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In sport, a utility player is one who can play several positions competently, a sort of jack of all trades. Sports in which the term is often used include football, baseball, rugby, rugby league, water polo softball and track.

In cricket, the term all rounder is used instead, although this generally refers to a player who can both bat and bowl competently.

The term has gained prominence in all sports due to its use in fantasy leagues, but in rugby and rugby league, it is commonly used by commentators to recognize a player's versatility.

Baseball[link]

In baseball, a utility player is a player who can play several different positions. In general, each major league baseball team has at least one player who can be described as a utility player.

Most professional teams have two types of utility players. There are "utility infielders", who usually play all of the infield positions (plus occasionally catcher). Utility outfielders, or fourth outfielders, tend to play all three outfield positions at various times. Occasionally, there will be players who perform a combination of the two duties. Utility players tend to be players who come off of the bench, though this isn't absolute. Often, players who don't have high prospects to be a major league star will learn additional positions so they can look more attractive to major league clubs as bench talent.

In 1991, the Detroit Tigers' Tony Phillips was the first player to start ten games at five different positions in the same season.^[1] César Tovar,^[2] Cookie Rojas,^[3] Bert Campaneris,^[4] Shane Halter,^[5] Don Kelly, and Jose Oquendo^[6] all played every position (including pitcher) during their respective careers.

Until becoming an everyday third baseman with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, and later an everyday second baseman with the Seattle Mariners, Chone Figgins earned a reputation as the game's most respected^{[by whom?]} utility player. In 2005, for example, Figgins started 48 games at third, 45 in center field and 36 at second, and finished 17th in American League Most Valuable Player balloting.^[7] A famous current utility player is Ryan Theriot of the St. Louis Cardinals, who has played shortstop, third base, second and outfield at some point in his short major league career. Mark DeRosa is another famous utility man, playing just about every position for the Cubs, Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Cardinals, and currently the San Francisco Giants in the past 3 seasons. As well as the Detroit Tigers third baseman Brandon Inge who has played third base, catcher, left field, right field, and center field. Several players have recently been named All Stars while playing multiple positions in their All Star seasons. Second baseman Ben Zobrist of the Tampa Bay Rays has played first, third, shortstop and outfield in his career. José Bautista is also a current utility player, having played first base, second base, third base, right field, center field, and left field in his career.^[8] Zobrist and Bautista both finished in the top 10 in MVP voting while starting at least 40 games at two different defensive positions. Other utility players would include Doug Mientkiewicz, Eduardo Nunez, and Brian Bixler.

In softball, a utility player is a player who can play several positions but can also bat well. Coaches often look for such players to bat as clean-up or 5th in the lineup.

North American football[link]

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In gridiron football, the utility player is often capable of playing multiple positions, and often they may play both offense and defense. The concept was far more common in the early days of football, when pro teams used their best athletes as many ways as possible, and substitutions were far more restricted, meaning players had to stay on the field for offense, defense and "special teams". This was known as the one-platoon system.

1907 photograph of Bradbury Robinson, who threw the first legal forward pass and was the sport's first triple threat

The triple threat man, who could run, pass and kick, was particularly popular during the early days of football from the time the forward pass was invented to the World War II era (see, for instance, Bradbury Robinson, Tommy Hughitt, Sammy Baugh and, during his college years, Johnny Unitas). Most levels of football lifted the substitution restrictions during the post-World War II era in the late 1940s, beginning with "platooning" (use of different offensive and defensive units) and eventually transitioning to complete free substitution. Chuck Bednarik, a center and linebacker, was the last full-time two way player in the NFL, having retired in 1962. Despite this, the American Football League of the 1960s frequently used players at multiple positions, particularly kickers and punters (e.g. George Blanda, Paul Maguire, Cookie Gilchrist, Gino Cappelletti, and Gene Mingo, a running back who became the first black placekicker in modern professional football, among others). Because of increased injury risk awareness, since the AFL-NFL merger these types of players are increasingly rare, and true utility players are mostly backups (e.g. Guido Merkens, Brad Smith) or career minor-league players (e.g. Don Jonas, Eric Crouch). It is still very common in smaller high schools to see top players play two or even three ways (offense, defense and special teams), in multiple positions, but in college and pro ball, where rosters are larger and the talent pool is more elite, the injury risk outweighs potential benefits.

