Mark Zuckerberg: Biography, Companies, Controversies & Facts

Mark Zuckerberg who is famously known as the founder of world’s largest social networking site Facebook. He is the CEO of Meta Platforms, Inc. previously Facebook Inc. Mark Zuckerberg is an American business magnate, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is also known as the 21st century’s one of the most innovative and tech geniuses. In this blog post, we will take a closer look at Mark Zuckerberg’s life and his career. You will know his early life, education, programs which he developed in his teenage years, his life in Harvard University, how he started Facebook and took it to the top social networking site, controversies and many other aspects. We will also discuss his future vision on many things such as Artificial Intelligence, Metaverse, social media, user data privacy etc. 

Let’s look deeply at the life of the man who is said to have completely changed the face of communication in the modern world.

Born	May 14, 1984 White Plains, New york US.
Citizenship	American
Occupation	Entrepreneur, American Media Magnet, and Philanthropist
Title	Co-founder, Chairmen and CEO of Meta Platforms, Inc.
Education	CS from Harvard University (dropped out)
Companies	Meta (Facebook), Beluga, Onavo, Oculus VR, WhatsApp, and Instagram
Wife	Priscilla Chan
Children	3
Net Worth	$101.8 Billion

Mark Zuckerberg’s Early Life

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, famously known as the founder of world’s largest social networking site Facebook, was born on May 24, 1984, in White Plains, New York. He was raised in a Reformed Jewish household in Dobbs Ferry, New York. His grandparents were Jewish emigrants from Austria, Germany and Poland.

Parents

Mark Zuckerberg was born in a quite educated family. His mother’s name was Karen, and she was a psychiatrist. His father’s name was Edward Zuckerberg who was a dentist by profession. And they both played an important role to shape Mark Zuckerberg’s future.

Childhood – How his parents shaped his life in early days?

Mark Zuckerberg was a simple but a genius child starting from his early childhood. Here, I am writing this not because I am a big fan of Mark Zuckerberg but according to research, an early environment plays a very critical role to shape a child’s mind. And, from the very starting, his parents Karen and Edward took care of Mark Zuckerberg. Because his parents were in good financial condition, they hired a computer tutor to teach and work with little Zuckerberg. You will be shocked to know that Mark Zuckerberg wrote his first computer program at the age of 11.

And this is how his parents shaped his future and gave Mark Zuckerberg a solid base where he was going to build his brightest future.

Mark Zuckerberg Education

It is a worldwide fact that education is the topmost tool of anyone to be successful. And, as I said earlier that because Mark Zuckerberg’s parents were well educated, they were aware that if they want Zuckerberg to be successful then Mark Zuckerberg needs to study from the best source (that best source could be a private tutor, school and collage etc.).

So, keeping this in mind their parents hired a private tutor for Mark Zuckerberg who can teach him programming and can also work with Zuckerberg on his curious ideas to develop something new. Mark Zuckerberg completed his high school at Ardsley High School and then transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy. He was a fencer in his high school days and also the captain of the fencing team. He was a fencer in his high school days and also the captain of the fencing team.

Mark Zuckerberg was a great student of programming, and he was also quite interested in psychology as he was a child of a psychiatrist mom. So, in 2002, he got admission to Harvard University to study Psychology and Computer Science. After one year of college, he started working on Facebook in 2003. And when he got the sense that his idea of Facebook could be a revolution on the internet, he decided to drop out from his college. So, he left the college while in the 2nd year of his degree.

Software Developed by Mark Zuckerberg

Early Years

There is a world-famous book named IKIGAI. In this book, Author gives a rule to become successful. And the rule is like this, “When what you like to do, what you are good at and what market want/need comes in perfect alignment then success is granted”. And somehow Mark Zuckerberg followed this rule.

If you observe keenly then you can see. Mark Zuckerberg was very passionate about programming, and he likes to do programming. He was also a good programmer from his very childhood. And the market also wanted to connect with others online. As a result, the multi-billion-dollar world’s largest social networking site “Facebook” borne. And this is how Mark Zuckerberg became successful in his career.

In this section, we will go deep into Mark Zuckerberg’s life. You will know some about some amazing software which were developed by Mark Zuckerberg.

As you have seen earlier in the blog, Zuckerberg started programming at a very young age. And their parents hired a personal tutor for him to teach programming. 

