Sheryl K. Sandberg
Sandberg at the Moët Hennessy Financial Times Club Dinner in 2011.
Born	Sheryl Kara Sandberg (1969-08-28) August 28, 1969 (age 42) Washington, D.C.
Alma mater	Harvard College (A.B.) Harvard Business School (M.B.A.)
Occupation	COO of Facebook
Salary	$300,000 (2011)[1]
Spouse	Brian Kraff (divorced 2004); David Goldberg (2004–present)
Children	2[2]

Sheryl Kara Sandberg^[3] (born August 28, 1969) is an American businesswoman. She has served as the chief operating officer of Facebook since 2008. Prior to Facebook, Sandberg was Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google. She also was involved in launching Google's philanthropic arm Google.org. Prior to Google, Sandberg served as chief of staff for the United States Department of the Treasury. In 2012, she was named in Time 100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world assembled by Time.^[4]

Early life and career[link]

Sandberg was born in 1969 in Washington, D.C.,^[5] the daughter of Adele and Joel Sandberg and the oldest of three siblings.^[3] Her family moved to North Miami Beach, Florida when she was two years old.^[5] She attended public school, where she was "always at the top of her class."^[5] Sandberg taught aerobics in the 1980s while in high school.^[6]

In 1987, Sandberg enrolled at Harvard College and in 1991, graduated with a B.A. in Economics and was awarded the John H. Williams Prize for the top graduating student in economics.^[7] While at Harvard, Sandberg met then professor Larry Summers who became her mentor and thesis adviser.^[8] Summers recruited her to be his research assistant at the World Bank,^[5] where she worked on health projects in India dealing with leprosy, AIDS, and blindness.^[9]

In 1993, she enrolled at Harvard Business School and in 1995 she earned her M.B.A. with highest distinction.^[7] After business school, Sandberg worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company. From 1996 to 2001, Sandberg served as Chief of Staff to then United States Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers under President Bill Clinton where she helped lead the Treasury’s work on forgiving debt in the developing world during the Asian financial crisis.^[9] She joined Google Inc. in 2001 and served as its Vice President of Global Online Sales & Operations, from November 2001 to March 2008. She was responsible for online sales of Google's advertising & publishing products and also for sales operations of Google's consumer products & Google Book Search. ^[10]

Facebook[link]

In late 2007, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook, met Sandberg at a Christmas party held by Dan Rosensweig; at the time, she was considering becoming a senior executive for the Washington Post Company.^[5] Zuckerberg had no formal search for a COO but thought of Sandberg as "a perfect fit" for this role.^[5] They spent more time together in January 2008 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and in March 2008 Facebook announced hiring Sheryl Sandberg away from Google.^[11]

After joining the company, Sandberg quickly began trying to figure out how to make Facebook profitable. Before she joined, the company was "primarily interested in building a really cool site; profits, they assumed, would follow."^[5] By late spring, Facebook's leadership had agreed to rely on advertising, "with the ads discreetly presented"; by 2010, Facebook became profitable.^[5] According to Facebook, Sandberg oversees the firm's business operations including sales, marketing, business development, human resources, public policy and communications.^[12]

Her executive compensation for FY 2011 was $300,000 base salary plus $30,491,613 in FB shares. According to her Form 3, she also owns 38,122,000 stock options and restricted stock units (worth approx. $1.45 billion as of mid-May 2012) that will be completely vested by May 2022, subject to her continued employment through the vesting date. ^[13]

Personal life[link]

In 2004, Sandberg married David Goldberg.^[3] Goldberg later became CEO of SurveyMonkey.^[5]

Other[link]

In 2009, Sandberg was named to the board of the Walt Disney Company.^[14] She also joined the Board of Directors of Starbucks, which comes with a $280,000 annual salary.^[15] She also serves on the boards of the Brookings Institution, Women for Women International, V-Day, and the Ad Council.^[7] In 2008, she wrote an article for The Huffington Post in support of her mentor Larry Summers who was then under fire for his comments about women.^[16] In May 2011, Sandberg gave the Commencement Address at the Barnard College graduation ceremony.^[17]

Rankings[link]

Sheryl Sandberg has been ranked one of the 50 "Most Powerful Women in Business" by Fortune Magazine since at least 2008. In 2007, she was ranked #29 and was the youngest woman on the list.^[18] In 2008, she was ranked #34.^[19] In 2009, Sheryl was #22 on 50 Most Powerful Women in Business by Fortune.^[20] In 2010, Sandberg was #16 on 50 Most Powerful Women in Business by Fortune.^[21]

