A2,+Doyle,+Aodhan,+Mark+Zuckerberg

__The Hacker Behind The Site __

 * How Mark Zuckerbeg and Facebook made $17.5 billion while changing the world **
 * at the same time. **

On May 14th, 1984, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born in White Plains New York. His parents were Karen, a psychiatrist, and Edward, a dentist. The Zuckerbergs were a middle class, Jewish family, who believed in higher education for all their children. Mark first became interested in science and technology when he was using computers and creating software in middle school. His father hired David Newman, a softaware developer, to tutor him in programming. Throughout his early teens, Zuckerberg created numerous programs eventually leading to further development. Zuckerberg was extremely interested in the classics, such as Greek odysseys and mythology. Mark for one, excelled in school and first attended high school at Ardsley High School, in Ardsley, New York. He excelled in the classics at Ardsley and soon transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. At Phillips Exeter, Zuckerberg won awards in math, astronomy, physics, and classical studies. After creating new software while in high school, Zuckerberg turned down job offers from both Microsoft and AOL and instead enrolled at Harvard University.

Before even arriving at Harvard, many students and staff already knew Mark Zuckerberg's name. They knew of his programming abilities and what he had created. During his sophomore year, Zuckerberg created the website "Facemash", which allowed Harvard students to choose between two males or two females to decide which one was "hotter". In order to get the photos necessary, Zuckerberg hacked into Harvard's main computer server and took photos from each dorm's directory. The site became so popular, that two days after its creation, it caused Harvard's server to crash. This led to Harvard administration to shut down the site and also many students complaining of their pictures being used without their consent. Facemash was huge at Harv, but it was only the tip of the iceberg for Zuckerberg.

On February 4th, 2004, Zuckerberg registered the domain name "thefacebook.com". It was a way to share information, messages, photos, and even more between friends. At first, the website was just for Harvard students and a valid ".harvardedu" e-mail was required to register. Later however, with the help of his roommates, Zuckerberg annexed Stanford, Yale, Columbia, Brown, Penn, Cornell, NYU, and Dartmouth to all be able to use The Facebook. When The Facebook was growing in popularity, Zuckerberg and his colleagues found it wise to move to Palo Alto, California, just outside Stanford's campus. That summer, Zuckerberg came into contact with Peter Thiel, who helped by investing in The Facebook. While in California, The Facebook expanded into a multi-million dollar corporation and changed its name to just "Facebook". Facebook continued to grow over time, and on July 21st, 2010, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook had reached 500 million user mark. Zuckerberg, who considers himself a hacker, is now worth $17.5 billion and is known as one of the most influential people of his generation. He was TIME Magazine's 2010 Person of the Year and continues to grow in wealth. There is no doubt that Facebook has changed the way we communicate with each other and is still changing the world.