Orkut Büyükkökten, 36 (image credit:batalhadoibope.com)
Orkut is a social networking services website owned and managed by Google. The Orkut service is designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships and communications. The Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten was the creator of Orkut, thus the social networking website was named after him. Orkut is less popular in the United States than its famous competitors Facebook and Google+, Orkut, is one of the most visited websites in India and Brazil. Orkut’s users about 59.1% are from Brazil, followed by India with 27.1% and Japan with 6.7% as of October 2011. Orkut social netwroking website was hosted originally in California, but Google announced that Orkut would be fully managed and operated in the city of Belo Horizonte Brazil, by Google Brazil, which was decided by Google,because of large Brazilian user base and growth of legal issues. Alexa traffic ranked Orkut.com at no. 746th and Orkut.com.br no. 738th in the world as of October 2012, which Orkut website has over 33 million active users worldwide currently. An Orkut member can also add videos to their profile from YouTube or Google Video with the option of creating restricted or unrestricted polls for community sharing opinions of users. There is an option to putting together Orkut with Gtalk (an instant messenger from Google) enabling chatting and file sharing. GTalk has been incorporated in Orkut currently, with users can chat directly from their Orkut page. Users may also use a like button similar to Facebook to share interests with friends in their Orkut account. The United Arab Emirates followed the footsteps of Iran by blocking the site in August 2006, followed by Saudi Arabia that has blocked Orkut access, while Bahrain’s ministry information is also under pressure to follow suit. Orkut Büyükkökten is a Turkish software engineer, born February 6, 1975, originally from Konya, Turkey, who created the Orkut, ClubNexus, and inCircle social networking services. Orkut Büyükkökten who was working with Google, decided to use his 20% time creating a new social network. Marissa Mayer, the Google product manager thought of giving the credit and name it after the creator of the social networking service Orkut.com to Orkut Büyükkökten. Orkut Büyükkökten is a Google product manager currently. Büyükkökten love to make and eat chocolate fondue (melting white, dark or milk chocolate in a a saucepan or pot over a low flame and dipping things into the melted chocolate such as fruits), and he is also a certified masseur, and an avid ballroom dancer.
6)
David Karp age 27,
Tumblr, with logo stylized as tumblr., is a social networking service and microblogging or broadcast medium in a form of blogging website founded by David Karp, and owned by Yahoo! Inc. where the users are allowed to post multimedia and other content to a blog in a short-form, and users can follow other blogs of users, or make their blogs private. Much of The features in the website are accessed from the interface of the dashboard, where the content is post with option and posts of followed blogs can be seen. Tumblr hosts over 130.5 million blogs as of August 8, 2013. Tumblr headquarters is in Silicon Valley, New York at 35 East 21st Street in the Flatiron District. On May 20, 2013, Yahoo! announced its intention to acquire Tumblr social networking service, for about $1.1 billion, and on June 20, 2013, the deal was closed. In 2006, development of Tumblr began during a two-week gap between contracts at David Karp’s software consulting company, Davidville (Karp’s former internship with Fred Seibert, producer/incubator of Frederator Studios, located a block away from current Tumblr’s headquarters). Many of Tumblr’s users were not happy, with the news of acquired by Yahoo!, causing some users to start a petition, achieving nearly 170,000 signatures. On June 20, 2013, the deal with Yahoo! was finalized to retain David Karp as the CEO. David Karp is an American entrepreneur and web developer, born July 6, 1986, founder and CEO of Tumblr, the short-form blogging platform social networking service. David Karp’s net worth exceeds $200 million, and Tumblr was valued at $800 million according to Forbes lists. As of September 2011, David Karp and his partner is Rachel Eakley, a chef and psychology graduate were living together as of September 2011, in Williamsburg with Clark, their pet dog.
Marco Arment
Marco Arment in red with David Karp
Marco Arment is an American web developer and iOS developer, technology writer and magazine editor, born June 11, 1982, living in Westchester, New York. Marco Arment is the co-founder of Tumblr and creating Instapaper. He worked as Tumblr’s blogging platform since the founding in February 2007 until September 2010. Arment left Tumblr which has estimated about 2 million registered accounts and hosted over 38 million blogs as of December 2011 to concentrate fully on Instapaper. Marco Arment announced on April 25, 2013 that he had sold the Instapaper majority stake to Betaworks, and as of January 2013 was operated. Instapaper is a bookmark and simple reading service tool for saving web pages and can read later on your iPhone, iPad, Android, Kindle and computer. Marco Arment founded Instapaper service in 2008 and has about 2 million users as of late 2011. Marco Arment started his blogs in December 2006 and receives about 600,000 page views per month.