In addition, in 2007, she was ranked #19 on 50 "Women to Watch" by The Wall Street Journal.^[22] She was ranked #21 on that list in 2008.^[23] In 2011, she was ranked #5 on "the world's 100 most powerful women" by Forbes.^[24]

Sandberg was also named one of the "25 Most Influential People on the Web" by Business Week.^[25]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sheryl Sandberg

• Transcript and Video of Speech by Sherly Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer, Facebook: Barnard College Commencement (2011)

Grace Murray Hopper
Grace Hopper (January 1984)
Born	(1906-12-09)December 9, 1906 New York City, New York
Died	January 1, 1992(1992-01-01) (aged 85) Arlington, Virginia
Place of burial	Arlington National Cemetery
Allegiance	United States of America
Service/branch	United States Navy
Years of service	1943–1966, 1967–1971, 1972–1986
Rank	Rear Admiral (lower half)
Awards	Defense Distinguished Service Medal Legion of Merit Meritorious Service Medal American Campaign Medal World War II Victory Medal National Defense Service Medal 30px Armed Forces Reserve Medal with two Hourglass Devices Naval Reserve Medal

Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy officer. A pioneer in the field, she was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, and developed the first compiler for a computer programming language.^{[1][2][3][4][5]} She conceptualized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first modern programming languages. She is credited with popularizing the term "debugging" for fixing computer glitches (motivated by an actual moth removed from the computer). Due to the breadth of her accomplishments and her naval rank, she is sometimes referred to as "Amazing Grace." The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Hopper (DDG-70) was named for her, as was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC.

Early life and education[link]

Hopper was born Grace Brewster Murray in New York City. She was the oldest in a family of three children. She was curious as a child, a life-long trait. At the age of seven she decided to determine how an alarm clock worked. She dismantled seven alarm clocks before her mother realized what she was doing; she was then limited to one clock.^[6] For her preparatory school education, she attended the Hartridge School in Plainfield, New Jersey. Rejected for early admission to Vassar College at age 16 (her test scores in Latin were too low), she was admitted the following year. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar in 1928 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics and earned her Master's degree at Yale University in 1930.

In 1934, she earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale under the direction of Øystein Ore.^[7][8] Her dissertation, New Types of Irreducibility Criteria, was published that same year.^[9] Hopper began teaching mathematics at Vassar in 1931, and was promoted to associate professor in 1941.

She was married to New York University professor Vincent Foster Hopper (1906–1976^[10]) from 1930 until their divorce in 1945.^[7] She never remarried, and she kept his surname.

World War II naval service[link]

In 1943, Hopper obtained a leave of absence from Vassar and was sworn in to the United States Navy Reserve, one of many women to volunteer to serve in the WAVES. She had to get an exemption to enlist; she was 15 pounds (6.8 kg) below the Navy minimum weight of 120 pounds (54 kg). She reported in December and trained at the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Hopper graduated first in her class in 1944, and was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard University as a lieutenant, junior grade. She served on the Mark I computer programming staff headed by Howard H. Aiken. Hopper and Aiken coauthored three papers on the Mark I, also known as the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. Hopper's request to transfer to the regular Navy at the end of the war was declined due to her age (38). She continued to serve in the Navy Reserve. Hopper remained at the Harvard Computation Lab until 1949, turning down a full professorship at Vassar in favor of working as a research fellow under a Navy contract at Harvard.^[11]

UNIVAC[link]

In 1949, Hopper became an employee of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation as a senior mathematician and joined the team developing the UNIVAC I. In the early 1950s the company was taken over by the Remington Rand corporation and it was while she was working for them that her original compiler work was done. The compiler was known as the A compiler and its first version was A-0.^[12]:11

In 1952 she had an operational compiler. "Nobody believed that," she said. "I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic."^[13]

In 1954 Hopper was named the company's first director of automatic programming, and her department released some of the first compiler-based programming languages, including ARITH-MATIC, MATH-MATIC and FLOW-MATIC.

