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| Mark Zuckerberg |
It
is sometimes believed that someone’s financial worth can be deduced
from the car they drive. Although somewhat popular, this assertion has
been rubbished by the world’s youngest billionaire, co-founder and CEO
of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.
Some of his contemporaries or
multi-millionaires and billionaires drive Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Rolls
Royces, Aston Martins and Bugatti Veyrons, which come with hefty price
tags running into hundreds of thousands of dollars and even millions.
Zuckerberg, 29, and currently worth
$19bn, according to Forbes, drives an Acura TSX and a Honda Fit, which
cost about $30,000 and $18,000, respectively.
His Acura TSX, is an entry level luxury
sedan which uses a 2.4 litre in-line 4 cylinder engine. It can churn out
201 hp and 172 lb-ft torque and has a 5 -speed automatic transmission,
which comes with steering-wheel paddle shifters for optional manual
shifting. The car is quite packed with luxury features like leather
interior, automatic climate control, a seven-speaker sound system,
Satellite Radio, Bluetooth and HandsFreeLink.
Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984 in
White Plains, New York, to Edward Zuckerberg, a dentist, and Karen (née
Kempner), a psychiatrist. Even though, he was raised Jewish, Zuckerberg
had since described himself as an atheist. As a junior student,
Zuckerberg won prizes in science (mathematics, astronomy and physics)
and classical studies. While most of his mates were busy playing games
as young students, Zuckerberg was creating them.
In his early teens he created a music
player named Synapse – as a school project – using some help from a
friend, which used artificial intelligence to understand one’s taste in
music and created a playlist accordingly. Software bigwigs like
Microsoft and AOL tried to buy it and even recruit Mark. But he refused
both. Instead, he went to Harvard in 2002. On February 4, 2004, with the
help of his room mates, Dutsin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, and using
the finance provided by another friend, Eduardo Saverin, he launched
what was then called, The Facebook. It was an instant hit, and soon made
Mark the next big thing.
On September 14, 2012, Facebook hit 1
billion users, a remarkable feat for a company that started in
Zuckerberg’s dormitory room while he was at Harvard. Zuckerberg later
dropped out of Harvard in his second year to concentrate on his project.
If you think that Zuckerberg’s home
will suggest his enormous wealth, you are mistaken. The American
computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur owns a house in Palo Alto ,
California, which is his first property investment. But prior to this,
he had always stayed in rented apartment. Zuckerberg lives in the house
with his wife, Priscilla Chan. The young billionaire is known to be a
fan of renting and a relatively modest lifestyle.
The house sits in the area of
5,1617-square-foot, was originally built in 1903. Since the house is of
historic times, it boasts gorgeous historical elements, like sash
windows, coffered ceilings, French doors, and deep porches. The
5-bedroom house was bought for $7m. Although the house is grand, it is
still considered modest, compared to the residences of Zuckerberg’s
other IT contemporaries.
Zuckerberg and his wife reportedly
bought a new house in San Francisco for almost $10m recently, but the
couple have neither confirmed nor denied the mansion, said to be
undergoing reconstruction.
The work includes a $65,000 kitchen and
bathroom remodel, a $60,000 greenhouse and the replacement of an
exterior wall and stairway, plus seismic upgrades.
Zuckerberg does not own a private jet,
but Facebook authorised its CEO and COO to use private aircraft for
business purposes to maximise such executives’ productive time and
ensure their quick availability. On some occasions, the jet could also
be used for personal purposes.
On May 19, 2012, Zuckerberg got married
to his long time college sweetheart, Priscilla, in an astonishing
ceremony at his Palo Alto home in California . The propitious wedding
was kept behind the curtains in such a way that even the guests thought
they were attending Priscilla’s graduation from the Univeristy of
California.
Zuckerberg announced the nuptial on his
social networking site ‘Facebook’, via a status update, posting his
wedding picture which was liked by more than 280,000 people. Just a day
before the wedding, Facebook’s fortune rose to £12bn in the stock
market.
Facebook Inc CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has
begun a campaign to make the United States government more transparent
in its surveillance programmes.
Zuckerberg said more openness regarding
the secretive programmes were required because they had been hurting
users’ trust in Internet companies such as his.
During a meeting with members of
Congress last week in Washington, the 29-year-old social media
billionaire urged the US government to inform the public about its
requests for data from Internet companies.
He said, “What I can tell from the data
that I see at Facebook is that I think the more transparency and
communication the government could do about how they’re requesting the
data from us, the better everyone would feel about it.
“From reading in the media, you couldn’t
get a sense whether the number of requests that the government makes is
closer to a thousand or closer to a 100 million. I think the more
transparency the government has, the better folks will feel.”
15 interesting facts about Zuckerberg
1. Type @[4:0] in a Facebook comment, and Mark Zuckerberg’s name will appear.
2. You can’t block Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook.
3. Facebook is blue because Zuckerberg has a red-green colour-blindness.
4. In 2009, Zuckerberg wore a tie for
the entire year as a symbol of how serious and important the year was,
following the recession that began in 2008.
5. He says he’s not that interested in money but in connecting the world.
6. He’s spent a year trying to eat only meat that he kills.
7. By the time he turned 13, he had
already created a basic computer network for his family dubbed
“Zucknet,” which allowed the computers in the family and his father’s
dental office to send messages to each other by pinging.
8. He designed his wife’s wedding ring.
9. At a party one Friday night, Zuckerberg met Priscilla, a Chinese American from Boston , who later became his wife.
10. To be able to communicate with Priscilla’s family members, Zuckerberg started to learn Chinese in 2010.
11. Zuckerberg’s first car was a Subaru Forester SUV.
12. Mark Zuckerberg is also on Twitter
as @finkd where he has over 150,000 followers but has posted only 19
tweets in the last three and a half years.
13. Zuckerberg has also created a few computer games.
14. His favourite musicians include Daft Punk, Lady Gaga, Shakira and Rihanna.
15. Eduardo Saverin, one of the four co-founders of Facebook had provided the $1000 seed capital to start Facebook.
Zuckerberg wants more transparency in Internet surveillance.
Sources: www.sfgate.com; www.bornrich.com; www.celebritycarsblog.com; ibnlive.in.com; www.washingtonpost.com; en.wikipedia.com
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