But in the past year, he's begun to influence his abyss pockets -- he's worth about $16 billion -- and high profile as an sponsor for issues beyond the company's Menlo Park, California, offices.
Whether it's entrusting to growth Internet access to the world's poorest corners, as he announced Wednesday, or plunking down millions to encourage kids to become scientists, Zuckerberg has evolved into a big-time player, willing to put himself forward for issues he believes in.
Here are five examples.
The Web evangelist
Zuckerberg on Wednesday announced Internet.org, a new nonprofit devoted to distribution Web entrees to the nearly 5 billion group around the ore who don't have it.
Zuckerberg pushes immigration overhaul Facebook CEO's personal silhouette hacked Facebook's IPO: One year later
Calling entrees to the Internet a human right, Zuckerberg told CNN the organization will focus on the mobile Web, which is the medium lots tribe in poor and growing nations get online. It's also, perhaps not coincidentally, an sphere where Facebook has focused heavily on branching its reach and revenue.
But Zuckerberg says the strain isn't designed to be self-serving.
"If we really just wanted to focus on arrangement money, the first billion group who are already on Facebook have funds more beans than the next 5 or 6 billion people combined," Zuckerberg said. "It's not fair, but it's the funds that it is. And, we just believe that everyone deserves to be connected, and on the Internet, so we're laying a lot of energy towards this."
The wandering reformer
At first glance, immigration reform doesn't seem like a natural factor for an Internet billionaire.
But Zuckeberg took the lead this month in bringing together tech luminaries to form FWD.us -- a escape advocating for Congress to reform the nation's immigration system.
Tech band mostly benefit from the federal government's H1B program, which makes it easier for highly skilled laborer in land like computer programming to emigrate to the U.S. But the aviation attorney equally for issues like helping undocumented immigrants who were brought into the soil as children.
The escape has pumped millions of dollars into things like a TV promotion urging Congress to "fix our broken immigration system."
The bipartisan backer
Silicon Valley has an uneasy relationship, at best, with Washington. But in recent months, Zuckerberg has begun spreading the currency around.
Does the Facebook founder "like" Democrats or Republicans? It's complicated.
Early this year, Zuckerberg hosted a fundraiser for Republican New Jersey governor -- and potential presidential runner -- Chris Christie, with whom he has partnered on teaching issues (see below). But he would later do the same favor for a Jersey Democrat -- Newark Mayor Corey Booker (see same).
Zuckerberg hosted a town hall appointment at Facebook for President Barack Obama in 2011. But his FWD.us group has helped fund procedure ads for conservative Republican senators like Florida's Marco Rubio and South Carolina's Lindsay Graham, considered swing votes for the migration bill in their chamber.
It may be unclear which handle Zuckerberg tends to pull at the voting booth. But when he selection up the phone, politicians answer.
The health-science patron
Zuckerberg spearheaded an effort early this year designed to spur innovation that has nothing do with social medium or mobile apps. Instead, it's for saving lives, or configuration them better.
He helped create the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, an annual gift given to researchers whose work is "aimed at curing intractable illness and extension human life."
The award pays recipients $3 million each -- twice as much as a Nobel Prize -- and is also funded by tech carrier like Google's Sergey Brin and Apple strip Chairman Art Levinson.
"Society has a enclosure of heroes for a enclosure of different things, but we don't have enough heroes who are scientists and researchers and engineers," Zuckerberg told CNN in February. "We're just trying to set up this ... to reward and recognize the amazing fabric these folks are doing."
The philanthropist
Zuckerberg hasn't shied away from giving back. In fact, end year he was the second-most generous contributors in the United States, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
He doesn't have any direct personal ties to Newark, New Jersey. But in 2010, he pledged a whopping $100 million of his destinies to helping out troubled schools there.
The crack was the first giveaways from Startup: Education, a establishments created by Zuckerberg to assistance schools. Joined by Booker and Christie, Zuckerberg took to "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to announce the donation and foundation.
Cynics noted that the betrayal came shortly before the exemption of "The Social Network," the fictionalized film on Facebook's beginning that many believed cast Zuckerberg in a negative light.
But his benevolence didn't stop there. Zuckerberg later pledged an even bigger sum, nearly $500 million, to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which issues grants for a host of causes in the San Francisco area. In 2012, its charitable causes ranged from programs that teach immigrants English to groups furnishing slab and shelter to the needy to funds for victims of the California wildfires.
0 comments:
Post a Comment