[103]The Chronicle of Philanthropy
reported on February 10, 2014 that Zuckerberg's donation was the
largest charitable gift on the public record in 2013 and put Zuckerberg
and his wife at the top of the magazine's annual list of 50 most
generous Americans in 2013, having donated roughly 1 billion dollars to
charity.[104]
In October 2014, Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan donated $25 million to combat the ebola virus disease, specifically the ebola virus epidemic in West Africa.[105][106]

Politics

In 2002, Zuckerberg registered to vote in Westchester County, New York, where he grew up, but did not cast a ballot until November 2008. Santa Clara County
Registrar of Voters Spokeswoman, Elma Rosas, told Bloomberg that
Zuckerberg is listed as “no preference” on voter rolls, and he voted in
the past two general elections, in 2008 and 2012.[107][108] On Zuckerberg's Facebook page, he has Chris Christie, Cory Booker, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Barack Obama in his likes section.[109]
Mark Zuckerberg has never specified his own political views: some consider him a conservative,[110][111] while others consider him liberal.[112] In 2013, numerous liberal and progressive groups, such as The League of Conservation Voters, MoveOn.org, the Sierra Club, Democracy for America, CREDO, Daily Kos, 350.org,
and Presente and Progressives United agreed to either pull their
Facebook ad buys or not buy Facebook ads for at least two weeks, in
protest of Zuckerberg ads funded by FWD.us that were in support of oil
drilling and the Keystone XL pipeline, and in opposition to Obamacare among Republican US senators who back immigration reform.[clarification needed][113]
On February 13, 2013, Zuckerberg hosted his first ever fundraising event for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
Zuckerberg's particular interest on this occasion was education reform,
and Christie's education reform work focused on teachers unions and the
expansion of charter schools.[114][115] Later that year, Zuckerberg would host a campaign fundraiser for Newark mayor Cory Booker, who was running in the 2013 New Jersey special Senate election.[116] In September 2010, with the support of Governor Chris Christie, Booker obtained a $100 million pledge from Zuckerberg to Newark Public Schools.[117] In December 2012, Zuckerberg donated 18 million shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a community organization that includes education in its list of grant-making areas.[118][119]
On April 11, 2013, Zuckerberg led the launch of a 501(c)(4) lobbying group called FWD.us. The founders and contributors to the group were primarily Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors, and its president was Joe Green, a close friend of Zuckerberg.[120][121][122][123] The goals of the group include immigration reform, improving the state of education in the US, and enabling more technological breakthroughs that benefit the public,[124][125]
yet it has also been criticized for financing ads advocating a variety
of oil and gas development initiatives, including drilling in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge and the Keystone XL pipeline.[126]
A media report on June 20, 2013 revealed that Zuckerberg actively
engaged with Facebook users on his own profile page after the online
publication of a FWD.us video. In response to a claim that the FWD.us
organization is "just about tech wanting to hire more people", the
Internet entrepreneur replied: "The bigger problem we’re trying to
address is ensuring the 11 million undocumented folks living in this
country now and similar folks in the future are treated fairly."[127]
In June 2013, Zuckerberg joined Facebook employees in a company float as part of the annual San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Celebration.
The company first participated in the event in 2011, with 70 employees,
and this number increased to 700 for the 2013 march. The 2013 pride
celebration was especially significant, as it followed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that deemed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional.[128][129]
When questioned about the mid-2013 PRISM
scandal at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in September 2013,
Zuckerberg stated that the U.S. government "blew it." He further
explained that the government performed poorly in regard to the
protection of the freedoms of its citizens, the economy, and companies.[52]

Personal life

At a party put on by his fraternity during his sophomore year, Zuckerberg met Priscilla Chan,[130][131] a fellow student whom he began dating in 2003. Chan is the daughter of Chinese-Vietnamese refugees, who arrived in the U.S. after the Fall of Saigon.[132] She was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, and is a 2003 graduate of Quincy High School.[133][134]
In September 2010, Zuckerberg invited Chan, by then a medical student at the University of California, San Francisco,[135]
to move into his rented Palo Alto house. Zuckerberg studied Mandarin in
preparation for the couple's visit to the People's Republic of China in
December 2010.[136][137]
On May 19, 2012, Zuckerberg and Chan married in Zuckerberg's backyard
in an event that also celebrated her graduation from medical school.[138][139][140]
On July 31, 2015, Zuckerberg announced that he and Chan were expecting a
baby girl. He stated that he felt confident that the risk of
miscarrying was low so far into the pregnancy, after having already
suffered three miscarriages.[141]