COBOL[link]

In the spring of 1959 a two day conference known as the CODASYL brought together computer experts from industry and government. Hopper served as the technical consultant to the committee, and many of her former employees served on the short-term committee that defined the new language COBOL. The new language extended Hopper's FLOW-MATIC language with some ideas from the IBM equivalent, COMTRAN. Hopper's belief that programs should be written in a language that was close to English rather than in machine code or languages close to machine code (such as assembly language) was captured in the new business language, and COBOL would go on to be the most ubiquitous business language to date.^[14]

From 1967 to 1977, Hopper served as the director of the Navy Programming Languages Group in the Navy's Office of Information Systems Planning and was promoted to the rank of captain in 1973.^[11] She developed validation software for COBOL and its compiler as part of a COBOL standardization program for the entire Navy.^[11]

Standards[link]

In the 1970s, Hopper advocated for the Defense Department to replace large, centralized systems with networks of small, distributed computers. Any user on any computer node could access common databases located on the network.^[12]:119 She pioneered the implementation of standards for testing computer systems and components, most significantly for early programming languages such as FORTRAN and COBOL. The Navy tests for conformance to these standards led to significant convergence among the programming language dialects of the major computer vendors. In the 1980s, these tests (and their official administration) were assumed by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), known today as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Retirement[link]

Hopper retired from the Naval Reserve with the rank of commander at the end of 1966. She was recalled to active duty in August 1967 for a six-month period that turned into an indefinite assignment. She again retired in 1971, but was asked to return to active duty again in 1972. She was promoted to captain in 1973 by Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr.

After Rep. Philip Crane saw her on a March 1983 segment of 60 Minutes, he championed H.J.Res. 341, a joint resolution in the House of Representatives which led to her promotion to commodore by special Presidential appointment.^[15] In 1985, the rank of commodore was renamed rear admiral, lower half. She retired (involuntarily) from the Navy on August 14, 1986. At a celebration held in Boston on the USS Constitution to celebrate her retirement, Hopper was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the highest non-combat award possible by the Department of Defense. At the time of her retirement, she was the oldest commissioned officer in the United States Navy (79 years, eight months and five days), and aboard the oldest commissioned ship in the United States Navy (188 years, nine months and 23 days).^[16]

She was then hired as a senior consultant to Digital Equipment Corporation, a position she retained until her death in 1992, aged 85.

Her primary activity in this capacity was as a goodwill ambassador, lecturing widely on the early days of computers, her career, and on efforts that computer vendors could take to make life easier for their users. She visited a large fraction of Digital's engineering facilities, where she generally received a standing ovation at the conclusion of her remarks. She was an interesting and engaging speaker, and the most memorable part of these talks was her illustration of a nanosecond. She salvaged an obsolete Bell System 25 pair telephone cable, cut it to 11.8 inch (30 cm) lengths (which is the distance that light travels in one nanosecond) and handed out the individual wires to her listeners. Although no longer a serving officer, she always wore her Navy full dress uniform to these lectures.

"The most important thing I’ve accomplished, other than building the compiler, is training young people. They come to me, you know, and say, “Do you think we can do this?” I say, “Try it.” And I back ‘em up. They need that. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir ‘em up at intervals so they don’t forget to take chances."^[17]

She was laid to rest with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

Honors[link]

• 1969: She won the inaugural "computer sciences man of the year" award from the Data Processing Management Association.^[18]
• 1971: The annual Grace Murray Hopper Award for Outstanding Young Computer Professionals was established in 1971 by the Association for Computing Machinery.
• 1973: She became the first person from the United States and the first woman of any nationality to be made a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society.
• 1986: Upon her retirement, she received the Defense Distinguished Service Medal.
• 1987: She became a Computer History Museum Fellow Award Recipient.^[19]
• 1988: She received the Golden Gavel Award at the Toastmasters International convention in Washington, DC.
• 1991: She received the National Medal of Technology.
• 1996: USS Hopper (DDG-70) was launched. Nicknamed Amazing Grace, it is on a very short list of U.S. military vessels named after women.
• 2001: Eavan Boland wrote a poem dedicated to Grace Hopper titled "Code" in her 2001 release Against Love Poetry.
• 2009: The Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center named its flagship system "Hopper".^[20]

The Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center is located at 7 Grace Hopper Avenue in Monterey, California.

Grace Murray Hopper Park, located on South Joyce Street in Arlington, Virginia, is a small memorial park in front of her former residence (River House Apartments) and is now owned by Arlington County, Virginia.

Women at the world's largest software company, Microsoft Corporation, formed an employee group called Hoppers and established a scholarship in her honor. Hoppers has over 3000 members worldwide.

Brewster Academy, a school located in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, United States, dedicated their computer lab to her in 1985, calling it the Grace Murray Hopper Center for Computer Learning. Hopper had spent her childhood summers at a family home in Wolfeboro.

An administration building on Naval Support Activity Annapolis (previously known as Naval Station Annapolis) in Annapolis, Maryland is named the Grace Hopper Building in her honor.

Building 1482 aboard Naval Air Station North Island, housing the Naval Computer and Telecommunication Station San Diego, is named the Grace Hopper Building.

Building 6007, C2/CNT West, Command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or C4ISR, Center of Excellence in Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland is named the Rear Admiral Grace Hopper Building.

