Mark Zuckerberg

The geek who changed the world. Mark Zuckerberg creted Facebook in 2004, aged 19.
Today he is the second youngest billionaire in the world.

Thanks to the success of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has a personal fortune of around 14 billion dolars. But the 27-year-old businessman has a very modest lifestyle. He wears jeans, T-shirts and trainers, works constantly and is studing Chinese.

Zuckerberg was a computer prodigy from a young age: his friends did ilustrations wich he transformed into computer games. He also showed a special talent for Latin, Ancient Greek and fencing.

He left New Yourk in 2002 to go to Harvard, an elite American university, to study psychology and computer science. He was shy and people thought he was a geek. He started to develop social network sites for fun.

Zuckerberg hacked into Harvard's computer system on 20 October 2003. He copied private photos of university students to create a site called Facemash. On the site, students could see photos and vote for the people they found most attractive. The site had 450 visitors in four hours, but Harvard shut it down.. and Mark Zuckerberg was almost exelled!!

He was not discouraged. Zuckerberg understood the demand for a website to share personal information with friends. So in 2004, he launched Facebook from his university bedroom. Within 24 hours, 1,200 Harvard students had signed up. After one month, more than half of the students population at Harvard had a Facebook profile.

Facebook soon arrived at other universties. Zuckerberg left Harvard without graduating- he wanted to spend time developing his site. In just seven, years facebook changed the world.

Whit 800 million users, Facebook is now the biggest website on the planet. Zuckerberg wants to keep Facebook users on the site for longer by sharing music, films and personal infomation in the Timeline.

Zukerberg has had problems with his site. Tree Harvard students accused him of copying their ideas to create Facebook, and won a lawsuit against him in 2008. Zukerberg, a private person, has also been criticized for Facebook's principales: making private information public...

The young billionaire doesn't care about this, though. He also says that he didn't just want to make money. "The thing I really care about is the mission making the world open", he says.

Facebook for your phone has helped Zuckerberg complete his mission... and made even more money for his company. But like Microsoft's Bill Gates, Zuckerberg promises to give half of his money to charity. With everything he does, Mark zuckerberg continues to change the world...