Mark Zuckerberg was able to write codes when he was just 11 years old. He created a messaging program for his father Edward Zuckerberg to use in his dental clinic. Whenever a new patient came into office, the receptionist used to use that messaging program to notify Edward. Before that program, the receptionist has to shout in the office.

Zucknet – Mark Zuckerberg also wrote a program and created an intranet messaging platform especially for his family. Anyone in his family can send messages to anyone with the help of that tool. Zuckerberg named that tool ZuckNet.

Synapse Media Player – Time passes, and when Mark Zuckerberg was in his high school Ardsley high school, he wrote a machine learning based program and named it Synapse Media Player. This program was a sensation. This Synapse Media Player plays the music according to the preference of the user. This program was one of the best programs of those days and it was such an amazing hit that Microsoft was ready to purchase it and offered a huge amount to Zuckerberg. But Mark Zuckerberg did not create that program for money, so he refused the offer of Microsoft. He uploaded that program on Slashdot for free.

Collage Years

Everything started in Harvard University. Zuckerberg built several software before Facebook which were awesome. In this section of the blog, you will learn about some amazing programs of Zuckerberg which he built in his college days at Harvard University.

CourseMatch – When Mark Zuckerberg moved to Harvard in 2002, in his very first year of college, he made an innovative platform and named it CourseMatch. It was specially programmed for Harvard students. The idea behind CourseMatch was that anyone (Harvard University’s students) can know which courses were taken by their friends in the college and could also form study groups. Basically, anyone can find their course mates. 

CourseMatch was an amazing idea, right? Many Harvard students find that idea quite interesting and actually it was. When other students were just studying computer science, Mark Zuckerberg was applying those learning to build something real.

FaceMash – After CourseMatch, in his starting month of second year (in his sophomore year), he made FaceMash. And this program was a sensation. Zuckerberg believes that breaking things is ok if you are breaking to make the idea better. To build FaceMash, he hacked Harvard directories as well as other collage’s directories, collected photos of students and used them in FaceMash. He uploaded pictures of both male and female students on his site with their names.

Basically, FaceMash was a platform where anyone can rate someone’s photo with two options that were HOT or NOT. This program was an epic shit which Zuckerberg created at that time. Within one night, this program got the traffic of 22000 users and eventually led to the failure of Harvard Network System. When the news spread out on Harvard campus, Mark Zuckerberg became a star among tech nerds. But some students also complain against Zuckerberg because he was using many students’ photos on his platform without their permission. So, Mark Zuckerberg publicly apologized.

Career

Facebook

After CourseMatch and FaceMash, everybody started talking about Mark Zuckerberg on the Harvard campus. There were three Harvard senior students Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra. These students were also like Zuckerberg. And they were working on an idea (which was similar to the original idea of Facebook). When they also heard of Zuckerberg, they thought that Zuckerberg can help them in their project. So, they came to meet Zuckerberg and asked him to work for them.

Those three Harvard seniors came with an offer to Mark to assist them in writing codes for a social network program named HarvardConnection.com. The reason behind this program was that students of Harvard can interact with each other and feed photos, videos etc.

In January 2004, Mark Zuckerberg with his four roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes started to write code for a new website. And in February 2004, he launched his website with the name “Thefacebook” which was originally located at “thefacebook.com”. Thefacebook has the features to interact with other people and they can also post photos, videos, etc. 

According to Mark Zuckerberg and this is also written in Wikipedia, the idea of Thefacebook was inspired from his Phillips Exeter Academy, the prep school from which Mark Zuckerberg graduated in 2002. Basically, Phillips Exeter Academy 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. And it sounds quite true. But there are some critics who say that Mark Zuckerberg stole his seniors’ idea of HarvardConnection.com. And the idea sounds very much similar to HarvardConnections.com, right? Yes, it is. And that is because Mark Zuckerberg had faced one of the biggest controversies of his life. You will know the whole Controversy in a later section of this blog.

So. initially Thefacebook was only accessible to Harvard students. But Thefacebook was a big hit in Harvard University, so Mark Zuckerberg decided to expand it with other schools and colleges. With the help of his roommates cum co-founders, they started enlisting like New York University, Stanford University, Columbia University, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, Yale University, University of Pennsylvania and several other universities.

Soon, Both Mark Zuckerberg and his site Thefacebook started getting spotlight. And they became very popular among the college students at different universities. Mark Zuckerberg understood that this idea could be very big and to execute it very well, he needs to work full-fledged for this project and he will also need funds and a good mentor. 

