Mark Zuckerberg

The Zuckerbergs of Dobbs Ferry had a dentist for a father and a psychiatrist for a mother, and at about 11 the son wrote a program called ZuckNet so the house and the dental office could message each other. In high school he built a music player that learned what its owner listened to. Slashdot posted it and PC Magazine gave it three stars out of five. At Phillips Exeter, where he captained the fencing team, the student photo directory was called the Facebook. At Harvard he put up Facemash over a weekend in his second year, inviting students to rank each other by looks. It crashed a campus network switch, drew complaints from people whose photographs he had used, and was gone by Monday.

Thefacebook launched on February 4, 2004, with four roommates. Six days later Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra said he had strung them along while building a competitor, and while he was trying to talk the Harvard Crimson out of the story he got into two editors' email accounts using login records from his own site. That suit settled for 1.2 million shares and 20 million dollars. He dropped out, moved to Palo Alto, took Peter Thiel's money, bought Instagram and WhatsApp, took the company public in May 2012 and renamed it Meta in 2021. It reported 201 billion dollars of revenue in 2025 with about 75,000 employees. In 2026 Trump named him to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Cambridge Analytica got data on as many as 87 million Facebook users, 70.6 million of them American, out of an app roughly 270,000 people had downloaded. In July 2019 the Federal Trade Commission voted three to two to fine the company five billion dollars and put it under a 20-year order. In 2014 he bought 700 acres on Kauai, and in January 2017 he filed quiet title suits against hundreds of native Hawaiians who held small parcels inside it, dropping them once he learned Hawaiian land law is not the mainland's. Court filings in a Massachusetts case allege he personally overrode his own Instagram head and global affairs president on measures meant to protect teenagers. He holds 13.68 percent of Meta and 61.2 percent of the votes, so none of it can be voted down.

He is 42 and the argument about him is nowhere near finished. Time made him Person of the Year in 2010, and Forbes had him third-richest alive at 251 billion dollars in October 2025. In his twenties he read as a liberal: 100 million dollars to Newark schools, a lobby for immigration reform, a public defense of Muslims after the Paris attacks. By August 2024 he was telling the House Judiciary Committee he regretted yielding to the Biden administration on COVID content. In January 2025 Meta dropped its outside fact-checkers and its diversity programs. He dined at Mar-a-Lago, stood near the front at the inauguration, and denied hiring a stylist for the gold chains.

Mark Zuckerberg's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• ZuckNet invention
  A messaging program linking the family house to his father's dental office 1995
• Synapse Media Player invention
  A high school project that learned listening habits. PC Magazine gave it three of five. 2002
• Facebook company
  Launched February 4, 2004, from a Harvard dorm room 2004
• Internet.org mission
  Shut down in India in 2016 after net neutrality objections 2013
• Chan Zuckerberg Initiative company
  Structured as a limited liability company rather than a foundation 2015
• Meta Platforms company
  The renaming that bet the company on virtual worlds, then on AI 2021

• 2003 aged ~19 Facemash goes up over a weekend and is shut down by Monday It overwhelmed a Harvard network switch and used student photographs without permission.
• February 4, 2004 aged 19 Launches Thefacebook with Saverin, McCollum, Moskovitz and Hughes
• February 10, 2004 aged 19 The Winklevoss twins and Divya Narendra accuse him of stealing their project It settled for 1.2 million shares and 20 million dollars.
• May 2012 aged 27 Takes Facebook public at 38 dollars a share He married Priscilla Chan on May 19, the day after trading began.
• December 1, 2015 aged 31 Pledges 99 percent of his shares to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Then worth about 45 billion dollars.
• April 10, 2018 aged 33 Testifies to the Senate over Cambridge Analytica He declined to appear before a UK parliamentary committee.
• July 2019 aged 35 The FTC votes 3-2 to fine the company five billion dollars A 20-year privacy order came with it.
• October 2021 aged 37 Renames Facebook, Inc. as Meta Platforms
• January 2025 aged 40 Meta ends third-party fact-checking and rolls back its diversity programs He had dined at Mar-a-Lago two months earlier.

• Priscilla Chan b. 1985
  Pediatrician and co-CEO of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative investing billions in science and education. married to
• Peter Thiel b. 1967
  PayPal co-founder and first outside investor in Facebook whose contrarian views shaped Silicon Valley culture. backed by
• Elon Musk b. 1971
  Engineer and entrepreneur whose companies have advanced electric vehicles, reusable rockets, and neural interfaces. rival
• Sheryl Sandberg b. 1969
  Former COO of Meta who wrote Lean In and became a prominent voice on women in leadership. ran the business for him
• Bill Gates b. 1955
  Co-founder of Microsoft who, through the Gates Foundation, has donated billions to global health and education. signed the Giving Pledge with
• Steve Jobs 1955–2011
  Co-founder of Apple who revolutionized personal computing, music, and mobile communications. predecessor in the founder myth