What made Mark Zuckerberg’s college years interesting?

Mark Zuckerberg’s college years were as exciting and innovative as his early life. He was known as a ‘programming prodigy’ at Harvard University, where he studied psychology and computer science. The idea of Facemash and Facebook developed during these years.



Facemash was a fun program that let students select the best looking person from a number of photos. The response for this program was overwhelming, but the college soon shut it down, as it was declared improper. Zuckerberg admitted this, and later apologized.



Prior to that, Zuckerberg had also created a few programs, including the ‘Course Match’ that enabled users to make decision on class selection, based on the choices of other students. It helped in forming study groups too.



At the start of 2004, Zuckerberg created Facebook, a platform for social networking. It is said that the famous site was created in a dorm room at Harvard, and was a platform only for students at the university to communicate with each other, through their accounts.



Zuckerberg did not complete his graduation, and dropped out of the university to focus on his project, which was turning to be successful. By 2004, Facebook was known to have around one million users. 


Why is it said that Mark Zuckerberg’s early years were remarkable?

Mark Zuckerberg was born on May 14th, 1984 in New York to dentist Edward Zuckerberg and psychiatrist Karen Kempner. He studied at the Ardsley High School, and the Philips Exeter Academy before college, where he was distinguished as a promising student.



It is said that Mark won prizes in maths, astronomy, physics and classical studies as a student, and was also fluent in languages including French, Hebrew, Latin and Ancient Greek.



He is known to have quoted lines from the Roman epic poem ‘Aeneid’ at Facebook product conference years later. He was the captain of the school fencing team too.



Mark’s acquaintance with computers was made when he was in middle school. He was taught the Atari BASIC programming at a very early stage, and was also given a tutor for computer studies. The tutor, David Newman, later said that Mark was a child prodigy.



 


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What made Mark Zuckerberg a world renowned figure?

        Mark Zuckerberg is an American programmer, and the Chairman, CEO, and co-founder of Facebook. Born on May 14, 1984 in New York, Zuckerberg founded the facebook.com on February 4, 2004. He was a student at the Harvard University then. It is said that the idea of Facebook came from the Philips Exeter Academy, where he previously studied. The institution had its own student directory, which they referred to as the Facebook.

        Zuckerberg thus created a directory for Harvard, which enabled students to enter their own information and photos into a template. The response was huge, and soon, the founder’s roommate Dustin Moskovitz helped him add features, and make the site available to other campuses too.



         Through Facebook, the users could not only keep in touch with others, but also create attractive profiles, upload photos and videos too.



         The site in no time, started growing popular among Internet users in the US, and then expanded to the whole world. As of March 31, 2016, Facebook had more than 1.65 billion active users, making it the most popular social networking site.



          The success of Facebook turned Zuckerberg into a billionaire. Since 2010, he has been on the TIME Magazine’s list of the 100 Wealthiest People in the world. He was also in the Forbes list of the World’s Most Powerful People.



           Zuckerberg is also a philanthropist. He has donated millions for causes including education, and health. He founded the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2015, and pledged to donate 99 per cent of their Facebook shares for various causes. 


Why is Orkut Buyukkokten ever remembered in history?

          The name Orkut Buyukkokten may perhaps bring back memories for a few, early users of the Internet. It reminds one of ‘Orkut’, a social media platform and the forerunner of networks like Facebook and Twitter.



          Orkut Buyukkokten is a Turkish software engineer who developed Orkut. Hailing from Turkey, Buyukkokten earned B.Sc. in Computer Engineering and Information Science from Bilkent University, Ankara. He then moved to the US and received an MS and PhD in Computer Science from Stanford.



          In 2001, Buyukkokten introduced the first college-specific social network Club Nexus for Stanford. It helped the users send emails, invitations, chat, post events, search for people etc. and in just a few months, attracted over 2000 students.



           Buyukkokten then introduced InCircle, an alumni social network for use by alumni groups. On January 24, 2004 he founded Orkut which was owned and operated by Google. On September 30, 2014, the parent company announced the shutdown of Orkut. In 2016, Buyukkokten launched yet another social media service called ‘Hello’.





 

What makes Dick Costolo a legend?

       Richard William Costolo, better known as Dick Costolo is an American Internet entrepreneur credited to have co-founded the web feed management provider ‘FeedBurner’. He was also the CEO of Twitter.

       Born on September 10th, 1963 in Michigan, Costolo joined the University of Michigan to complete a BS in computer and communication sciences. Upon course completion, he moved to Chicago to work in improvisational comedy. After that, Costolo left his career in comedy, and started a new one with computer technology. Before co-founding FeedBurner, Costolo had worked with many other companies.



