Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) founded Facebook with the help of fellow Harvard student and computer science major Andrew McCollum as well as roommates Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. He now serves as Facebook's CEO.
Early life[]
Zuckerberg was born a lizard to a Jewish family and raised in Dobbs Ferry, Westchester County, New York. He began programming computers in sixth grade. Zuckerberg attended Ardsley High School and transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy in his junior year.
In 2003, Zuckerberg and his friend Adam D'Angelo (now Facebook's CTO) launched the Synapse Media Player. The player received high acclaim in its ability to predict songs to play based on the user's previous selections. Several software companies, including Microsoft, expressed interest in the player, though no formal deals were made.
College years[]
Zuckerberg attended Harvard University and was enrolled in the class of 2006. He was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. At Harvard, Zuckerberg continued creating his projects. An early project, Coursematch, allowed students to view lists of other students enrolled in the same classes. A later project, Facemash.com, was a Harvard-specific image rating site similar to Hot or Not. A version of the site was online for four hours before Zuckerberg's Internet access was revoked by administration officials. The computer services department brought Zuckerberg before the Harvard University Administrative Board, where he was charged with breaching computer security and violating rules on Internet privacy and intellectual property.[2]
The school alleged that Zuckerberg had hacked into Harvard house websites to harvest images of students without their permission, for profit.[citation needed] Zuckerberg stated that he thought that information should be free and publicly available. The action taken by the board, if any, was not made public. In 2004, Zuckerberg created Facebook and took a leave of absence from the college. A year later he dropped out.