So, he dropped out from Harvard when he was in the 2nd year of his college. He moved to Palo-Alto, California with his four friends cum co-founders and rented a house there.

He met there Napster founder Sean Parker who gave Mark Zuckerberg an idea to remove “The” from the name and keep it just “Facebook”. Because it will be a much cooler name.

Now, one of the most important things they had to do was to find an investor. And luckily, he met one of the great investors Peter Thiel. He believed in their idea and made an investment. And this is how Peter Thiel became Factbook’s first investor. They got their first office in mid-2004 in Silicon Valley. Later Peter Thiel also guided them in scaling Facebook.

After getting the first investment from Peter Thiel, they never turned back. Many big corporations tried to buy Facebook with big offers, but Mark Zuckerberg refused all that. In an interview in 2007, Zuckerberg said, “It is 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.” 

In 2012, Facebook went public and became the most successful Internet Initial Public Offering (IPO) in history when it raised $16 billion.

Facebook started scaling in the global field. There have been times in Zuckerberg and Facebook’s life when he had to face a lot of criticisms and he had gone through a lot of controversies while scaling in different countries like in Russia, China, India etc. But he did not lose his faith in his dream. He inspired a lot of techy and many individuals.

In recent years, Mark Zuckerberg started focusing more on Virtual reality, Metaverse and all. According to him, the metaverse is the future of technology and his company is constantly working on this. In October 2021, Mark Zuckerberg changed his parent company’s name from “Facebook Inc.” to “Meta Platforms Inc.”. He changed his company’s name in view of the future of technology.

Other Ventures

Wirehog – Wayne Chang, fellow of Zuckerberg launched i2hub, a peer-to-peer file sharing software in the same year when Facebook was launched in 2004. i2hub was also a campus-only software like Facebook. In those days, both Facebook and i2hub were becoming famous and growing rapidly in users. They both gained amazing publicity.

So, in August 2004, Zuckerberg with Andrew McCollum, Adam D’Angelo, and Sean Parker launched a software named Wirehog. Wirehog was also providing peer-to-peer file sharing service. Wirehog was launched to compete with i2hub.

Zuckerberg also launched a precursor to Facebook Platform applications, which launched in 2007.

Internet.org – Mark Zuckerberg launched internet.org in 2013. He described internet.org as a new step to provide internet access to the five billion people without it as of the launch date. But unfortunately, Mark’s project got banned in Asian country India in February 2016. The Indian activists said its limits ran counter to the principle of net neutrality; Zuckerberg in answer to these activists said that a limited internet was better than no internet. Even though his company got shut down in India, Zuckerberg later met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss further possibilities.

Breakthrough Starshot – Other than Wirehog and internet.org, Zuckerberg co-founded another company in 2016 named Breakthrough Starshot. Breakthrough Starshot is a solar sail spacecraft development project (Company). He is a board member of Breakthrough Starshot.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Net Worth

According to Forbes, as of 2023, his net worth has been estimated to be $101.8 Billion.

Meta (formerly Facebook’s) Acquisition

In business, there is a famous traditional saying that “Either acquire the competitor or destroy it” and Facebook (Currently Meta Inc.) executed it very well. It acquired some of the best companies which could have been Meta’s biggest competitor in future. In this section of the blog, you will know some of best the acquisition of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Inc. (Previously Facebook Inc.)

Instagram Acquisition

The first company which Meta acquired was Instagram. This acquisition happened on April 9, 2012. Although, Instagram is a very popular social media platform, for those who don’t know about it, Instagram is a photo and video-sharing social networking platform which was officially launched in 2010. Through the Instagram app, someone (Users) can upload, edit, and can also tag photos and videos. Meta bought Instagram for $1.0 billion. 

Now, some estimates indicate that Instagram generates more advertising revenue than its parent company Meta Inc. These estimates could be wrong but the current popularity of and huge user base of Instagram shows that Meta has not taken a bad decision to acquire Instagram.

WhatsApp Acquisition

WhatsApp acquisition was Meta’s one of the best acquisitions executed on February 19, 2014. WhatsApp is a messenger and calling service available to users throughout the world. This platform was officially launched in 2009 as a low-cost alternative to standard text messaging services. WhatsApp is a very popular app worldwide. Users of this can use this app for free of cost. They can send messages and make calls directly to other users for free of cost, regardless of location. Users can also share (send) photos, videos, documents and different types of emojis over the platform. Meta bought WhatsApp for $19 billion.

