Mark Zuckerberg (FACEBOOK)

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. Zuckerberg began using computers and writing software as a child in middle school. His father taught him Atari BASIC Programming , and later hired software developer David Newman to tutor him privately. Zuckerberg also took a graduate course in the subject at Mercy College near his home while he was 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", which allowed all the computers between the house and dental office to communicate by pinging each other. It is considered a "primitive" version of AOL's Instant Messenger, which came out the following year.

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. 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 artificial intelligence to learn the user's listening habits, which was posted to Slashdotand received a rating of 3 out of 5 from PC Magazine. Microsoft and AOL tried to purchase Synapse and recruit Zuckerberg, but he chose instead to enroll at Harvard University.

Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dormitory room. 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 proximities to friends, and their telephone numbers. Zuckerberg faced his first challenge as head of his new company, the Winklevoss twins started a legal battle against him stating he stole their idea. The dispute continued even though an initial settlement fee of $65 million was agreed. Then in Zuckerberg’s story was made into a film entitled “The Social Network”, but Mark had mixed thoughts on the film saying:“So there’s all this stuff that they got wrong and a bunch of random details that they got right.” Finally Zuckerberg floated Facebook on the open stock market where it was valued at $104bn. Mark was named Person by Time magazine and beat Steve Jobs to no. 35 on Forbes 400 list with an estimated net worth at around $6.9 billion.

With his fairly large fortune, and lack of bad debts, Mark gives to a variety of philanthropic causes such as signing the “Giving Pledge”, stating he would donate at least 50% of his wealth to charity over the course of his lifetime. Other members of this pledge include George Lucas and Bill Gates. At only 28, this is just the beginning for Mark Zuckerberg with a rumoured Facebook phone looking to be released and we imagine there is still much to come from this young entrepreneur.