Currently, in the National Football League, Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots uses the utility player frequently. For instance, Doug Flutie, as a member of the Patriots, famously switched from quarterback to kicker for one extra-point play in 2006, to deliver the first drop kick in the NFL in sixty years. Belichick has also used his linebackers, including Bryan Cox and Mike Vrabel, as H-backs on offense, and doubled his wide receivers (e.g. Troy Brown and Randy Moss) as cornerbacks and safeties.

The tackle eligible is a special form of utility player; examples of those who used this play notably include Jason Peters, Warren Sapp, Jumbo Elliott, William "The Refrigerator" Perry, Mitch Frerotte and Anthony Muñoz. Another example of a type of utility player is the halfback option play, in which a running back performs the passing duties of a quarterback; Walter Payton, LaDanian Tomlinson and most recently Ronnie Brown have used this play multiple times, and this type of play has spawned an entire offensive scheme. Note that generally, a player who plays one regular position as well as special teams is usually not considered a utility player, nor are hybrid running back/wide receivers such as Reggie Bush; only those who play two distinct offensive and/or defensive positions are considered such, as are those who play an offensive or defensive position and in addition kick or punt.

The Arena Football League, for many years, made almost all of its players, with the exception of two players on each side (always a quarterback, a kicker {the quarterback and kicker were never on the field at the same time} and usually a wide receiver and two defensive backs), play both sides of the ball; this was known as "ironman." The "ironman" concept was dropped in 2007, but is expected to be reinstated when Arena Football 1 takes over the league in 2010.

Ice hockey[link]

In ice hockey, it is common for centres and wingers to play either position in certain situations. Depending on need, a team may use a natural centreman on the wing if they have too many centres or, conversely, a winger may be pressed to play centre because of a lack of suitable players in that area. Because of the frequency of forwards playing both positions, the term utility player tends to refer not to a player that plays more than one forward position, but to a player that can play both defense and forward. Teams may use a defenseman as a forward, or vice versa, for a variety of reasons.

Sometimes a natural defenseman who struggles on the defensive side of the game but possesses strong offensive qualities may be used as a winger. Marc-Andre Bergeron and Kurtis Foster, for example, have proven to be a quality offensive defensemen who struggle in defending their own zone. As such, they have dressed as forwards so their teams can continue to use their offensive abilities on the powerplay while still using the standard six defensemen during even strength.

An extra defenseman may also be pressed to play forward in an emergency situation, where a team has a rash of injuries to their forwards and do not have time to summon a replacement player from a farm team.

It is very common for teams to use a forward on "the point" (defense) during the powerplay to provide a greater offensive threat. Though the forward is playing defense in this situation, they aren't necessarily seen as true utility players.

Along with Bergeron and Foster, other notable defensemen that have played forward at some point in their careers include Phil Housley, Mark Streit,^[9] Christoph Schubert, Ian White and Chris Campoli.^[10] Notable forwards who have played defense include Sergei Fedorov,^[11] Mathieu Dandenault and Sami Kapanen.^[12]

In some cases a player has made a full time conversion from one position to the other and experienced success. Hockey Hall of Famer Red Kelly spent the first half of his career as an offensive defenseman for the Detroit Red Wings before finishing his career as a strong two-way centreman for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Wendel Clark was a star defenseman in junior before converting to left wing and scoring over 300 goals and 500 points in 15 NHL seasons. (Some junior hockey teams have a tendency to put their best offensive players on defence instead of as forwards, since defencemen generally have more time on the ice.) Dustin Byfuglien is an example of a current player who has made the switch from forward to defense full time. Jonathan Ericsson of the Detroit Red Wings is another example of a player who converted from forward to defense.^[13]

It is extremely rare for goaltenders to play any position other than goaltender; likewise, it is just as rare for non-goaltenders to suit up in goal, because of the significant difference in skills and equipment required for the position.