When Meta bought WhatsApp, at that time WhatsApp was a very fast-growing app and was becoming a potential rival to the Facebook network platform. So, to destroy the competition, Meta bought WhatsApp.

Oculus VR Acquisition

Oculus VR is a virtual reality hardware and software company. It was founded in 2012. Oculus VR is best known for its Oculus Rift product, a virtual reality headset that was initially designed for video gaming purposes. Meta (when Meta was Facebook) acquired Oculus VR in 2014 for $2 billion.

By acquiring Oculus VR, Meta directly entered into the virtual reality market when developers and tech enthusiasts were showing growing interest in VR. Mark Zuckerberg is very serious about VR, and he will try to uplift humanity by using this technology.

Onavo Acquisition

Meta Acquired Onavo in 2013, an Israeli company which performs web analytics on other mobile apps to determine customer usage. Onavo was founded in 2010. Although, officially Meta Inc. never disclosed the acquisition amount but according to an analyst estimate, it would have been between $100 million and $200 million.

Beluga Acquisition

With Beluga acquisition, Meta again eliminated a potential rival. Beluga is a messaging service app. It was founded in 2010. Meta acquired Beluga in the midst of the startup’s fundraising process for an undisclosed sum. By acquiring Beluga, Meta got the technology of its highly successful Messenger platform. And again, Meta expanded its offerings and created a market monopoly.

These acquisitions show how a company should expand. Maybe it could not be the best way to expand but it has been the best way for Meta Inc.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Personal Life

Zuckerberg’s grandparents were originally Jews and migrated from Austria and Germany. So, Mark and his sisters were all raised in a Jewish reform family. His parents were well educated as you have seen earlier in the blog. His mother Karen Zuckerberg was a psychiatrist. His father Edward Zuckerberg was a dentist by profession. And their parents nurtured Zuckerberg in a very sensible manner and provided him a base to grow to fulfill his dream.

Wife

Mark Zuckerberg married Priscilla Chan on May 19th, 2012. Priscilla Chan was born in the USA. Her parents were Chinese-Vietnamese refugees. Priscilla was also a student at Harvard University and pursuing medicine. 

They both met in a party during Zuckerberg’s sophomore year in 2003. After the party they started dating. She also moved into Zuckerberg’s rented house in Palo Alto. After completing her studies in Harvard, she got admission in University of California for her further studies in the medical field and became a pediatrician.

After completing her studies, they both got married in 2012 in the grounds of Mark Zuckerberg’s mansion in an event that also celebrated her graduation from medical school.

Childrens

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla have three children. The eldest one is Maxima Zuckerberg, and she was born on December 1st, 2015. They also gave her a Chinese name – Chen Mingyu. In August 2017, the couple had their second child and named her August Zuckerberg. Very Recently, on March 24, 2023, Zuckerberg announced the birth of his third daughter, Aurelia Chan Zuckerberg, on Instagram, writing: “You’re such a little blessing.”

Sisters

Mark Zuckerberg has three sisters, Arielle, Randi and Donna.

Hobbies

Other than programming and building companies, Mark Zuckerberg loves to travel. In 2017, Zuckerberg with his wife Priscilla Chan Zuckerberg began a nationwide tour “to visit every state in the union and learn more about a silver of the nearly two billion people who regularly use their Social network – Facebook.” In the tour, he met with almost every kind of person who were in different professions. He met with farmers, business owners etc.

Mark Zuckerberg also loves to play sports. His favorite sports are Mixed Martial Arts and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He is very open about his love for these two sports. Zuckerberg plays these sports not just for fun. He deeply loves these two sports. Even, Zuckerberg competed in a BJJ tournament on May 6, 2023, and guess what? He won both a silver and gold medal in gi and no gi, competing at white belt.

Mark Zuckerberg also loves to play with pets. He has a pet dog named “Beast”. And the beast is really cute. You have to check his Facebook page.

Religious beliefs

As we discussed earlier, Mark Zuckerberg with his three sisters were raised in a reform Jewish family but Zuckerberg later identified himself as an atheist. This has seen in many tech entrepreneurs and scientists that they believe that religion is a waste of time. However, in 2016, he said that “I went through a period where I questioned things, but now I believe religion is very important.”

