Facebook is today a billion-dollar company. The man behind the internet giant is Mark Zuckerberg. The co-founder of Facebook celebrates his 36th birthday on Thursday. From being the ‘nerd’ in Harvard dormitories to owning and running the biggest technology company in the world, Mark Zuckerberg has most definitely come a long way.
As a college student, Mark Zuckerberg created TheFacebook.com along with his fellow roommates Chris Huges, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum, and Eduardo Saverin in hopes of gaining a few hundred users. 11 years later, his site has more than 1.4 billion active users each month.
Facebook to become ‘privacy-focused’ like WhatsApp: Zuckerberg
Interesting facts about Mark Zuckerberg:
- Mark Zuckerberg held the title of the youngest self-made billionaire for the longest time. The Facebook co-founder and CEO reached $1 billion back in 2008 when he was just 23 years old. Kylie Jenner recently beat Zuckerberg to become the youngest self-made billionaire.
- He met his future wife, Priscilla Chan, in line at a party for his fraternity. “He was this nerdy guy who was just a little bit out there,” Chan told the New Yorker. “I remember he had these beer glasses that said ‘pound include beer dot H.’ It’s a tag for C++. It’s like college humor but with a nerdy, computer-science appeal.”
- When he was a senior in high school he co-created an app called Synapse Media Player, an MP3 player that kept track of the user’s favorite songs and made playlists based on their choices, essentially an earlier version of Spotify or Pandora.Microsoft looked to acquire the company and its founders, but instead of working for the cyber tech giant, Zuckerberg and co-creator Adam D’Angelo — who later found Quora — got a patent for the tech and then went to college instead.
- Blocking Zuckerberg or Priscilla Chan isn’t an option for users on Facebook. If you attempt to block them, an error message will appear that reads, “this profile can’t be blocked for now.”
- His company has created or bought at least 20 different iOS applications. The priciest of the bunch was WhatsApp, which Facebook purchased for a whopping $19 billion in February 2014.
- Zuckerberg has one of the most popular feuds with fellow billionaire, Elon Musk. What started as a partnership soon resulted into both Zuckerberg and Musk taking a jibe at each other. Facebook’s $200 million Internet.org satellite which took off in one of Musk’s rockets exploded. This led to Zuckerberg blaming SpaceX for their satellite, while Musk being eccentric as he is responded saying that a free launch was given to them.
- Zuckerberg doesn’t have a verified Twitter profile and has nearly 3 lakh followers despite not being very active on the micro-blogging site.
- Mark Zuckerberg turned vegetarian in 2011, declaring he would only eat meat of animals if he killed the animal himself.
