Category IT Business Tycoons

Mark Zuckerberg’s college years were as exciting and innovative as his early life. He was known as a ‘programming prodigy’ at Harvard University, where he studied psychology and computer science. The idea of Facemash and Facebook developed during these years.

Facemash was a fun program that let students select the best looking person from a number of photos. The response for this program was overwhelming, but the college soon shut it down, as it was declared improper. Zuckerberg admitted this, and later apologized.

Prior to that, Zuckerberg had also created a few programs, including the ‘Course Match’ that enabled users to make decision on class selection, based on the choices of other students. It helped in forming study groups too.

At the start of 2004, Zuckerberg created Facebook, a platform for social networking. It is said that the famous site was created in a dorm room at Harvard, and was a platform only for students at the university to communicate with each other, through their accounts.

Zuckerberg did not complete his graduation, and dropped out of the university to focus on his project, which was turning to be successful. By 2004, Facebook was known to have around one million users. 

Mark Zuckerberg was born on May 14th, 1984 in New York to dentist Edward Zuckerberg and psychiatrist Karen Kempner. He studied at the Ardsley High School, and the Philips Exeter Academy before college, where he was distinguished as a promising student.

It is said that Mark won prizes in maths, astronomy, physics and classical studies as a student, and was also fluent in languages including French, Hebrew, Latin and Ancient Greek.

He is known to have quoted lines from the Roman epic poem ‘Aeneid’ at Facebook product conference years later. He was the captain of the school fencing team too.

Mark’s acquaintance with computers was made when he was in middle school. He was taught the Atari BASIC programming at a very early stage, and was also given a tutor for computer studies. The tutor, David Newman, later said that Mark was a child prodigy.

Continue reading “Why is it said that Mark Zuckerberg’s early years were remarkable?”

        Mark Zuckerberg is an American programmer, and the Chairman, CEO, and co-founder of Facebook. Born on May 14, 1984 in New York, Zuckerberg founded the facebook.com on February 4, 2004. He was a student at the Harvard University then. It is said that the idea of Facebook came from the Philips Exeter Academy, where he previously studied. The institution had its own student directory, which they referred to as the Facebook.

        Zuckerberg thus created a directory for Harvard, which enabled students to enter their own information and photos into a template. The response was huge, and soon, the founder’s roommate Dustin Moskovitz helped him add features, and make the site available to other campuses too.

         Through Facebook, the users could not only keep in touch with others, but also create attractive profiles, upload photos and videos too.

         The site in no time, started growing popular among Internet users in the US, and then expanded to the whole world. As of March 31, 2016, Facebook had more than 1.65 billion active users, making it the most popular social networking site.

          The success of Facebook turned Zuckerberg into a billionaire. Since 2010, he has been on the TIME Magazine’s list of the 100 Wealthiest People in the world. He was also in the Forbes list of the World’s Most Powerful People.

           Zuckerberg is also a philanthropist. He has donated millions for causes including education, and health. He founded the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2015, and pledged to donate 99 per cent of their Facebook shares for various causes. 

          The name Orkut Buyukkokten may perhaps bring back memories for a few, early users of the Internet. It reminds one of ‘Orkut’, a social media platform and the forerunner of networks like Facebook and Twitter.

          Orkut Buyukkokten is a Turkish software engineer who developed Orkut. Hailing from Turkey, Buyukkokten earned B.Sc. in Computer Engineering and Information Science from Bilkent University, Ankara. He then moved to the US and received an MS and PhD in Computer Science from Stanford.

          In 2001, Buyukkokten introduced the first college-specific social network Club Nexus for Stanford. It helped the users send emails, invitations, chat, post events, search for people etc. and in just a few months, attracted over 2000 students.

           Buyukkokten then introduced InCircle, an alumni social network for use by alumni groups. On January 24, 2004 he founded Orkut which was owned and operated by Google. On September 30, 2014, the parent company announced the shutdown of Orkut. In 2016, Buyukkokten launched yet another social media service called ‘Hello’.

       Richard William Costolo, better known as Dick Costolo is an American Internet entrepreneur credited to have co-founded the web feed management provider ‘FeedBurner’. He was also the CEO of Twitter.

       Born on September 10th, 1963 in Michigan, Costolo joined the University of Michigan to complete a BS in computer and communication sciences. Upon course completion, he moved to Chicago to work in improvisational comedy. After that, Costolo left his career in comedy, and started a new one with computer technology. Before co-founding FeedBurner, Costolo had worked with many other companies.

       In 2004, along with Eric Lunt, Steve Olechowski, and Matt Shobe, he founded FeedBurner, a web feed management provider. Three years later, Google Inc. bought FeedBurner and Costolo joined the search giant, only to leave it in two years.

       He then joined Twitter as its Chief Operating Officer. In 2010, he became its CEO. 

          Australian computer expert and journalist Julian Assange had a special interest in hacking even as a teenager.

          Hacking, as some of you might know, is an unauthorized or unpermitted intrusion into a computer, or its network.

         Around 1987, Assange used the hacking nickname ‘Mendax’ and infiltrated a number of secure systems, including those at NASA, Pentagon, and the Australian National University. This was done with the help of two other hackers, and together, they formed a group called the ‘International Subversives’. The intelligent programmer had also hacked into the master terminal of Nortel, a Canadian multinational telecommunications corporation.

         However, in 1994 Assange was charged with 31 cyber-related crimes by the Australian Federal Police. Luckily for him, there was only a small fine as punishment. After this incident, Assange travelled widely, and joined the University of Melbourne to study physics.

         He then worked as a computer security consultant.

         Years later, in 2006, Julian Assange was back to hacking with Wiki Leaks. Since then, the team has posted many politically important and controversial documents and messages on the site. Some of them were details about the US military, US wars, and the Afghanistan war logs.