#11 Mark Zuckerberg

Age: 26yrs

Birth Place: White Plains, New York, USA

Industry: Social Media Mogul

Influence: Revolutionized Online Social Media and Networking

Net Worth: $6.9 billion

Why they made the list…

Mark Zuckerberg, is possibly one of the most spoken about individuals of the past year, not only is he one of the richest men on the planet, he’s just had a story portrayed by the Hollywood giants in a new movie entitled the Social Network. Zuckerberg first launched his website Facebook whilst attending Harvard University, the website was launched from his dormitory room, on 4 February 2004. It has been rumoured, but the inspiration for Facebook actually came from his former high school the Phillips Exeter Academy which had its own student directory known as”The Photo Address Book” which according to rumour, the students nicknamed the Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg was joined by fellow Harvard university students Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes as he wanted to evolve the Facebook website.

To begin with Facebook wasn’t available to everybody and due to this competitors such as; MySpace and Bebo seemed to be the clear winners, in terms of social networking. However that soon changed when Zuckerberg and the co-founders of Facebook dropped out of the Harvard University in a bid to make Facebook success, which they knew was possible, due to the amount of support it had received at the University. By then the 2004 Facebook had received over 1 million users for the website. Then in 2005 capital venture firm Accel partners, invested $12.7 million into the business to help them evolve its further. Soon Facebook was being approached by massive brands and companies who wants to buy out Zuckerberg and co-tutor is obvious trendsetting capabilities and the possible revenue to be made from it. However we know that Zuckerberg didn’t actually sell Facebook and he still is CEO of it although his partners have left now, and today according to Forbes magazine Zuckerberg is worth approximately $6.9 billion. Not bad for a college dropout.