Success Story of Facebook Founder and CEO

Her father installed the messenger on the computer at the dentist's office, and the receptionist was able to notify when a new patient arrived. While in college, Mark wrote an artificially intelligent media player Synapse for MP3 playlists that learns of user preferences and is able to generate 'guesswork' playlists that track what the user wants to hear.

Microsoft and AOL got an unusual interest in the media player Synapse and wanted to acquire it. However, he turned down the offer from IT-giants and then politely declined their invitation to cooperate.

Just like that, Mark Zuckerberg turned down from tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars, and worked at one of the top IT-corporations.

Mark Zuckerberg studied at Phillips Exeter Academy, an exclusive prep school in New Hampshire. He showed good results in science and literature, and received a classic degree. He also showed great talent and even became the school captain of his team. But Mark Zuckerberg was fascinated by coding instead and wanted to work on developing new software.

One of the students from Harvard - Divya Narendra - spoke with the idea of creating a special social network for Harvard students, as many of them suffer from emotional rigidity. And no strangers should be allowed, Narendra suggests using a Harvard email address as the primary username.

On February 4, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg registered TheFacebook.com for the domain name, now known worldwide as Facebook.com . However, it only works within Harvard. After Zuckerberg and his colleague Eduardo Saverin realized that there were already 4,000 registered users on Facebook, they came to the conclusion that they needed a new programmer.

One of them was Mark's neighbor, Darren Moscowitz, who later opened up a Facebook service for students at Columbia University, Stanford, and Yale. Around the same time after the IPO, Zuckerberg owned 503.6 million shares. 

And now Zuckerberg controls nearly 60% of the company, 35% - Eduardo Saverin, and 5% goes to newcomer Moscowitz. Another friend of Mark, Chris Hughes, was assigned as a Facebook Attaché

Some time later, registration was opened to all students. The main condition is the availability of an email address in the EDU zone, which also indicates that someone belongs to the education sector.

In 2005, Facebook became accessible to all educational institutions and universities in the United States. Zuckerberg still believes that his project is a social network for students, but users' interest for Facebook is growing exponentially.

Then it was decided to make the registration accessible to the public. And after this, the Facebook 'epidemic' started. 

In 2007, an important event happened to Facebook. Microsoft acquired a 1.6% equity stake in Facebook for an impressive amount of $ 240 million dollars. On this basis, a number of analysts suggest that Facebook's total value is up to $ 15 billion. a pretty good result for the company, which earns no more than $ 200 million per year.

After the deal, Bill Gates created an account on Facebook. He used to spend several hours a day communicating via Facebook with everyone, but after time decided to close his account for some time, because there were too many people willing to chat with him.

Physically, he was unable to chat with all of them. However, Gates provided a major PR campaign for Facebook all over the world. This is significant for Microsoft, given that it was exclusive advertising deals with social networks until 2011.

In 2013, the turnover of Facebook, Inc. reached $ 787 billion and net profit - $ 1.5 billion. The growth rate is also impressive: three years turnover has increased sixfold. Facebook's basic income comes from contextual advertisements on social network pages.

The growth in the number of users and the time they spend on the site is converted into advertising revenue. 85% percent of the cash flow that came in through the company last year was obtained through contextual advertising. Most of the remaining 15% is deductions from purchases made through the Facebook payment system.

These are mostly unreal, but virtual items. For example seeds, fruits and vegetables, bought by fans of the popular game Farmville developed by Zynga.

Despite the obvious levity, virtual goods are serious business, and a Facebook report confirms that. The company estimates that in 2010 the global market turnover for virtual goods reached $ 7 billion, and in 2014, it rose to $ 15 billion.

In early January 2013, Facebook Inc began testing a private pay-tomessage service. Facebook charges $ 1.00 for private messages that you can send to users who are not on your friends list. And messages go directly to their Inbox folder, not another one.

But Facebook went a step further and realized that some users were worth more than $ 1. If you wanted to message Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and get to his inbox, you might have to pay $ 100 for this exclusive option. This is another very simple way to generate extra income.