A Genius Different from the Start... How Did He End Up on the Brink? [News Inside]

Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook)

▲Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook) [Image source=EPA Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwon Jae-hee] 'The Second Bill Gates' 'Genius CEO' 'Harvard Prodigy'

The man who turned down Bill Gates and media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.

These are the epithets that follow Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta (Facebook).

Zuckerberg was a prodigy from a young age. He was born in 1984 in a Jewish family in New York, the second child among one brother and three sisters. His father is a dentist and his mother is a psychiatrist, and his sisters are also known as prodigies.

For example, Zuckerberg is famous for teaching himself software development after receiving a computer as a gift at age 11. Around age 16, he developed a game set in the Roman era featuring Julius Caesar as the main character. After entering Phillips Exeter Academy, one of the top private high schools in the U.S., he created a music player program called 'Synapse Media Player' with his friend Adam D’Angelo. Microsoft showed interest in this service and tried to recruit the teenage genius developer Zuckerberg, but he flatly refused and entered Harvard University in 2002.

Was he ahead of his time? Today, interdisciplinary studies combining engineering and humanities are well known, but at that time it was rare for engineering students to take humanities courses. Zuckerberg chose psychology as a double major alongside computer science. In a 2006 interview with The New Yorker, he explained his background in psychology by saying, "What interests people are other people."

[Image source=AP Yonhap News]

One day in 2003, while attending Harvard, Zuckerberg launched 'Facemash,' the predecessor of Facebook. It was a site where students uploaded photos and voted on who was more attractive. The response was explosive. Within just a few hours of launching, 450 students visited and over 22,000 votes were cast. Harvard was thrown into turmoil, and Zuckerberg faced expulsion, but he voluntarily shut down the site and narrowly avoided being expelled.

However, this prank of the eccentric was not entirely negative. It led to the birth of Facebook, the world's largest social media platform.

In February 2004, Facebook was introduced to the world. The site connected Harvard students online, allowing users to share photos, profiles, and contact information to build networks. Later, Zuckerberg recalled, "Facemash provided the clue to creating Facebook."

The platform quickly spread beyond Harvard to the Ivy League schools on the East Coast. Within two months, users expanded across the U.S. from Yale and Columbia to Stanford on the West Coast, making Zuckerberg a celebrity overnight.

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

Rising to stardom at Harvard, Zuckerberg suddenly decided to drop out. A remark from Bill Gates during a Harvard lecture?"If you truly want to do something, you can skip classes. It's possible because it's Harvard. If Microsoft fails, I will come back to Harvard"?moved him deeply.

In June 2004, he moved the office to Silicon Valley with his partners and began to commercialize Facebook in earnest. What was once popular only among Harvard and some college students expanded to high school students in 2005 and to anyone aged 13 and older in 2006. Facebook's user base grew to 300 million within its first three years.

Zuckerberg is well known for his free-spirited style, often appearing in official settings wearing a gray T-shirt and black jeans. Even after becoming famous, he never gave up his hobby of running, often seen jogging around his neighborhood accompanied by bodyguards. This trait also showed in his management style; he eliminated the 'dual reporting system' where half of the company executives reported company status to other executives simultaneously.

He is not only free-spirited but also very generous. He is known for turning down huge acquisition offers and even countering with offers more than double the amount, surprising the other parties. He rejected acquisition proposals from U.S. media company Viacom, global media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft.

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

True to Zuckerberg's ambition to 'connect the world,' Facebook established itself as the most influential site globally, making him a billionaire.

Although there were obstacles along the way, recent consecutive setbacks have brought him to the biggest crisis of his life. A whistleblower testified before the U.S. and UK parliaments, and Facebook's third-quarter earnings fell short of market expectations. Apple's strengthened privacy policies have hit Facebook's main revenue source?advertising income.

To overcome this, Zuckerberg renamed the company 'Meta' to target the next goal of Facebook?the 'Metaverse'?but the market response has been lukewarm. Will Zuckerberg's ambition to 'connect the world' continue? The world’s attention is focused on the uncertain start of 'Meta.'