Release notes: 2003 → today
“Move fast and break things”, so here is his career as a product changelog.
At Harvard he studied computer science and psychology. In 2003 he built Facemash, which let students compare photos scraped from house directories; it drew an administrative rebuke and huge traffic in a few hours.
In February 2004 he launched “TheFacebook” from his Kirkland House room. Within a month half of Harvard had signed up. Classmates Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra accused him of using their idea; the dispute was later settled.
He moved to Palo Alto for the summer of 2004, took early investment from Peter Thiel and never went back to Harvard. The site dropped “The” in 2005, opened to high schools, then to everyone in 2006, and launched the News Feed, first hated by users, then adopted.
He turned down a reported $1 billion offer from Yahoo in 2006, a decision that looked reckless at the time.
Facebook passed 100 million users in 2008 and a billion in 2012, the year it went public in one of the largest tech IPOs in history.
He bought Instagram in 2012 for about $1 billion and WhatsApp in 2014 for about $19 billion, deals widely mocked as overpriced and later seen as among the best in tech.
The company faced intense criticism over misinformation and the 2018 Cambridge Analytica data scandal; Zuckerberg testified before the US Congress and later the company paid a record $5 billion FTC penalty.
In 2021 he renamed the company Meta to signal a bet on virtual and augmented reality.
With his wife Priscilla Chan, a paediatrician, he launched the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2015, pledging most of their Facebook shares over their lifetimes to science and education.
Since 2023 Meta has pivoted hard toward AI, releasing its Llama models openly.