Grace Hopper's legacy was an inspiring factor in the creation of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.^[21] Held yearly, this conference is designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront.

Anecdotes[link]

Photo of "first computer bug"

Throughout much of her later career, Grace Hopper was much in demand as a speaker at various computer-related events. She was well known for her lively and irreverent speaking style, as well as a rich treasury of early war stories. She also received the nickname "Grandma COBOL".

• While she was working on a Mark II Computer at Harvard University in 1947, her associates discovered a moth stuck in a relay and thereby impeding operation, whereupon she remarked that they were "debugging" the system. Though the term computer bug cannot be definitively attributed to Admiral Hopper, she did bring the term into popularity.^[22] The remains of the moth can be found in the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.^[23]
• Grace Hopper is famous for her nanoseconds visual aid. People (such as generals and admirals) used to ask her why satellite communication took so long. She started handing out pieces of wire which were just under one foot long, which is the distance that light travels in one nanosecond. She gave these pieces of wire the metonym "nanoseconds."^[24] She was careful to tell her audience that the length of her nanoseconds was actually the maximum speed the signals would travel in a vacuum, and that signals would travel more slowly through the actual wires that were her teaching aids. Later she used the same pieces of wire to illustrate why computers had to be small to be fast. At many of her talks and visits, she handed out "nanoseconds" to everyone in the audience, contrasting them with a coil of wire nearly a thousand feet long, representing a microsecond. Later, while giving these lectures while working for DEC, she passed out packets of pepper which she called picoseconds.^[25]

Jay Elliot described Grace Hopper as appearing to be "all Navy" but when you reach inside, you find a "Pirate" dying to be released.^[26]

Obituary notices[link]

• Betts, Mitch (Computerworld 26: 14, 1992)
• Bromberg, Howard (IEEE Software 9: 103–104, 1992)
• Danca, Richard A. (Federal Computer Week 6: 26–27, 1992)
• Hancock, Bill (Digital Review 9: 40, 1992)
• Power, Kevin (Government Computer News 11: 70, 1992)
• Sammet, J.E. (Communications of the ACM 35 (4): 128–131, 1992)
• Weiss, Eric A. (IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 14: 56–58, 1992)

See also[link]

	United States Navy portal
	World War II portal
	Software Testing portal

• Women in computing
• Systems engineering
• Women in the United States Navy

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Beyer, Kurt W. (2009-09-30). Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age (1st ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01310-9. 
• Williams, Kathleen Broome (2004-11-15). Grace Hopper: Admiral of the Cyber Sea (1st ed.). Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-55750-952-9. 
• Marx, Christy (August 2003). Grace Hopper: the first woman to program the first computer in the United States. Women hall of famers in mathematics and science (1st ed.). New York City: Rosen Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8239-3877-3. 
• Williams, Kathleen Broome (2001). Improbable Warriors: Women Scientists and the U.S. Navy in World War II. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-55750-961-1.  Williams' book focuses on the lives and contributions of four notable women scientists: Mary Sears (1905–1997); Florence van Straten (1913–1992); Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992); Mina Spiegel Rees (1902–1997).

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Grace Hopper

• Extensive Grace Hopper Biography and Images from the United States Navy Naval Historical Center
• Grace Hopper links from Chips, the United States Navy information technology magazine
• "Grace Murray Hopper", Biographies of Women Mathematicians, Agnes Scott College
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Grace Hopper", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews, http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Hopper.html .
• www.GraceHopper.org site for the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing
• www.hopper.navy.mil Official United States Navy website for the USS Hopper, which includes a biography of Hopper
• Grace Murray Hopper Award
• The Government Technology Leadership Awards: The Gracies
• Grace Hopper at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg, 37th G8 summit (2011)
Born	Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (1984-05-14) May 14, 1984 (age 28)[1] White Plains, New York, U.S.
Residence	Palo Alto, California, U.S.[2]
Alma mater	Harvard University (Dropped out)
Occupation	Chairman and CEO of Facebook [3]
Years active	2004–present
Known for	Co-founding Facebook in 2004; world's youngest billionaire as of 2008[4]
Net worth	US$ 17.5 billion (2012)[5]
Spouse	Priscilla Chan, M.D. (m. 2012) «start: (2012)»"Marriage: Priscilla Chan, M.D. to Mark Zuckerberg" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Mark_Zuckerberg)
Relatives	Randi, Donna and Arielle (sisters)
Awards	TIME Person of the Year 2010
Website
Facebook.com/MarkZuckerberg

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) is an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. He is best known as one of four co-founders of the social networking site Facebook, of which he is chairman and chief executive.^[6]

Zuckerberg was born and raised in a Jewish household in New York state. While still in middle school in his early teens, he took up writing software programs as a hobby, beginning with BASIC, with help from his father. His father then hired a tutor to help his son develop his programming skills further. Zuckerberg's enjoyment in writing programs led him to developing computer games, writing a music player, and setting up a primitive home network he called "ZuckNet." His private tutor calls him a "prodigy." In high school he excelled in classic literature and science, while becoming proficient in four other languages. He was also captain of the school's fencing team.

