Young man makes billion-dollar fortune in only 4 years

Mark Zuckerberg, an American computer coordinator and entrepreneur, takes the 785^th position on the fresh list of world’s richest people published by Forbes magazine. Mr.Zuckerberg owns the fortune of 1.5 billion dollars. The first person on the list – Warren Buffet – is 40 times richer. However, Buffet is 77, whereas Zuckerberg is only 23.

Photo: Young man makes billion-dollar fortune in only 4 years

Age is not the most aspect at this point. Sixteen years ago Forbes mentioned the name of an eight-year-old boy from Germany, who inherited his father’s multi-million-dollar fortune. In 2002, the boy, Albert von Thurn und Taxis, a German prince, entered upon the inheritance and became included on Forbes’s lists.

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Unlike children of wealthy parents, Mark Zuckerberg earned his fortune himself. The young man became a self-made billionaire in only four years. Zuckerberg founded the online social networking website Facebook

Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room on February 4, 2004. According to sources, Zuckerberg wrote the original code for the site in less than two weeks.[citation needed] It quickly became a success at Harvard and more than two-thirds of the school's students signed up in the first two weeks. Zuckerberg then decided to spread Facebook to other schools and enlisted the help of roommate Dustin Moskovitz. They first spread it to Stanford, Columbia and Yale and then to other Ivy League colleges and schools in the Boston area. By the beginning of the summer, Zuckerberg and Moskovitz had released Facebook at almost 30 schools.

On September 5, 2006, Facebook launched News Feed, a list of what friends were doing on the site. Zuckerberg became the target of criticism as some saw News Feed as unnecessary and a tool for cyberstalking. Three days later, Zuckerberg responded in an open letter to the Facebook community, apologizing for the sudden unwelcome feature, providing new privacy options, but ultimately defending the feature and his belief in free information flow. Zuckerberg contended that the feature was a good asset to use between friends, and the privacy settings allow for information to be blocked from users who are not friends with the person. News Feed is now one of the most popular features of Facebook and several of its competitors have tried to copy it.

Nowadays Facebook with its 70 million subscribers comes second after the absolute leader – MySpace with its 200 million.

The story of Facebook’s speedy development reminds the success of Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. However, they entered Forbes’s lists only in 2004, after IPO, which made them multi-billionaires. The springboard for the price of Facebook was its deal with Microsoftm which acquired 1.6 percent of the company for $240 million. Gates paid a good price for the meager share of the company, but obtained the right for exclusive provision of advertising on Facebook before 2011.

Forbes evaluated Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune at $1.5 billion. However, the young man’s company costs ten times as much against the background of the deal with Microsoft. It is worthy of note than the right to exclusively place advertising on MySpace cost Google almost one billion dollars.

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov
Pravda.ru