7)
Jonathan Abrams (image credit:www.sociosite.org)
Vincent Tan Chee Yioun, Chairman and Chief Executive of Berjaya Corporation Berhad
Friendster was founded by Jonathan Abrams, a Canadian computer programmer in 2002, before the launching of social networking services in 2003′s MySpace, in 2004′s Facebook and other social networking sites. Friendster is a popular social gaming site based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, was previous known as a social networking website. As of May 7, 2009, the top 10 countries Friendster users according to Alexa, are the Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sudan, Thailand and United Arab Emirates. Before Friendster site was redesigned, the service allowed members to invite other members, maintain those contacts, sharing content online and media with those contacts. The Friendster website was also used as dating sites and discovering new friends, events, and hobbies. It was announced on December 9, 2009, that Friendster was acquired by MOL Global, for $26.4 million, one of Asia’s biggest Internet companies, funded by Tan Sri Vincent Tan, one of Malaysia’s successful businessmen, Chairman and Chief Executive of Berjaya Corporation Berhad. The company repositioned in June 2011 into a social gaming site and discontinued Friendster’s user social network accounts. Since June 2011, the relaunch of Friendster as a social gaming platform, the number of registered users has reached over 115 million. Friendster accounts will not be deleted and users can still log in using their existing e-mail address and password. Friendster said that in the new and improved website, they focus more on entertainment for the users, and aims not to compete with, but to complement Facebook.
8)
Chris DeWolfe
Myspace is a social networking service, (stylized as myspace, previously stylized as MySpace) with a strong music emphasis owned by Specific Media LLC and Justin Timberlake, actor and pop music singer. In August 2003, Myspace was launched and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. Myspace had 25 million unique U.S. visitors as of June 2012. Myspace was founded in 2003 by Tom Anderson, an American internet entrepreneur and was acquired in July 2005 by News Corporation for $580 million. Myspace was the most visited social networking site in the world, from 2005 until early 2008, and in June 2006 surpassed Google as the most visited website in the United States. Myspace was overtaken by Facebook in April 2008, in the number of unique visitors worldwide, and was surpassed in May 2009 by the number of unique U.S. visitors. The number of Myspace users has declined steadily in spite of several redesigns. Myspace was ranked 303 by total web traffic, and 223 in the United States as of June 2013. Myspace employed approximately 1,600 workers in June 2009, but since the decline in rankings, and the company has undergone several rounds of layoffs, Myspace had reduced its staff to around 200 employee as of June 2011. In June 2011, Specific Media Group and actor-singer Justin Timberlake purchased jointly the company for approximately $35 million. Several eUniverse employees with Friendster accounts saw potential in its social networking features in August 2003. Intermix Media, Inc. (AMX symbol as MIX, formerly eUniverse) was an Internet marketing company based in Los Angeles founded in 1998 and owned the MySpace website. The eUniverse group decided to mimic the more popular features of the website, and the first MySpace version was ready for launch within 10 days, implemented using ColdFusion. The project was managed by eUniverse founder, Chairman and CEO, Brad Greenspan, who managed MySpace starting CEO Chris DeWolfe, Josh Berman, MySpace starting President, Tom Anderson, and a team of programmers and resources provided by eUniverse. The eUniverse employees were the first Myspace users. Chris DeWolfe is an American entrepreneur, born in 1966, and one of the creators of Myspace with co-creator former CEO Tom Anderson.