Controversies Faced by Mark Zuckerberg

There are many controversies faced by Mark Zuckerberg. Some of those controversies changed his way of working. Some famous controversies which were spread like a fire are given below.

1. Biggest Controversy Faced by Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook Origin Controversy

Just after six days of Thefacebook launched, those three Harvard seniors, accused Mark Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing he would help them with their idea to build a social network called HarvardConnections.com (as we discussed earlier), while he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product. Those three Harvard seniors complained to the daily newspaper of Harvard University, The Harvard Crimson. And the newspaper accepted the complaint and started investigating the matter. While all these things, Mark Zuckerberg tried hard to convince the editors of The Harvard Crimson not to run the story. But when they refused him. He also tried in his own way. He broke into two of the editor’s email accounts for which he used their private login data logs from TheFacebook. But he did not get anything useful.

At last, the three Harvard seniors filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg and the matter moved to court. And in the court, it was proved that the idea of “Thefacebook” was similar to “HarvardConnections.com”. His three seniors won the case. The whole matter was settled for $65 million, which was $20 million in cash and another $45 million in the form of stakes in Facebook.

2. The Pakistan Controversy – ‘Draw Mohammad’ Controversy

In 2010, Mark Zuckerberg and his co-founders got into a blasphemy case because of a Facebook contest. A contest Draw Mohammad contest was organized by a German lady on Facebook. When the people of Muslim countries, especially Pakistanis, noticed this contest, they got offended. And immediately, Pakistan’s Deputy Attorney General Muhammad Azhar appealed for an investigation and asked Interpol to arrest Mark Zuckerberg and his co-founders cum friends Chris and Dustin for insulting Mohammad. On May 19, 2010, Facebook’s website was temporarily blocked in Pakistan until Facebook removed the contest from its site at the end of May month.

3. Eduardo Saverin

Remember Eduardo Saverin? Yes, he was among the co-founders of Facebook. He was an important person who worked very hard to build Facebook. In 2005, Eduardo Saverin filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg and Facebook, alleging that Zuckerberg had illegally spent Saverin’s money for his personal use. This lawsuit was settled out of court. The terms of this settlement were kept secret. The company affirmed Saverin’s title as co-founder of Facebook, and after the settlement Saverin agreed to stop talking to the press.

4. Hawaiian Land Ownership

In 2014, Mark Zuckerberg bought 700 acres of land in Kauai Island of Hawaii. Now, because he thought that he was the owner now and he could do whatever with his land. So, he made a stone wall all around the property. But one day some families of Kauai Island claimed that they were the inherited legal owners of the land and Mark Zuckerberg occupied their land.

Then in January 2017, Zuckerberg filed eight “quiet title and partition” lawsuits against those local Hawaiian families to sell the land. Hawaiian people posted this whole matter on Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg got too much hate because of that post.

Mark did not expect that the matter would turn out like this. So, he apologized and dropped the lawsuits. He said that he was not aware of Hawaiian land sell rules. He thought that the rules of buying land were the same as in the USA.

5. The Cambridge Analytica Controversy

In March 2018, media outlets including The New York Times and The Observer reported that the U.K.- based political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had paid an outside researcher to collect data on 50 million Facebook users without their permission. The New York Times reported that Cambridge Analytica’s goal was to use the data for its trademark, and it was potentially the influence of the election.

Later that month, Mark appeared on Capitol Hill to testify before the House and the Senate Committee about Facebook’s consumer data.

The statement said that actions would be undertaken by Facebook to prevent future incidents of this nature, including “safeguarding our platform,” “investigating other apps,” and “building better controls” and many more of the same respects.

6. Testimony before U.S. Congress

There have been some instances when Mark Zuckerberg had to give testimony before the U.S. Congress. Now, here is the thing that these types of controversies are very normal if you are a tech company, and you are handling someone’s (User’s) personal data.

Mark Zuckerberg, on April 10 and 11, 2018, testified before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation regarding the usage of personal data by Facebook in relation to the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data breach. Zuckerberg clearly explained and said the whole matter was a breach of trust between Aleksandr Kogan, Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook. So, the committee asked him for the legit evidence. But Zuckerberg has refused requests to appear to give evidence on the matter to a Parliamentary committee in the United Kingdom.