He later enrolled in Harvard, majoring in computer science and sociology. In his sophomore year he wrote a program called Facemash as a "fun" project, letting students on the college's network vote on other students' photo attractiveness. It was shut down within days, but would become a template for his writing Facebook, a program he launched from his dormitory room. With the help of friends, including roommate Dustin Moskovitz, Facebook went national on other campuses, and they moved to Palo Alto, California. By 2010, the site had an estimated 500 million users worldwide. Zuckerberg and Facebook have since been involved in various legal disputes initiated by others who have claimed a share of the company's profits due to their help in setting it up. Zuckerberg is the largest individual shareholder with 28.4 percent of the common stock and controls 56.9 percent of the voting power.^[7] As of 2012^[update], his personal wealth was estimated at more than $19.1 billion, making him one of the world's youngest billionaires.^[8] Zuckerberg is one of the 30 richest people on Earth.

Zuckerberg was named four times in Time 100: in 2009 as one of the 100 influential people of the world, in 2010 as Time magazine's Person of the Year,^[9] in 2011^[10] and 2012, along with being one of the world's richest and most influential people.^[8][11] In 2010 a fictionalized account of Zuckerberg creating Facebook while in college and its later start-up phase was made into a movie dramatization, The Social Network.

Early life[link]

Zuckerberg was born in 1984 in White Plains, New York.^[12] He is the son of Karen (née Kempner), a psychiatrist, and Edward Zuckerberg, a dentist.^[13] He and his three sisters, Randi, Donna, and Arielle,^[2] were brought up in Dobbs Ferry, New York.^[2] Zuckerberg was raised Jewish, had his bar mitzvah when he turned 13,^[14][15] and has since described himself as an atheist.^{[15][16][17][18]}

At Ardsley High School, Zuckerberg had excelled in the classics before transferring to Phillips Exeter Academy in his junior year, where he won prizes in science (math, astronomy and physics) and classical studies (on his college application, Zuckerberg listed as non-English languages he could read and write: French, Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek) and was a fencing star and captain of the fencing team.^{[17][19][20][21]} In college, he was known for reciting lines from epic poems such as The Iliad.^[19]

Software developer[link]

Early years[link]

Zuckerberg began using computers and writing software as a child in middle school. His father taught him Atari BASIC Programming in the 1990s, and later hired software developer David Newman to tutor him privately. Newman calls him a "prodigy", adding that it was "tough to stay ahead of him". Zuckerberg also took a graduate course in the subject at Mercy College near his home while he was still in high school. He enjoyed developing computer programs, especially communication tools and games. In one such program, since his father's dental practice was operated from their home, he built a software program he called "ZuckNet", which allowed all the computers between the house and dental office to communicate by pinging each other. It is considered a "primitive" version of AOL's Instant Messenger, which came out the following year.^[2]

According to writer Jose Antonio Vargas, "some kids played computer games. Mark created them." Zuckerberg himself recalls this period: "I had a bunch of friends who were artists. They'd come over, draw stuff, and I'd build a game out of it." However, notes Vargas, Zuckerberg was not a typical "geek-klutz", as he later became captain of his prep school fencing team and earned a classics diploma. Napster co-founder Sean Parker, a close friend, notes that Zuckerberg was "really into Greek odysseys and all that stuff", recalling how he once quoted lines from the Roman epic poem Aeneid, by Virgil, during a Facebook product conference.^[2]

During Zuckerberg's high school years, under the company name Intelligent Media Group, he built a music player called the Synapse Media Player that used artificial intelligence to learn the user's listening habits, which was posted to Slashdot^[22] and received a rating of 3 out of 5 from PC Magazine.^[23] Microsoft and AOL tried to purchase Synapse and recruit Zuckerberg, but he chose instead to enroll at Harvard University in September 2002.

