Mark Zuckerberg, (born May 14, 1984) is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. As a Harvard student, he created the online social website Facebook, a site popular among students worldwide, with fellow computer science major students and his roommates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. He serves as Facebook's CEO. He has been the subject of controversy for the origins of his business and his wealth.

Time Magazine added Zuckerberg as one of The World's Most Influential People of 2008. Zuckerberg fell under the Scientists & Thinkers category for his web phenomenon, Facebook, and ranked 52 out of 101 people.

Early life

Zuckerberg was raised in Dobbs Ferry, New York, by his Jewish parents, Edward and Karen Zuckerberg. His father Edward is a dentist in Dobbs Ferry, New York, and his mother is a physician. He started programming when he was in middle school. Early on, Zuckerberg enjoyed developing computer programs, especially communication tools and games. While attending Phillips Exeter Academy, he built a program to help the workers in his father's office communicate; he also built a version of the game Risk and a music player named Synapse that used artificial intelligence to learn the user's listening habits. Microsoft and AOL tried to purchase Synapse and recruit Zuckerberg, but he decided to attend Harvard University instead.

Founding

Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room on February 4, 2004. It started off as just a "Harvard-Thing," until Zuckerberg then decided to spread Facebook to other schools and enlisted the help of roommate Dustin Moskovitz. They first spread it to Stanford, Dartmouth, Columbia, Cornell and Yale, and then to other schools with social contacts with Harvard. By the beginning of the summer, Zuckerberg and Moskovitz had released Facebook at almost forty-five schools and hundreds of thousands of people were using it.Fact: date=March 2009 Zuckerberg was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity while at Harvard.

Moving to California

Zuckerberg moved to Palo Alto, California, with Moskovitz and some friends. To date, he has not returned as a student to the college. They leased a small house which served as their first office. Over the summer, Zuckerberg met Peter Thiel who invested in the company. They got their first office during the summer of 2004. According to Zuckerberg, the group planned to return to Harvard in the fall but eventually decided to remain in California.

News Feed

On September 5, 2006, Facebook launched News Feed, a product to show what your friends were doing on the site. Zuckerberg was criticized as some saw News Feed as unnecessary and a tool for cyberstalking.

Facebook Platform

On May 24, 2007, Zuckerberg announced a Facebook Platform, a development platform for programmers to create social applications within Facebook. This announcement sparked a great deal of interest in the developer community. Within weeks, many applications had been built and some already had millions of users. Today, there are more than 400,000 developers around the world building applications for Facebook Platform.