Mark Zuckerberg is the most influential on the web

Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and executive director (CEO) of the world's largest social network, Facebook, is already among the legends of Silicon Valley even before he turned 30.

“Fortune smiles on the bold”, Virgil's famous maxim, quoted by Zuckerberg on his personal page, seems to faithfully reflect the trajectory of a young man who launched his company at the age of 19 and who never left the head of the company.

Zuckerberg is already one of the 20 richest men in the world and his company has become a reality 104 billions of dollars after its debut on the stock market this Friday. Since 2010, he has been elected the “man of the year” by Time weekly and the most influential man of the “new establishment” by Vanity Fair. Despite his life as an executive and having already had an award-winning film about his trajectory, Zuckerberg takes his life in a discreet way, giving few details about it on his personal page, which is followed by 11 million people.

Trajectory

Born on May 14, 1984, raised in Dobbs Ferry, near New York, the son of a dentist and a psychiatrist, Zuckerberg began at 11 years in computer programming.

He was still in high school when Microsoft and AOL bid for one of his creations, a program that let you guess listeners' musical desires, in the style of Apple's "Genius" system for its iTunes online store. .

The proposal, however, was rejected by Zuckerberg, who joined Harvard, the most prestigious university in the United States at the age of 18. In his sophomore year, he launched Thefacebook, “a Mark Zuckerberg production,” which at that time was essentially an online student directory. “Making the world more connected” would be the definition of Zuckerberg’s website, first used on his personal website on February 4, 2004.

the creation of Facebook, however, was the subject of several lawsuits, which led Zuckerberg to pay $65 million to three former college classmates: Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra, and to acknowledge the role of “co-founder” his former partner, the Brazilian Eduardo Saverin.

The four accused him of stealing the site's idea and unfairly deleting them. Zuckerberg admitted in recent years to having made some "Errors" in your youth.

Unlike Google creators Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who offered the company's CEO position to Eric Schmidt, Zuckerberg never shared the reins of the group, even though he was surrounded by experienced employees, including COO Sheryl Sandberg, hired when worked at Google in 2008. “His position at Facebook is similar to Bill Gates' position, which lasted a long time” as Microsoft's CEO, said Josh Bernoff, an analyst at Forrester Research.

Interviewed in April by President Barack Obama, Zuckerberg was teased by the American president for wearing a suit and tie, something unheard of for him.

Zuckerberg lives with Priscilla Chan, a medical student he met in 2003. In order to speak to his in-laws, he started learning Mandarin in 2010.

Known for his love of Greco-Roman antiquity, he does not hesitate to declare some eccentricities. Also, last year he decided to become a quasi-vegetarian and vowed not to eat meat unless he kills the animal that comes from it himself.

Last Friday, Zuckerberg rang the opening bell for Facebook shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

From AFP | ppgad@pucrs.br