Harvard years[link]

By the time he began classes at Harvard, he had already achieved a "reputation as a programming prodigy", notes Vargas. He studied psychology and computer science as well as belonging to Alpha Epsilon Pi, a Jewish fraternity.^{[2][6][9][24]} In his sophomore year, he wrote a program he called CourseMatch, which allowed users to make class selection decisions based on the choices of other students and also to help them form study groups. A short time later, he created a different program he initially called Facemash that let students select the best looking person from a choice of photos. According to Zuckerberg's roommate at the time, Arie Hasit, "he built the site for fun". Hasit explains:

We had books called Face Books, which included the names and pictures of everyone who lived in the student dorms. At first, he built a site and placed two pictures, or pictures of two males and two females. Visitors to the site had to choose who was "hotter" and according to the votes there would be a ranking.^[25]

The site went up over a weekend, but by Monday morning the college shut it down because its popularity had overwhelmed Harvard's server and prevented students from accessing the Internet. In addition, many students complained that their photos were being used without permission. Zuckerberg apologized publicly, and the student paper ran articles stating that his site was "completely improper".^[25]

Around the time of Facemash, however, students were requesting that the university develop an internal website that would include similar photos and contact details. According to Hasit, "Mark heard these pleas and decided that if the university won't do something about it, he will, and he would build a site that would be even better than what the university had planned."^[25]

Career[link]

Zuckerberg listening to President Barack H. Obama before a private meeting where Obama dined with technology business leaders in Woodside, California, February 17, 2011. (Also pictured, from left: Carol Bartz of Yahoo!, Art Levinson of Genentech, Steve Westly of The Westly Group, and Eric Schmidt of Google.)

Facebook[link]

Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dormitory room on February 4, 2004.^[26][27] An earlier inspiration for Facebook may have come from Phillips Exeter Academy, the prep school from which Zuckerberg graduated in 2002. It 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 proximities to friends, and their telephone numbers.^[26]

Once at college, Zuckerberg's Facebook started off as just a "Harvard thing" until Zuckerberg decided to spread it to other schools, enlisting the help of roommate Dustin Moskovitz. They first started it at Stanford, Dartmouth, Columbia, New York University, Cornell, Penn, Brown, and Yale, and then at other schools that had social contacts with Harvard.^{[28][29][30][31]}

Zuckerberg moved to Palo Alto, California, with Moskovitz and some friends. They leased a small house that served as an office. Over the summer, Zuckerberg met Peter Thiel who invested in the company. They got their first office in mid-2004. According to Zuckerberg, the group planned to return to Harvard but eventually decided to remain in California.^[32][33] They had already turned down offers by major corporations to buy out Facebook. In an interview in 2007, Zuckerberg explained his reasoning:

It's 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.^[27]

He restated these same goals to Wired magazine in 2010: "The thing I really care about is the mission, making the world open."^[34] Earlier, in April 2009, Zuckerberg sought the advice of former Netscape CFO Peter Currie about financing strategies for Facebook.^[35]

On July 21, 2010, Zuckerberg reported that the company reached the 500 million-user mark.^[36] When asked whether Facebook could earn more income from advertising as a result of its phenomenal growth, he explained:

I guess we could ... If you look at how much of our page is taken up with ads compared to the average search query. The average for us is a little less than 10 percent of the pages and the average for search is about 20 percent taken up with ads ... That’s the simplest thing we could do. But we aren’t like that. We make enough money. Right, I mean, we are keeping things running; we are growing at the rate we want to.^[34]

In 2010, Steven Levy, who authored the 1984 book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, wrote that Zuckerberg "clearly thinks of himself as a hacker".^[37] Zuckerberg said that "it's OK to break things" "to make them better".^[37][38] Facebook instituted "hackathons" held every six to eight weeks where participants would have one night to conceive of and complete a project.^[37] The company provided music, food, and beer at the hackathons, and many Facebook staff members, including Zuckerberg, regularly attended.^[38] "The idea is that you can build something really good in a night", Zuckerberg told Levy. "And that's part of the personality of Facebook now ... It's definitely very core to my personality."^[37]

Vanity Fair magazine named Zuckerberg number 1 on its 2010 list of the Top 100 "most influential people of the Information Age".^[39] Zuckerberg ranked number 23 on the Vanity Fair 100 list in 2009.^[40] In 2010, Zuckerberg was chosen as number 16 in New Statesman's annual survey of the world's 50 most influential figures.^[41]

In a 2011 interview with PBS after the death of Steve Jobs, Zuckerberg said that Jobs had advised him on how to create a management team at Facebook that was "focused on building as high quality and good things as you are".^[42]

Wirehog[link]

A month after Facebook launched in February 2004, i2hub, another campus-only service, created by Wayne Chang, was launched. i2hub focused on peer-to-peer file sharing. At the time, both i2hub and Facebook were gaining the attention of the press and growing rapidly in users and publicity. In August 2004, Zuckerberg, Andrew McCollum, Adam D'Angelo, and Sean Parker launched a competing peer-to-peer file sharing service called Wirehog, a precursor to Facebook Platform applications.^[43][44]

Platform and Beacon[link]

Zuckerberg at World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland (January 2009)

On May 24, 2007, Zuckerberg announced Facebook Platform, a development platform for programmers to create social applications within Facebook. Within weeks, many applications had been built and some already had millions of users. It grew to more than 800,000 developers around the world building applications for Facebook Platform.