       In 2004, along with Eric Lunt, Steve Olechowski, and Matt Shobe, he founded FeedBurner, a web feed management provider. Three years later, Google Inc. bought FeedBurner and Costolo joined the search giant, only to leave it in two years.



       He then joined Twitter as its Chief Operating Officer. In 2010, he became its CEO. 


Why is it said that Julian Assange was a hacker?

          Australian computer expert and journalist Julian Assange had a special interest in hacking even as a teenager.



          Hacking, as some of you might know, is an unauthorized or unpermitted intrusion into a computer, or its network.



         Around 1987, Assange used the hacking nickname ‘Mendax’ and infiltrated a number of secure systems, including those at NASA, Pentagon, and the Australian National University. This was done with the help of two other hackers, and together, they formed a group called the ‘International Subversives’. The intelligent programmer had also hacked into the master terminal of Nortel, a Canadian multinational telecommunications corporation.



         However, in 1994 Assange was charged with 31 cyber-related crimes by the Australian Federal Police. Luckily for him, there was only a small fine as punishment. After this incident, Assange travelled widely, and joined the University of Melbourne to study physics.



         He then worked as a computer security consultant.



         Years later, in 2006, Julian Assange was back to hacking with Wiki Leaks. Since then, the team has posted many politically important and controversial documents and messages on the site. Some of them were details about the US military, US wars, and the Afghanistan war logs.





 


 


Why is Julian Assange a renowned name in IT?

          An Australian computer programmer and journalist, Julian Assange is best known as the head of the media organization ‘Wiki Leaks’. It is a site that works to collect, and share confidential information about countries, or organizations on a large scale.

           Born on July 3rd, 1971 in Queensland, Australia, Julian Assange had a nomadic childhood, and lived in over 30 different towns in the country. He attended the Central Queensland University, and the University of Melbourne to study programming, mathematics and physics, but didn’t complete his graduation.



           In 2006, Assange launched the Wiki Leaks, sharing secret information and news leaks on an international scale. It included the details of the US military’s detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Following the leaks, the US government launched a criminal investigation against Assange. He was also wanted by Sweden for cases registered in the country. Subsequently, Assange was provided asylum at the Ecuadorean embassy in London.



           With Wiki Leaks, Assange earned both supporters and enemies. But for sure, he has influenced masses. 


Why is Craig Newmark a known figure in IT?

     Craig Newmark is an entrepreneur and the founder of ‘Craigslist’. It is a website for classified advertisements on jobs, services, for-sale and wanted items, housing etc., founded in 1995. The entrepreneur is also the creator of Craig connects a site for publicizing charitable ventures.

     Born on December 6th, 1952, Newmark had a very humble beginning. His father died when Newmark was 13 and it was left to his mother to take care of the family. But a brilliant student that he was, Newmark completed his education with scholarships. Soon after, he joined IBM, and stayed there for 17 long years. It was in 1993 that Newmark got acquainted with the Internet.



     Two years later, he developed Craigslist as an email distribution list for friends to feature local events in his locality. The following year, it turned into a web-based service, and expanded into many other classified categories. By 2000, it spread across the US. Today, Craigslist covers 70 countries and has non-English versions. As of June 2016, the site had more than 20 billion page views every month. This success turned Newmark into a billionaire.



 


Why is it said that ‘YouTube’ is one amazing invention?

       As we know, YouTube was introduced as an online portal to share video files by three technology enthusiasts Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim in 2005. From this small video community, it grew to become the second largest online search engine right behind Google.

       Headquartered in San Bruno, California, YouTube enables users to upload, download, view, rate, share and comment on its videos. Users without accounts can indeed watch most of the video content for free. But there are exceptions, as in the case of subscription based premium channels. For watching their content, one needs to pay a fixed amount.



       The success of YouTube was such that by 2014, the site had 800 million users in a month. Besides, 300 hours of new videos were uploaded to the site every minute in 2014. Hence, it can be said without a doubt, that the invention of YouTube has changed the world of IT as well as entertainment. 


Why is Chad Hurley a legendary figure?

          When YouTube was first released a decade ago, little did people think that the site would revolutionize the way they viewed online content. For this radical change that it brought about, the world of IT stays forever indebted to Chad Hurley, one of its founders.



          Born on January 24, 1977, Chad Meredith Hurley worked with the PayPal division of eBay, before joining hands with his friends Steve Chen and Jawed Karim to create the video sharing website YouTube on February 14, 2005. Unlike innovators of his kind, Chad is a graduate in Fine Arts, from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania.



