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Issue 3
The Forward Thinker's Newsletter - Mark Zuckerberg
If you had the chance to drop out of an Ivy-league school and become the CEO of a multi-billion dollar business, would you? Mark Zuckerberg did just that when he founded the internet phenomena Facebook at Harvard University. Mark had already notarized himself at Harvard for hacking into the school’s database of
student ID pictures. He used the pictures to create a website that allowed students to rate each other as 'hot or not'. The site became popular in minutes and was taken down several hours after it went online. Zuckerberg was put to trial and issued a severe warning. Fortunately, the trial only made Zuckerberg infamous at the school as a programmer prodigy, giving him the social prominence needed to successfully launch Facebook on February 4th, 2004. Since its birth at Harvard it has garnered more than 150 million members
in College, High School, and adult communities worldwide. The company is rumored to be future competition to internet giant Google, and has even denied a one billion dollar buyout offer by Yahoo. Of course Zuckerberg's company has encountered some issues since its launch; the most recent being a lawsuit filed against Zuckerberg by former classmates Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra. The three
claim that Zuckerberg stolethe Facebook concept from their own social network idea called Connect. The lawsuit was settled in 2008 in Facebook’s favor, and the company still stands strong to this day. Zuckerberg’s vision for Facebook is that it will become more than just a social utility; it will become an evolution of social interaction.
"The last hundred years have been defined by the mass media. In the next hundred years, information won't be just pushed out to people: It will be shared among the millions of connections people have."
-Mark Zuckerberg
- John Gallagher
