Mark Zuckerberg is the quintessential figure who shaped modern social media platforms: with Facebook he wanted to connect the world. He ended up controlling it.
The dorm room experiment
In February 2004, inside a Harvard dorm, Mark Zuckerberg launched Thefacebook. It was a simple idea: a digital directory for college students to connect and share their lives. What began as a closed academic experiment would, within a decade, morph into one of the most powerful communication networks in human history.
Born in 1984 in White Plains, New York, Zuckerberg was a precocious child, fluent in computer languages before he could drive. His father, a dentist, introduced him to programming early; by 12, Mark had written ZuckNet, a private messaging system for his family and his father’s office. Harvard was the perfect playground for his intellect and his ambition.
From "Hot or Not" to "Thefacebook"
Before Facebook, there was Facemash, an infamous website that compared the attractiveness of fellow students using hacked university photos. It earned Zuckerberg both notoriety and disciplinary attention. But Facemash revealed something essential about his mindset: curiosity about social interaction through data and code.
When Thefacebook.com went live, it spread through Ivy League campuses like wildfire. Students wanted to be seen, to belong, to connect, and Zuckerberg’s algorithmic simplicity gave them that. Within a year, the site had millions of users and investor attention. Sean Parker (of Napster fame) joined as an advisor, and soon, venture capital from Silicon Valley propelled Thefacebook beyond the campus.
The fallouts and the lawsuits
With success came friction. The Winklevoss twins and Divya Narendra, founders of ConnectU, sued Zuckerberg, claiming he had stolen their idea. Another early partner, Eduardo Saverin, was later pushed out amid accusations of mismanagement. These episodes would foreshadow a lifelong tension: Zuckerberg’s mission to connect people often clashed with the ethics of how he built and maintained control.
The lawsuits settled, but they exposed a trait that would define his leadership: relentless pursuit of scale, sometimes at the expense of relationships or transparency.
Facebook becomes the Internet
By 2010, Facebook had transcended its college roots. With over 500 million users, it became the world’s default social network. Zuckerberg’s mantra, “Move fast and break things,” became a Silicon Valley creed. But the things being broken were no longer just bits of code: they were social norms, privacy expectations, and eventually, democracy itself.
In 2012, Facebook went public, making Zuckerberg one of the youngest billionaires in history. That same year, he married Priscilla Chan, a fellow Harvard graduate and pediatrician, in a modest backyard ceremony. Their partnership would later give birth to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, pledging billions toward education and science, a philanthropic counterpoint to the controversies surrounding Facebook.
An empire built on influence
As Facebook acquired Instagram (2012), WhatsApp (2014), and Oculus (2014), it evolved from a social media company into a digital empire. Zuckerberg’s vision shifted from connection to immersion, from news feeds to virtual worlds.
Yet, with influence came scrutiny. The Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 revealed how Facebook data was harvested for political manipulation. Zuckerberg’s subsequent testimony before the U.S. Congress marked a turning point: the once-idolized innovator was now seen as the architect of a system that could undermine truth itself.
When asked if Facebook had grown too powerful, his answer was telling: “We built something people wanted to use. That’s all we ever tried to do.”
From Facebook to Meta
In 2021, Zuckerberg announced the rebranding of Facebook’s parent company to Meta, a strategic pivot toward the metaverse, an immersive digital realm where work, play, and identity converge. Critics saw it as an attempt to escape Facebook’s scandals; supporters viewed it as the next frontier of human interaction.
The metaverse remains largely speculative, but it represents his enduring obsession: creating systems that mediate human connection.
The paradox of power
Mark Zuckerberg began as an idealist seeking connection and ended presiding over the infrastructure of digital life.
Love him or loathe him, Zuckerberg’s fingerprints are on the architecture of the modern world. Every “like,” every news feed scroll, every algorithmic nudge toward outrage or community all trace back to his creation.
Dig deeper
Mark Zuckerberg features in several documentaries and interviews. Here are a few worth watching:
Zuckerberg: King of the Metaverse (2024)
A feature-length documentary released on Sky Documentaries on January 11, 2024, provides an in-depth look at his journey from a Harvard student to the founder and CEO of Facebook and Meta.
Mark Zuckerberg: Inside Facebook (2011)
Features a rare interview with Zuckerberg and covers the creation of Facebook, its early days, and its potential for online advertising.