A Face We All Know and Like: Mark Zuckerberg

This month’s influential individual focus is Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, who was Named TIME’s Person of 2010. Need I say anymore? There isn’t a day, hour or minute that passes where something regarding Facebook doesn’t appear in mainstream media.

Amongst an elite few hundreds, Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest of the world’s billionaires. When we think of ourselves at the age of 27, how we cannot be amazed at his genius and influence? Zuckerberg is different from those who inherited their billions because he started his own business and built it from ground up to reach the peak. If you’ve not seen the movie The Social Network, then I recommend it just for the sheer joy of watching how Facebook came to be. Well, and of course a few good laughs along the way.

Facebook’s founder was born on May 14, 1984, as Mark Elliot Zuckerberg. This shy and reserved child has an unparalleled brilliance, and according to Forbes magazine Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in the world for 2008 and the 35th richest person in the USA.

Mark’s early years were filled with a passion for hacking computers and writing his own programs. While studying computer science at Harvard University, he created a website called Facemash that compared students’ dorm pictures side-by-side to see which one was better looking (hot or not.) It was a few months later this late night idea exploded, bringing him both fame and money via the social networking site that recently just surpassed Google for use and interaction. His idea took fruition as Facebook, gaining unprecedented fame. He and his friend Andrew McCollum, along with two other roommates named Dustin Moskovits and Chris Hughes, started Facebook. He also won the Crunchie Award in 2007 for the “Best Startup CEO.”

Zuckerberg is the person responsible for the overall direction and product strategy for Facebook. He currently leads the design of Facebook’s service and development of its infrastructure and core technology. In an announcement, Zuckerberg said the TIME award was "a real recognition and honor of how our small squad is developing something that vast sums of people need to use to create the world much more open and connected.” He recently became one of the recent billionaires to promise to give away the most of his wealth to charity. He's one of 17 new people to AID Group, founded by Bill Gates and his wife together with Warren Buffet, which persuades America's richest to openly promise to contribute to charity.

Until next time, embrace your inner wisdom.

Namaste,
Karen