Mark Elliot Zuckerberg

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) is an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. He is best known as one of five co-founders of the social networking site Facebook. Zuckerberg is the chairman and chief executive of Facebook, Inc.^[5][6] Zuckerberg's personal wealth is estimated to be $9.4 billion as of 2012.^[4]
Born and raised in New York state, Zuckerberg began writing software as a hobby in middle school, with help from his father and a tutor (who called him a prodigy). In high school, he excelled in classic literature and fencing while studying at Phillips Exeter Academy.
Zuckerberg later attended Harvard College, majoring in computer science and psychology. In his sophomore year, he wrote a notorious application that he called Facemash that allowed students on the college's network to vote on the relative attractiveness of other students. It was shut down within days, and led to disciplinary action.
He launched Facebook from his dormitory room. With the help of friends, he took Facebook to other campuses nationwide and soon after moved to Palo Alto, California. By 2007, Facebook had made him a billionaire at the age of 23.^[7] By 2010, Facebook had an estimated 500 million users worldwide and reached 1 billion in 2012. Zuckerberg was involved in various legal disputes initiated by others who claimed a share of the company due to their help in setting it up.
Since 2010, Zuckerberg has been named among the 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world by Time magazine's Person of the Year.^[8][9][10] In 2010, a fictionalized account of Zuckerberg's life was made into a film, The Social Network.

The Rise of Facebook

In 2005, Zuckerberg's enterprise received a huge boost from the venture capital firm Accel Partners. Accel invested $12.7 million into the network, which at the time was open only to ivy league students. Zuckerberg's company then granted access to other colleges, high school and international schools, pushing the site's membership to more than 5.5 million users by December 2005. The site then began attracting the interest of other companies, who wanted to advertize with the popular social hub. Not wanting to sell out, Zuckerberg turned down offers from companies such as Yahoo! and MTV Networks. Instead, he focused on expanding the site, opening up his project to outside developers and adding more features.

Zuckerberg seemed to be going nowhere but up, however in 2006, the business mogul faced his first big hurdle. The creators of Harvard Connection claimed that Zuckerberg stole their idea, and insisted the software developer needed to pay for their business losses. Zuckerberg maintained that the ideas were based on two very different types of social networks but, after lawyers searched Zuckerberg's records, incriminating Instant Messages revealed that Zuckerberg may have intentionally stolen the intellectual property of Harvard Connection and offered Facebook users' private information to his friends.

Zuckerberg later apologized for the incriminating messages, saying he regretted them. "If you're going to go on to build a service that is influential and that a lot of people rely on, then you need to be mature, right?" he said in an interview with The New Yorker. "I think I've grown and learned a lot."

Although an initial settlement of $65 million was reached between the two parties, the legal dispute over the matter continued well into 2011, after Narendra and the Winklevosses claimed they were misled in regards to the value of their stock.

Zuckerberg faced yet another personal challenge when the 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires, by writer Ben Mezrich, hit stores. Mezrich was heavily criticized for his re-telling of Zuckerberg's story, which used invented scenes, re-imagined dialogue and fictional characters. Regardless of how true-to-life the story was, Mezrich managed to sell the rights of the tale to screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, and the critically acclaimed film The Social Network received eight Academy Award nominations.