Association football[link]

For a more comprehensive list, see: Category:Association football utility players

In association football, like other sports, the utility man is usually a player who can play myriad positions. This will be commonly be defence and midfield, sometimes defence and attack. A few outfield players have also made competent substitute goalkeepers, for example Phil Jagielka and Mike Magee. But in the case of goalkeepers playing as outfield players, it is extremely rare. Some may be free kick and penalty specialists (Chilavert and Jorge Campos), but they don't hold a role in the outfield. John O'Shea a former Manchester United player, is a famous example for playing in all positions in his United career.

Basketball[link]

The term "utility player" is rarely used in basketball outside of fantasy leagues. Instead; basketball uses the terms tweener and swingman to refer to a player who can play two or three different positions, with more specific terms being combo guard, cornerman, and forward-center.

Rugby union[link]

Utility player is a term used mostly in New Zealand. In rugby union, it comes in a form of utility back. It is mostly a back who can cover at least two positions. Notable examples in New Zealand include Daniel Bowden, Luke McAllister and Cory Jane, but Australia also has many utility backs like Adam Ashley-Cooper, Quade Cooper and Matt Giteau.

Despite that, there are forwards who are capable of covering multiple positions. Many players in the back row of the scrum (flankers and number eights) will frequently switch between the two positions. Less often, a player may also be capable of playing lock as well as a back-row position, with a notable modern example being Sébastien Chabal, who has played internationally as both a lock and a back-rower. However, this description never applies to props who can play both ends of the front row (i.e. Numbers 1 & 3).

Rugby League[link]

The use of utility in rugby league is more expansive because not only would a player play only at backs' (or forwards') positions, some may play in forward and back positions with similar roles (e.g. halfback/hooker), or even play so many different positions as injury cover. Lance Hohaia is a prime example of this as he played in six different positions in his NRL career.

References[link]

v t e Baseball positions Pitchers by role Ace pitcher Starting pitcher Relief pitcher Middle relief pitcher Long reliever Setup pitcher Closer Left-handed specialist by style Fireballer Power pitcher Control pitcher Groundball pitcher Flyball pitcher Switch pitcher Defensive players by number Pitcher (1 / P) Catcher (2 / C) First baseman (3 / 1B) Second baseman (4 / 2B) Third baseman (5 / 3B) Shortstop (6 / SS) Left fielder (7 / LF) Center fielder (8 / CF) Right fielder (9 / RF) by type Infielder Outfielder Utility player Utility infielder Position player Battery Fourth outfielder Corner outfielder Offensive players by role Batter Runner Batting order (1–9) Designated hitter Pinch hitter Pinch runner Lead off Leadoff hitter Cleanup hitter by style Clutch hitter Contact hitter Switch hitter Non-players Official scorer Umpire Manager Coaches General manager Related Disabled list Phantom ballplayer

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]

Zuckerberg donated an undisclosed amount to Diaspora, an open-source personal web server that implements a distributed social networking service. He called it a "cool idea".^[34]

Zuckerberg founded the Start-up: Education foundation.^[83][84] On September 22, 2010, it was reported that Zuckerberg had arranged to donate $100 million to Newark Public Schools, the public school system of Newark, New Jersey.^[85][86] Critics noted the timing of the donation as being close to the release of The Social Network, which painted a somewhat negative portrait of Zuckerberg.^[87][88] Zuckerberg responded to the criticism, saying, "The thing that I was most sensitive about with the movie timing was, I didn’t want the press about The Social Network movie to get conflated with the Newark project. I was thinking about doing this anonymously just so that the two things could be kept separate."^[87] Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker stated that he and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had to convince Zuckerberg's team not to make the donation anonymously.^[87]