On November 6, 2007, Zuckerberg announced a new social advertising system called Beacon, which enabled people to share information with their Facebook friends based on their browsing activities on other sites. For example, eBay sellers could let friends know automatically what they have for sale via the Facebook news feed as they list items for sale. The program came under scrutiny because of privacy concerns from groups and individual users. Zuckerberg and Facebook failed to respond to the concerns quickly, and on December 5, 2007, Zuckerberg wrote a blog post on Facebook^[45] taking responsibility for the concerns about Beacon and offering an easier way for users to opt out of the service.

In 2007, Zuckerberg was named to the MIT Technology Review TR35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35.^[46]

On July 23, 2008, Zuckerberg announced Facebook Connect, a version of Facebook Platform for users.

Legal controversies[link]

ConnectU lawsuits[link]

Harvard students Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra accused Zuckerberg of intentionally making them believe he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com (later called ConnectU).^[47] They filed a lawsuit in 2004 but it was dismissed on a technicality on March 28, 2007. It was refiled soon thereafter in federal court in Boston. Facebook counter sued in regards to Social Butterfly, a project put out by The Winklevoss Chang Group, an alleged partnership between ConnectU and i2hub. On June 25, 2008, the case settled and Facebook agreed to transfer over 1.2 million common shares and pay $20 million in cash.^[48]

In November 2007, confidential court documents were posted on the website of 02138, a magazine that catered to Harvard alumni. They included Zuckerberg's social security number, his parents' home address, and his girlfriend's address. Facebook filed to have the documents removed, but the judge ruled in favor of 02138.^[49]

Saverin lawsuit[link]

A lawsuit filed by Eduardo Saverin against Facebook and Zuckerberg was settled out of court. Though terms of the settlement were sealed, the company affirmed Saverin's title as co-founder of Facebook. Saverin signed a non-disclosure contract after the settlement.^[50][51]

Pakistan criminal investigation[link]

In June 2010, Pakistani Deputy Attorney General Muhammad Azhar Sidiqque launched a criminal investigation into Zuckerberg and Facebook co-founders Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes after a "Draw Muhammad" contest was hosted on Facebook. The investigation also named the anonymous German woman who created the contest. Sidiqque asked the country's police to contact Interpol to have Zuckerberg and the three others arrested for blasphemy. On May 19, 2010, Facebook's website was temporarily blocked in Pakistan until Facebook removed the contest from its website at the end of May. Sidiqque also asked its UN representative to raise the issue with the United Nations General Assembly.^[52][53]

Paul Ceglia[link]

On June 30, 2010, Paul Ceglia, the owner of a wood pellet fuel company in Allegany County, upstate New York, filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, claiming 84% ownership of Facebook and seeking monetary damages. According to Ceglia, he and Zuckerberg signed a contract on April 28, 2003, that an initial fee of $1,000 entitled Ceglia to 50% of the website's revenue, as well as an additional 1% interest in the business per day after January 1, 2004, until website completion. Zuckerberg was developing other projects at the time, among which was Facemash, the predecessor of Facebook, but did not register the domain name thefacebook.com until January 1, 2004. Facebook management dismissed the lawsuit as "completely frivolous". Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt told a reporter that Ceglia's counsel had unsuccessfully sought an out-of-court settlement.^[54]

Pursuant to the contract, Ceglia agreed to pay Zuckerberg $1,000 for StreetFax and $1,000 for PageBook. The contract also refers to The Face Book, a project that was to be completed by January 2004. Ceglia offered a receipt for $1,000, dated six months after the contract, to prove he paid Zuckerberg, but it was not the full amount due, and the contract did not specify what occurs in the event of a default.^[55]

In an interview with ABC World News, Zuckerberg stated he was confident he had never signed such an agreement. At the time, Zuckerberg worked for Ceglia as a code developer on a project named "StreetFax". Judge Thomas Brown issued a restraining order on all financial transfers concerning ownership of Facebook until further notice; in response, Facebook removed the case to federal court and asked that the state court injunction be dissolved. According to Facebook, the injunction would not affect their business and lacked any legal basis.^{[56][57][58][59][60][61]}