Thomas “Tom” Anderson
Tom Anderson age 42
Thomas “Tom” Anderson American Internet entrepreneur, born November 8, 1970, co-founder of Myspace social networking service in 2003, with Chris DeWolfe, and became the president and strategic adviser of Myspace until he left in 2009. Because the newly-created Myspace accounts initially included Tom Anderson as a default friend, or annoying friend and his face became known as MySpace default picture, and he is often referred to as “Tom from Myspace” or “Myspace Tom”. Tom Anderson was no longer the default “friend” on Myspace, by 2010, and his profile was being replaced by “Today On MySpace” or “T.O.M.” In 2009′s Funny People, an American drama and comedy film starred by actor Adam Sandler, Anderson appeared in a cameo role. Tom Anderson is active on other social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter (with nearly 200,000 followers as in December 2012), and ranked no.10 in December 2011 by number of followers in Google+. Tom Anderson has also invested in real estate.
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Google Inc. is an American multi national corporation social networking services that specialize in Internet products and services, which includes search or research, cloud computing (a common expression used to describe a different types of concepts in computing that involve a large number of computers connected through an Internet, a communication network), software and technologies in online advertising. Most of its profits are derived from the main source of revenue and advertising products of Google, known widely as AdWord, which offers pay-per-click, that is, cost-per-click (CPC) advertising. The founder of Google were Larry Page and Sergey Brin, while they were Stanford University Ph.D. students. Both Page and Brin owned about 16% of Google shares. On September 4, 1998, Page and Brin, incorporated Google as a privately held company, followed by an initial public offering on August 19, 2004. The founder and Google company’s statement mission from the outset was “to organize various information in the world and make it universally accessible and useful”. In 2006 Google moved to headquarters known as Googleplex in Mountain View, California. The rapid growth of Google Corporation, since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions and partnerships after Google’s core search engine (a web search engine owned by Google Inc., Google Search is the most-used search engine on the World Wide Web (www) . Google offers online productivity software ( category of application commonly used, aiming to help accomplish specific jobs such as documents, charts and graphs, presentations, spreadsheets, and databases, creating digital paintings, electronic music, make digital movies, and many more applications) usually includes Gmail (e-mail), Google Drive or an office suite and Google+ social networking. The desktop products include applications for web browsing, organizing and editing photos and instant messaging. A desktop environment (DE) commonly consists of icons, windows, folders, wallpapers toolbars and desktop widgets. The Google Inc. company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system and the Google Chrome OS (a Linux-based OS designed by Google to work primarily with web applications) a browser-only for a specialized type of netbook known as a a personal computer running Chrome OS as its operating system or Chromebook.
Google+, a social networking and identity service, sometimes written as Google Plus, operated by Google Inc. In January 2013, the Google+, is the 2nd largest social networking site in the world, having surpassed Twitter, with approximately 359 million active users. Google+ had a total of 500 million registered users, as of May 2013, of whom 235 million are active in a given month, and in April to June 2013, the 30% was used by smartphone users, making it the fourth most used Google app. Before the launch, Google referred to Google+ as Google Circles, a name refers to its emphasis on organizing friendship information. Google+ is considered the 4th venture or an initial attempt of the company into social networking, following Google Buzz which was launched 2010, but closed in 2011, Google Friend Connect, launched in 2008, and closed by March 1, 2012 and Orkut which was launched in 2004, and still exist and operated entirely by subsidiary Google Brazil as of 2013. The New York Times sources, have declared Google’s biggest attempt to rival Facebook, the social networking service which has over 1 billion users. Google Inc. opened Google+ to teenagers on January 26, 2012, with the age limit 18 years old previously, but Bradley Horowitz, Google Vice President for Product Management, announced on Google+ that users as young as 13 would be allowed.
Larry Page
Larry Page, founder Google
Lawrence “Larry” Page is an American computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur, co-founder and creator of
Google with co-founder
Sergey Brin. On April 4, 2011, Page succeeded
Eric Schmidt as the
Google’s chief executive officer (CEO). Page is the founder and creator of
PageRank (named after him), the foundation of Google’s search ranking algorith. Page and he and
Brin own approximately 16 % of Google’s stock. In 2007, Page married
Lucinda Southworth at the
Necker Island owned by
Richard Branson in the Caribbean.
