22 year old billionaire

Mark Zuckerberg never graduated from Havard University. In fact, in 2001 he created quite a ruckus there by hacking into the database mainframe to retrieve student information. He reposted this information on a website he designed in a type of "Hot or Not" grading experience. This underground site aggregated 450 visitors in 4 hours. Havard found out about his hacking and yanked Zuckerberg's internet connection.

Mark Zuckerberg is the owner and creator of an internet company valued at 1 Billion dollars. At 22 years old. Zuckerberg left Havard and created Facebook. You know Facebook, right? Social Networking site that owns 1% of all internet time? Number 1 Photo Sharing website with 6 million pictures uploaded daily?

Yeah. You Do.

What few people know though, is that Mark Zuckerberg is no ordinary internet mogul. Zuckerberg isn't in it for the money, at least not solely. This fact was proved when Zuckerberg turned down a buyout deal from Yahoo! rumored to be valued at 1 Billion dollars. That's almost double what MySpace accepted from NewsCorp last year.

Zuckerberg, it seems, is working for a dream: the free exchange of information over the internet. Facebook first goal is not to make money- it's to create a new type of media.

Zuckerberg is hardly greedy; benefits for Facebook employees include 3 catered meals per day, free laundry/dry cleaning service, 401k medical & dental, and a $600 stipend for housing. Needless to say, his employees are extremely satisfied in their surroundings.

Since beginning Facebook, Zuckerberg has faced one huge challenge- making it relevant to age groups outside the 18-22 year old college bound. Zuckerberg has since opened facebook to everyone- first only to High School networks, then to corporations, and now the general public. Facebook is still different in that it groups people into their specific networks rather than one giant "6 million person" network.

The road to glory has been paved with a few thorns, though, mainly in the form of the News Feed. In September 2006, a new feature revolutionized Facebook forever. Permanently and irrevocably installed on your home page, the news feed alerted you to any and all profile changes made by any of your friends. For instance, one receives a message every time "Billy Smith is single" or "Kate Lynch has added puppies to her interests". The new feature was met with an uproar from students and over 700,000 students joined the "Official Petition Against the Facebook Newsfeed" Facebook group. Suddenly, the students displeasure at the invasion of privacy was a national story with coverage by the New York Times and CNN.com. While the feed was not removed, privacy controls were soon put into place by an apologetic Zuckerberg. In an open letter to the Facebook community posted on the Facebook blog, Zuckerberg said "We really messed this one up".

This is the tale of the newest Web 2.0 rock star. From Harvard drop-out to billionaire, Zuckerberg has chosen to remain with his initial intentions rather than monetary needs.