The Most Influential Person on AIB This Week Is Mark Elliot Zuckerberg

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York, U.S. He is an American computer programmer who was co-founder of Facebook, a social networking Web site.

In 2002, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg enrolled in Harvard University, after graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, On February 4, 2004, he introduced thefacebook.com, which was renamed Facebook in 2005. Facebook is a directory where fellow Harvard students may enter their data and images into a framework he had created. Half of the student body had signed up for Facebook within just two weeks of creation. Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, two of Zuckerberg’s flatmates, worked with him to expand the site’s functionality and make it accessible to other colleges around the nation.

Facebook gained much popularity due to the ability of registered users to make profiles, post images and other material, and communicate with friends, But unlike other social networking sites, it placed more of an emphasis on “trusted connections,” or genuine names (and email addresses). Also, it gives networking special attention as registered users can share information with friends of friends in addition to each user’s network of friends, or “social graph,” as described by Zuckerberg.

In the summer of 2004, the group relocated to Palo Alto, California, where Zuckerberg persuaded venture entrepreneur Peter Thiel to provide them with preliminary funding. Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard to focus on the startup business, which he later became CEO and president of. Facebook received its initial significant venture money infusion ($12.7 million) in May 2005. Four months later, Facebook allowed high school kids to sign up. Also, Foreign colleges and institutions also started registering and by September 2006, anyone with an email address could join a regional network based on where they lived.

Around that time, Zuckerberg rejected a $1 billion buyout offer from Yahoo!, but in 2007, Facebook reached an agreement with the software giant in which Microsoft paid $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in the social media platform; two years later, Digital Sky Technologies paid $200 million for a 1.96 percent stake. The estimated value of Zuckerberg in 2008 was $1.5 billion. Zuckerberg’s net worth was estimated to be over $19 billion following Facebook’s first public offering (IPO) of stock in 2012.

In October 2021, Facebook changed its company parent name to Meta Platforms. The name change indicated a focus on the “metaverse,” in which users would engage in virtual reality settings.

Mark is married to Priscillian Chan.