Lucinda Southworth is a research scientist, and she is the sister of actress and model
Carrie Southworth. The couple has a son, born on November 2009. Larry Page was romantically link before, to
Marissa Mayer, former head of location products for Google
, who became
Yahoo!’s CEO in July 2012. In May 2013, Page announced on his
Google+ profile that he was suffering from a vocal cord issue for 14 years, with his left cord paralyzed since 1999, and his right
vocal cord is paralyzed from a cold that he contracted the previous summer. As of May 2013 Page’s post, he said that doctors were still unable to identify the exact cause of the problem. Larry Page was ranked no. 24th on the
Forbes list of billionaires in 2011 and the 11th richest person in the United States. The
Bloomberg Billionaires Index lists Page as the 27th richest man in the world as of October 2012, with an estimated net worth of 21.1 billion.
Sergey Brin
Sergey Brin age 40
Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin is an American computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur, born August 21, 1973, co=founder of Google with Larry Page, one of the most profitable Internet companies. Brin’s personal wealth was estimated to be $22.8 billion as of 2013. At age six, Sergey Brin with his family, immigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union. In May 2007, Brin married Anne E. Wojcicki, in the Bahamas. Wojcicki is an American biotech analyst, biologist, and businesswoman, and she is the co-founder of 23andMe.The couple, Brin and Wojcicki have a son, Benji, born in December 2008, and a daughter, born in late 2011. Brin and his wife were living separately as of August 28, 2013 but not legally separated. The Forbes Magazine, ranked Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the fifth most powerful people in the world in November 2009.
Google Buzz was a social networking services, messaging tool and microblogging developed by Google and integrated into Gmail, their web-based e-mail program. The Google buzz method, users could share links, photos, videos, status messages and comments organized in conversations and seen in the inbox‘s users. Google announced on October 14, 2011, that the Google buzz networking service will discontinue with its services and that the existing content would be available in read-only mode, and discontinued on December 15, 2011.
10)
Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting social networking website, pronounced as flicker, stylized as flickr, and web services set created in 2004 by Ludicorp and acquired in 2005 by Yahoo!. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photos, and effectively an online community service is widely used by bloggers and photo researchers and to host images that they embed in blogs and social media. Through Flickr, photos and videos can be accessed without the need to register an account but an account must be created in order to upload content and also, by registering an account allows users to create a profile page that contains the uploaded videos and photos by the user, and users can add contacts as another Flickr user. Ludicorp was the company, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, nd created Flickr and Game Neverending, founded by Stewart Butterfield, Caterina Fake and Jason Classon in 2002, and was bought in 2005 by Yahoo!. Flickr image hosting website and video hosting, has official mobile apps for Windows Phone OS, iOS Android and PlayStation Vita.
Stewart Butterfield
Stewart Butterfield, born Daniel Stewart Butterfield, born in 1973, is a Canadian-born businessman and entrepreneur, known as the co-founder of Flickr, the photo sharing website. Butterfield and co-founder, former wife, Caterina Fake, the photo sharing Flickr website and its parent company Ludicorp, a company based in Vancouver, BC, which was acquired by Yahoo! in March 2005. Stewart Butterfield continued as the Flickr‘s General Manager until he left Yahoo! on July 12, 2008. From 2001 to 2007, Butterfield was married to Caterina Fake, his Flickr co-founder, and together they had one daughter in 2007. Butterfield lives in San Francisco , California currently, according to his flickr profile. Stewart Butterfield co-founded Tiny Speck a new company in 2009, and launched on September 27, 2011, its first project, the Glitch, a massive multiplayer game. The game world Glitch, closed down on December 9, due to its failure to attract a sufficiently large audience, however, the web site, with most of the content, is still available. It was announced in January 2013, that the company would make most of the game’s art available under a Creative Commons license. Ludicorp created Flickr and Game Neverending.
Caterina Fake
Caterina Fake is an American businesswoman and entrepreneur, born to an American father and a Filipino mother in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Fake is the co-founder of the websites Flickr and Hunch. Fake is also the co-founder of the Ludicorp in 2002, in Vancouver with former husband, Stewart Butterfield. Caterina Fake co-founded the Hunch website in 2009, with entrepreneur Chris Dixon. The web site was launched in June 2009, the site is building the Internet taste graph , mapping every Internet user to something that exists, and their attraction to people and other things. Hunch was acquired by eBay in November 2011, for a reported $80 million, and renamed to Findery in July 2012. From 2001 to 2007, Fake was married to Stewart Butterfield, her Flickr co-founder, and together they had one daughter.