Personal View of Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg is among the world’s top faces who understand technology. People look to Zuckerberg to learn about the future. So, this is important to get the real information from them rather than just believing in rumors. In this section, you will know the views of Mark Zuckerberg on the world’s most concerned topics. Let’s start.

Social Media

Personally, Mark Zuckerberg is not a big fan of social media. According to Zuckerberg social media is one of the best tools in this world of technology. If somebody is using it for connecting and making relationships online, then it is the best tool 100%. But if somebody is sitting there and consuming stuff (contents) then it is bad. Being a tech entrepreneur and founder of the world’s largest social networking site, he said that he built these platforms to betterment people’s online experience, not to waste their time for just consuming content. He said in an interview that he would love to teach how to code to his child instead of using social media for just consuming content. 

Many studies show that people who are excessively using social media and just scrolling and consuming content leads to anxiety and depression. A documentary “The Social Dilemma” explained all the problems caused by social media. You can watch that. 

Social media is really a big, concerned topic and in order to keep your mental health well, you should regulate your use of social media.

Metaverse and Artificial Intelligence

Many critics say that because of the rapid growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Facebook has changed its focus from Metaverse to AI. But replying to rumors, Zuckerberg says that he did not shift his focus from Metaverse to AI. His company Meta has always been working in both fields. And he is very focused in both the fields. He truly believes that these two things (Metaverse and AI) are the future of technology.

User Data Privacy

User data privacy, this is a thing for which he has always been in controversy. Although, Zuckerberg says that user data is a very important thing to be protected. Some information which people come to his platform and share is their choice. But as a CEO of a company, he always tries to protect his users’ data and that is the reason why people trust Facebook now Meta.

Tech Industry

According to Mark Zuckerberg, technology is the best tool humanity has ever had. OfCourse, it is like a double-edged sword. But by using technology one can really change the whole of humanity in a better direction. And by creating platforms such as Facebook, he is also shaping in a better direction. He says that technology gives people freedom to express his views on global topics which is not possible. So, in a nutshell the thing is this is how somebody is using this double-edged sword.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Vision about Future

According to Mark Zuckerberg, the future is Metaverse and AI. People are going to upgrade themselves from just using the internet on phones to using Metaverse. Because it will help them do their work more easily and efficiently. By entering the Virtual world, in a fraction of second anyone can be at their office giving their presentation from his hologram. These seem very impractical ideas till now but the rapid growth of AI shows that these ideas are not impractical at all. All these things are going to happen very soon. So, he is very optimistic about the future. 

Philanthropic Works Done by Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg, a man who is among the richest persons on earth. Many people just think that money is everything but what are the views of the richest persons on money? They clearly without any doubt say that money is a need for humans, but it is not everything. So, if you have more money than your needs then give it to those who need it the most. Giving back to society is the most beautiful expression of gratitude towards humanity.

And Mark Zuckerberg is also a big believer in the philosophy of giving back. In this section of the blog, you will learn about the philanthropic works of Mark Zuckerberg along with his wife Priscilla Chan Zuckerberg. Let’s start.

1. In 2010, Zuckerberg with Bill gates and Warren Buffet signed “The Giving Pledge”. In this pledge they said that they will donate half of their wealth to charity. Zuckerberg also asked many other rich persons to come and join the pledge.

2. The Chan-Zuckerberg initiative – The Chan – Zuckerberg Initiative is a philanthropic organization started by Mark and his wife Priscilla Chan with an investment of 99% assets of the shares at Meta, previously Facebook. It is known as the “world’s best-funded philanthropic organization”. The beginning of this organization was announced with the announcement of the birth of their first daughter, Maxima Chan Zuckerberg.

The main initiative of this organization is to “build a more inclusive, just, and healthy future for everyone and to advance human potential and promote equality in areas such as health, education, scientific research, and energy”.

This organization is headquartered in Redwood City, California.

3. In COVID-19 pandemic, Zuckerberg donated $25 million to a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-backed accelerator that is searching for treatment for the disease. In the pandemic when journalism was very much affected, Zuckerberg announced $25 million in grants to support local journalism that was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and $75 million in advertisement purchase in local newspapers by Facebook Inc., where Facebook would market itself.

These are just some of Zuckerberg’s philanthropic works. Mark is an amazing human being who dedicated his whole life to uplift humanity. We should take inspiration from him and do good for humanity, at least as much we can do, we should do.

