mark zuckerberg is a self taught computer programmer and co founder chair and chief executive officer of meta meta formerly known as facebook originally named facemash zuckerberg founded the social networking site in his harvard university dorm room in 2004 along with andrew mccollum dustin moskovitz chris hughes and eduardo saverin 
according to bloomberg zuckerberg s net worth as of june 10 2022 was about 68 2 billion 1investopedia alison czinkotaearly life and educationon may 14 1984 mark zuckerberg was born in white plains new york as a child he showed an affinity for computers he learned the basic programming language at a nearby college and at the age of 12 he developed an instant messaging application that his father used in his office 3zuckerberg attended harvard university but dropped out after his sophomore year to focus on developing facebook the site grew out of two earlier ventures facemash a website for ranking the attractiveness of other harvard students and harvardconnection com an online social networking platform in 2004 cameron and tyler winklevoss and divya narendra the three credited founders of harvardconnection com sued zuckerberg for allegedly stealing intellectual property from the website they reached a multi million dollar settlement of cash and stock options in 2008 the winklevoss twins tried to reopen the lawsuit in 2011 but the court denied their request 4notable accomplishmentsin mid 2005 facebook raised 12 7 million in venture capital and expanded access to hundreds of universities and high schools one year later the social network opened to the general public and yahoo offered 1 billion to buy the company a bid that was swiftly rejected by zuckerberg 56in 2012 facebook went public and became the most successful internet initial public offering ipo in history when it raised 16 billion that same year facebook bought the photo sharing application instagram and zuckerberg married priscilla chan in a surprise wedding the day after the ipo 7meta has acquired dozens of companies over the years including instagram for 1 billion in 2012 whatsapp for 22 billion in cash and shares in 2014 oculus vr for 2 billion in 2014 and several other companies ranging from artificial intelligence ai to identification platforms 8910zuckerberg has made headlines for his philanthropy including his 2010 donation of 100 million to help schools in newark n j in 2014 the publication philanthropy ranked zuckerberg and chan the most generous american donors of the previous year after they donated 18 million shares of facebook stock to the silicon valley community foundation in mountain view calif 11on dec 1 2015 zuckerberg and chan published a letter to their daughter max in which they announced the creation of the chan zuckerberg initiative to join people across the world to advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation 12in the post zuckerberg and chan said the initial areas of focus will be personalized learning curing disease connecting people and building strong communities and that we will give 99 of our facebook shares currently about 45 billion during our lives to advance this mission 12meta has been accused nearly since its inception of collecting and selling the personal data posts and instant messages of its users these accusations mounted shortly after the 2016 u s presidential elections with some alleging that u s voters had been under the influence of targeted ads financed by russia in march 2018 media outlets including the new york times and the observer reported that u k based political consulting firm cambridge analytica had paid an outside researcher to collect data on 50 million facebook users without their permission the new york times reported that cambridge analytica s goal was to use the data for its trademark psychographic modeling with the aim of reading voters minds and potentially influencing the outcome of elections the estimated ad revenue of instagram in 2021 13in april 2018 facebook disclosed that the information of 87 million users had been improperly shared with cambridge analytica and not the 50 million as earlier reported 14later that month zuckerberg appeared on capitol hill to testify before house and senate committees about facebook s use of consumer data in prepared remarks before the senate zuckerberg noted that facebook had been beneficial in connecting people during the metoo movement and various disasters the statement went on to say that zuckerberg and facebook heard about cambridge analytica s involvement from the media just like everyone else zuckerberg also outlined actions that facebook intended to undertake to prevent future incidents of this nature including safeguarding our platform investigating other apps and building better controls 15