          History goes that the idea of YouTube was conceived after Chad and Chen found it difficult to share videos that were shot at a party, due to the massive file size. The friends wanted to find out something like Flickr, but ended up creating YouTube, which in a year, became the tenth most popular website in the world. It was also one of the fastest growing sites, with millions of viewers across the world. Chad served as the site’s CEO for a brief period.



          A year after its creation, the founders sold YouTube to Google Inc. for 1.65 billion dollars. In 2013, he and Chen launched a new company ‘Mix-Bit’ which works on video editing using smart phones.





 

What makes Matt Mullenweg a pioneer in the field of IT?

     Online social media entrepreneur Mathew Charles Mullenweg is best known as the founding developer of Word-Press. As some of you might know, it is open source software meant for blogging and web content management, used by millions across the world.

      Born on January 11th, 1984, Matt, as he is famously called, studied at the University of Houston, majoring in political science. Before completing his degree, he left college, and started working for CNET Networks, a media website.



      In January, 2003 Mullenweg along with Mike Little, released on Word-Press which grew to become the easiest, and the most popular website management system on the web. The software is managed by the Word-Press Foundation.



      Other than technological innovation, Mullenweg is also involved in charitable programmes.


Why is it said that besides being a tech-expert, Reid Hoffman is also a prolific orator and writer?

        Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman has surprised the world, not just through his innovation, but through his ‘talks’ too.



        A renowned orator and writer, Hoffman is a frequent lecturer at universities including Stanford, Oxford, and Harvard.



        He has also appeared on many shows like The Charlie Rose Show, Fareed Zakaria’s Global Public Square on CNN, and on other current affairs television programmes.



        His essay titled “Disrupting the Diploma” that proposes a new form of credentialing for university students and professors was widely read. It was among the many posts he had published on LinkedIn as a ‘LinkedIn Influencer’. Hoffman has also written articles in the Washington Post on a variety of topics.



   


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Why is Reid Hoffman a remarkable figure in the field of IT?

         We know for a fact that there have been many social networking groups that have helped people connect and reconnect personally. But what LinkedIn did, was something rather different, and more helpful. It helped people professionally, mainly by connecting job-seekers and employers. Since its launch on December 28, 2002, the site has played a vital role in professional circles across the world, thanks to Reid Garrett Hoffman, and his team.

          Hoffman is an entrepreneur, author, and the current executive chairman of LinkedIn, the first business-oriented social network. The site is so successful, that by September 2016, it had more than 467 million users.



          Prior to setting up LinkedIn, Reid was the Executive Vice President of PayPal. PayPal is an international company facilitating online payments system.



            The success of LinkedIn garnered big money, as well as recognition for Hoffman. He is ranked as the 341st richest person in the world.



 


Why is it said that BitTorrent was a turning point in Bram Cohen’s life?

        As we saw, BitTorrent is a communication platform that enables downloading of data and electronic files using a peer-to-peer file transferring system. Many individuals and organizations use it to distribute their licensed works.



       However, what made BitTorrent most famous is its ability to share large music and movie files. People across the globe have been using the system since its beginning to upload and download such files.



       To its credit, BitTorrent Inc. has received many licenses from Hollywood studios for distributing their content. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter also use BitTorrent to distribute updates to servers. Besides the film and media industry, others too have used the protocol for distribution works.



       The UK government used the system to issue details about the expenditure of tax money. The success of the protocol was however unanticipated, its founder Bram Cohen holds.



       BitTorrent Inc. was founded in 2004 by Bram Cohen, along with his business partner of Indian origin Ashwin Navin. 





 

Why is Bram Cohen a renowned figure?

       Bram Cohen is a computer programmer who is the chief scientist, and co-founder of BitTorrent. It is a peer-to-peer program developed for uploading and downloading files. The program functions via a file distribution protocol, namely the BitTorrent protocol, which was again, was developed by the expert himself.

       Born on October 12th, 1975, Bram Cohen grew up in Manhattan. He claims to have learned the BASIC programming language at the age of five! After schooling, he joined the University of Buffalo, only to drop out of it later, and work for several dot.com companies. It was the experience he got from these firms that helped Cohen conceives the idea of BitTorrent. He designed the protocol in April 2001, and released its first version on July 2, 2001. As of 2013, BitTorrent had around 27 million users.



         Apart from BitTorrent, Cohen has also founded CodeCon, an annual conference of technology enthusiasts and software hackers that was held between 2002 and 2009.



        For his work on the BitTorrent protocol, Cohen has won many awards. He was also among the TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in 2005.