Awards and Achievements of Mark Zuckerberg

Honestly, it is very hard to write how many awards and achievements Zuckerberg had in his life till now. Because he got many awards, and his achievements are just amazing. In the field of business, Zuckerberg achieved almost everything. In this section, here are some awards and achievements.

1. Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest self-made billionaire at the age of 23.

2. In 2010, He won the “Person of the Year” award by the “Times” magazine.

3. Between the span of 2009 and 2012, he made it into the “Times 100 list”, which consisted of the 100 most influential people in the world.

These are very few things (awards and achievements) covered in this section. There is also a famous movie which was based on Zuckerberg’s life which is written below.

4. The Social Network – The Social Network is a movie which is based on Mark Zuckerberg’s life and on Facebook. It was released on October 1, 2010. Jesse Eisenberg played the role of Zuckerberg in the movie. There are many controversies about this movie which you can read on Wikipedia in more detail. Basically, the whole controversy is around Zuckerberg’s personality. After watching this movie, many people were very curious about Mark’s personality.

So, how Mark Zukerberg is as a person? Is he the same as depicted in the movie “The social network”? Well, there might be some similarities but a movie, however, is a movie cannot be considered a reality. In the movie, He was portrayed as socially awkward, cold, easily manipulated, dishonest, and disloyal. Which is actually quite different from reality. Mark Zuckerberg is an INTJ (Introversion, Intuition, Thinking, Judgement) personality type entrepreneur. Which is quite similar to that of Elon Musk. He is an introvert, who has a strict schedule and works with a vision in mind.

Famous Quotes Said by Mark Zuckerberg

“The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”

– Mark Zuckerberg

“Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.”

– Mark Zuckerberg

“People don’t care about what someone says about you in a movie – or even what you say, right? They care about what you build. And if you can make something that makes people’s life better, then that’s something that’s really good.”

– Mark Zuckerberg

“The question I ask myself like almost every day is, ‘Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?’’’

– Mark Zuckerberg

“I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.”

– Mark Zuckerberg

“The thing that we are trying to do at Facebook, is just help people connect and communicate more efficiently.”

– Mark Zuckerberg

Insightful Podcast and Interviews of Mark Zuckerberg

Books Written about Mark Zuckerberg

1. “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal” by Ben Mezrich.

2. “The Facebook Effect: The inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World” by David Kirkpatrick

3. “Billionaire Boy: Mark Zuckerberg in His Own Words” by George Beahm.

4. “Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe” by Roger McNamee.

5. “Mark Zuckerberg: The Face Behind Facebook” by Rick Worthy.

Some Lesser-Known Facts About Mark Zuckerberg

1) Mark Zuckerberg was approached by several multinational companies with high paying job offers (including AOL and Microsoft) before he even graduated high school, but he rejected them all.

2) Zuckerberg suffers from red and green color blindness. This means that the color he can easily see is blue. Which is why he picked the color blue for Facebook.

3) “The Social Network” is a movie based on his life.

4) Zuckerberg has been a vegetarian since 2011. He once said that he would only eat meat if he had killed the animal himself.

5) Mark Zuckerberg knows 6 languages including English, Hebrew, French, Latin, Greek, and Mandarin Chinese. In an interview, his Chinese wife said that he knows mandarin language better than her.

6) He dropped out of Harvard in 2004 to focus on Facebook but went back in 2017 to complete his degree.

7) It has been known that his business cards have the tagline, “I’m CEO, Bitch!”

8) As per the Forbes estimate, by becoming a billionaire at 23, he became one of the youngest billionaires.

9) Zuckerberg doesn’t have his own office. He has a desk in an open space just like the rest of his staff.

10) Mark Zuckerberg owns a Hungarian sheepdog. His dog’s name is Beast, who has a Facebook page with 1.5 million fans.

Conclusion

So, this was the blog on the life of Mark Zuckerberg, one of the most influential people in the world, youngest self-made billionaire, founder and CEO of world’s largest social networking site “Facebook”. Nobody could have thought that something that started for fun in a dorm room would change the face of social media. With the visionary thinking, the drive and the controversial decisions, Mark Zuckerberg has redefined the concept of social networking and has left an indelible mark globally. He inspired a lot of people. He set an example for the young minds to follow their passion and build something better for humanity. Long story short, he is a genius who is constantly working for the betterment of society.

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