Depictions in media[link]

[edit] The Social Network

A movie based on Zuckerberg and the founding years of Facebook, The Social Network was released on October 1, 2010, and stars Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg. After Zuckerberg was told about the film, he responded, "I just wished that nobody made a movie of me while I was still alive."^[62] Also, after the film's script was leaked on the Internet and it was apparent that the film would not portray Zuckerberg in a wholly positive light, he stated that he wanted to establish himself as a "good guy".^[63] The film is based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, which the book's publicist once described as "big juicy fun" rather than "reportage".^[64] The film's screenwriter Aaron Sorkin told New York magazine, "I don't want my fidelity to be to the truth; I want it to be to storytelling", adding, "What is the big deal about accuracy purely for accuracy's sake, and can we not have the true be the enemy of the good?"^[65]

Upon winning the Golden Globes award for Best Picture on January 16, 2011, producer Scott Rudin thanked Facebook and Zuckerberg "for his willingness to allow us to use his life and work as a metaphor through which to tell a story about communication and the way we relate to each other.”^[66] Sorkin, who won for Best Screenplay, retracted some of the impressions given in his script:^[67]

"I wanted to say to Mark Zuckerberg tonight, if you're watching, Rooney Mara's character makes a prediction at the beginning of the movie. She was wrong. You turned out to be a great entrepreneur, a visionary, and an incredible altruist."

On January 29, 2011, Zuckerberg made a surprise guest appearance on Saturday Night Live, which was being hosted by Jesse Eisenberg. They both said it was the first time they ever met.^[68] Eisenberg asked Zuckerberg, who had been critical of his portrayal by the film, what he thought of the movie. Zuckerberg replied, "It was interesting."^[69] In a subsequent interview about their meeting, Eisenberg explains that he was "nervous to meet him, because I had spent now, a year and a half thinking about him ..." He adds, "Mark has been so gracious about something that’s really so uncomfortable ... The fact that he would do SNL and make fun of the situation is so sweet and so generous. It’s the best possible way to handle something that, I think, could otherwise be very uncomfortable."^[70][71]

Disputed accuracy[link]

Jeff Jarvis, author of the book Public Parts, interviewed Zuckerberg and believes Sorkin has made too much of the story up. He states, "That's what the internet is accused of doing, making stuff up, not caring about the facts."^[72]

According to David Kirkpatrick, former technology editor at Fortune magazine and author of The Facebook Effect:The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World, (2011),^[73] "the film is only "40% true ... he is not snide and sarcastic in a cruel way, the way Zuckerberg is played in the movie." He says that "a lot of the factual incidents are accurate, but many are distorted and the overall impression is false", and concludes that primarily "his motivations were to try and come up with a new way to share information on the internet".^[72]

Although the film portrays Zuckerberg's creation of Facebook in order to elevate his stature after not getting into any of the elite final clubs at Harvard, Zuckerberg himself said he had no interest in joining the final clubs.^[2] Kirkpatrick agrees that the impression implied by the film is "false".^[72]

Karel Baloun, a former senior engineer at Facebook, notes that the "image of Zuckerberg as a socially inept nerd is overstated ... It is fiction ..." He likewise dismisses the film's assertion that he "would deliberately betray a friend".^[72]

Other depictions[link]

Zuckerberg voiced himself on an episode of The Simpsons, "Loan-a Lisa", which first aired on October 3, 2010. In the episode, Lisa Simpson and her friend Nelson encounter Zuckerberg at an entrepreneurs' convention. Zuckerberg tells Lisa that she does not need to graduate from college to be wildly successful, referencing Bill Gates and Richard Branson as examples.^[74]

On October 9, 2010, Saturday Night Live lampooned Zuckerberg and Facebook.^[75] Andy Samberg played Zuckerberg. The real Zuckerberg was reported to have been amused: "I thought this was funny."^[76]

Stephen Colbert awarded a "Medal of Fear" to Zuckerberg at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear on October 30, 2010, "because he values his privacy much more than he values yours".^[77]

Use of other social networks[link]

Zuckerberg created an account with Google+ soon after the social network was unveiled, saying he sees it as a "validation for his vision" of online social networking.^[78] By July 2011, Zuckerberg had become the most followed user on Google+, outranking Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.^[79] As of March 6, 2012, his ranking has dropped to 184 on the service, behind Page and Brin.^[80] His public profile is minimal with one photo and a bio that reads "I make things".^[81]

Zuckerberg has maintained a private account on Twitter under the username "zuck", though in 2009 he revealed that the public account "finkd" also belonged to him.^[82]

Philanthropy[link]