At the young and fairly impressive age of only 34, Mark Zuckerberg is globally renowned for being the legal founder of Facebook; one of the most popular Social Media sites of all time. With an estimated worth of some $71 billion and as a known investor in the Giving Pledge (where billionaires pledge more than half of their fortune to charity): what does Mr Zuckerberg do to keep himself rich?
Born in 1984 in New York, this American businessman created a computing network from an Atari when he was just twelve years old. He studied at a private high school where he developed the first version of what we now call ‘Pandora’, a system which he still takes royalties for. He attended Harvard as of 2002 where he built a program which matches students to courses and invented a program he called ‘Facemash‘ (Washington Post)… you guessed it. Facemash later became TheFacebook, then Facebook a short time thereafter…and the jewel in his expensive crown.
After a legal suit in the early 00’s Zuckerberg was accused of stealing the Facebook idea from colleagues he had worked with in Harvard. A settlement was eventually reached and it did nothing to inhibit him. Facebook continued to be fully successful and is known nowadays as one of the two biggest digital marketing advertising sites online. Strangely, Zuckerberg’s finances seem to be inextricably tied to the successes and failures, and he operates as the CEO to this day.
Zuckerberg is a well known figurehead and has guest spoken at mobile world conferences, is frequently interviewed by magazines and is always developing, changing and updating his social media platform to ensure that Facebook stays ahead of the game. He believes in marketing strategies combined with speedy software and accessible internet, demonstrated by the launching of the internet.org (TechCrunch) project. In spite of numerous offers throughout his whole career Mr Zuckerbeg has clung to his company, recognizing its vast potential and knowing that selling it would be folly.
Where other billionaires take years to achieve their goals, Zuckerberg done it before he even finished his studies. At 34 we think it is safe to say we have not hear the last from him yet, although it remains to be seen how he will go about modifying, improving and building upon his love of software development in the future. After Facebook’s fairly recent and very clever move of buying out Instagram in 2017 we can only guess at how far this man’s determination and drive will take him.
Of all of the billionaires in the world Zuckerberg probably gets the most stigma. The combination of the lawsuit and the Russian’s hacking of Facebook in order to control the outcome of the American elections has left his reputation somewhat damaged. When combined with the various other hacking instances that Facebook have experienced should have had a detrimental effect on the company. However, despite all of this, Facebook are still a market leader; and Mark Zuckerberg continues to inspire millions, every day.