On December 9, 2010, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and investor Warren Buffett signed a promise they called the "Giving Pledge", in which they promised to donate to charity at least half of their wealth over the course of time, and invited others among the wealthy to donate 50% or more of their wealth to charity.^[89][90][91]

Personal life[link]

At a party put on by his fraternity during his sophomore year, Zuckerberg met Priscilla Chan, a fellow student who he began dating in 2003. Chan is of Chinese descent, was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, and is a 2003 graduate of Quincy High School.^[92][93] In September 2010, Zuckerberg invited Chan, by then a medical student at the University of California, San Francisco,^[94] to move into his rented Palo Alto house.^[2][95] Zuckerberg studied Mandarin Chinese in preparation for the couple's visit to the People's Republic of China in December 2010.^[96][97]

On Zuckerberg's Facebook page, he listed his personal interests as "openness, making things that help people connect and share what's important to them, revolutions, information flow, minimalism".^[98] Zuckerberg sees blue best because of red–green colorblindness; blue is also Facebook's dominant color.^[99]

On May 19, 2012, Zuckerberg and Chan married in Zuckerberg's backyard in a celebration also marking her graduation from medical school.^{[100][101][102]} Chan has a medical degree, and, according to some sources, is planning to begin interning and residencing towards becoming a pediatrician in 2012 or is a pediatrician currently.^{[103][104][105][106]}

References[link]

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (May 2012)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mark Zuckerberg

	Biography portal
	Internet portal

• Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook
• Profile at Forbes
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Mark Zuckerberg on Charlie Rose
• Mark Zuckerberg at the Internet Movie Database
• Mark Zuckerberg collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Mark Zuckerberg collected news and commentary at The Guardian
• Mark Zuckerberg collected news and commentary at The Wall Street Journal
• Mark Zuckerberg collected news and commentary at Bloomberg News
• Works by or about Mark Zuckerberg in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Mark Zuckerberg at the Notable Names Database

Document list

• Mark Zuckerberg's patents at ip.com

Interviews

• Video of interview, Leslie Stahl, Sixty Minutes^[when?]
• Video of Interview, Rick Stengel, Time Magazine December 2010

Nicholas A. Spano (born 1953)^[1][2] is best known as a New York Republican politician, who represented Yonkers and surrounding areas in the New York State Senate from 1986 to 2006. During his state senate career he served on the Rules, Transportation, Finance, Education, Health, and Racing, Gaming, and Wagering committees, chaired the Senate Investigations Committee,as was the Senior Assistant Majority Leader.^{[citation needed]}

In 2004, Spano won re-election by only 18 votes after facing a serious challenge by Westchester County Legislator Andrea Stewart-Cousins.^[3] During his run for re-election in 2006, Stewart-Cousins ran against him again, this time with the support of Democrats Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson and Andrew Cuomo, she won;^[3] he conceded defeat on November 16, 2006.

Spano subsequently become involved in commercial real estate^[4][5] as well as lobbying state and local governments in New York through Empire Strategic Planning, a firm he established after his defeat.^[6]

Personal life[link]

Spano's paternal grandfather, also named Nicholas, immigrated with two brothers from the Italian province of Bari to the United States in 1918.^[2] Spano's father Leonard ran for public office in 1967, employing his son Nicholas in door-to-door campaigning.^[2] After losing in 1967, Leonard became a county legislator in 1971, an office he held until 1993 when he was elected to the job of Westchester county clerk.^[2]

Spano grew up in Yonkers as the oldest of 16 children of Leonard and Josephine Spano;^[1] He is a graduate of St. Peter's Elementary School in Yonkers and Iona College in New Rochelle, New York. He and his wife Linda reside in Yonkers.^[1] Spano has two children, Lenny and Christina.^[1]

References[link]