11)
Yahoo! Inc. is a social network service and an American multinational Internet corporation and the Yahoo! headquarter is located in Sunnyvale, California. Yahoo! Inc is known worldwide for its search engine, Yahoo! Search, Web portal and related services, such as Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo!Answers, online mapping, social media, video sharing, advertising and fantasy sports website, and one of the most popular social media sites in the United States . In January 1994, Yahoo! Inc. was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo and was incorporated on March 1, 1995. Marissa Mayer, former Google executive was named as the President and Yahoo! CEO, effective July 17, 2012. According to American Internet analytics company that provides marketing data to various large agencies, enterprises, publishers in the world known as comScore, Inc., in July 2013, Yahoo! surpassed Google, according to number of visitors at 196 million in the United States to its Web sites for the first time since May 2011, increasing by 21 % in a year.
Jerry Yang
Jerry Yang, age 44, co-founder Yahoo!
Jerry Yang is a Taiwan born-American Internet entrepreneur, born November 6, 1968, the Yahoo! Inc. co-founder and Yahoo! Inc. CEO. In April 1994, while Yang was studying at Stanford University taking up Electrical Engineering, he co-created Yahoo! with David Filo, an Internet website they called Jerry and Dave’s Guide to the World Wide Web, consisting of a directory of other websites. In April 1995, it was renamed Yahoo! (with an exclamation). On January 13, 2009, Yahoo! named Carol Bartz, a Silicon Valley veteran as its new CEO, on January 13, 2009, effectively replacing Jerry Yang. Bartz was removed on September 6, 2011, from her Yahoo! CEO position (via phone call), and replaced by CFO Tim Morse as Interim CEO of the company. Yang regained his former position as Chief Yahoo and remained as board of directors in Yahoo! Inc. Yahoo! announced on January 17, 2012, that Jerry Yang will be leaving the company, and will be resigning from the board and all other positions at the company. Yahoo! also announced Yang’s resignation from the boards of Yahoo! Japan and Alibaba Corp. Jerry Yang is married to a Japanese citizen, but was raised in Costa Rica, Akiko Yamazaki, a Stanford University graduate, with a degree in industrial engineering and is a Wildlife Conservation Network director. The couple met in 1992 at Stanford University in the Kyoto overseas program. When Jerry Yang resigned from Yahoo!’s board, the company’s market capitalization was $20 billion, as of January 17, 2012.
David Filo
David Filo, age 47, co-founded Yahoo!
David Filo is an American businessman, born April 20, 1966, and the co-founder of Yahoo! with Jerry Yang. His Filo Server Program, he named Filo Server Pages, written in the C programming language (one of the most widely used programming languages of all time, a general-purpose programming language initially created by Dennis Ritchie between 1969 and 1973), was the server-side software used to dynamically serve variable web pages, visiting the Yahoo! website’s early versions. David Filo was estimated to be worth $1.7 billion, by March 2013, ranking him the 882nd richest person in the world. Filo is married to Angela Buenning, a photographer and teacher. Yahoo! started off as a web portal with a web directory providing online activities services and an extensive range of products. Yahoo! is now one of the leading internet brands and most visited trafficked networks on the Internet, because to partnerships with telecommunications firms.
12)
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created in February 2005, by designer Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim both Computer Science graduates, three former PayPal employees and in late 2006, it was owned by Google, on which users can upload, view and share videos. The YouTube company’s headquarter is based in San Bruno, California, and uses HTML5 and Adobe Flash Video technology to display a user-generated video in a wide variety content, which includes educational videos, movie clips, TV clips, music videos, amateur content video blogging, and short original videos. Most of the YouTube content has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations such as CBS, the BBC, Hulu and Vevo and other organizations offering some of their material through the website, as part of the YouTube partnership program. Registered YouTube users can upload an unlimited number of videos, at least 18 years old users, while the unregistered members can only watch videos. In November 2006, the YouTube, LLC was purchased for US$1.65 billion by Google, operating currently as a Google subsidiary. The first YouTube video was entitled Me at the Zoo, showing co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo.
Chad Meredith Hurley
Chad Hurley, age 46, co-founder of YouTube
Chad Meredith Hurley is an American former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and co- founder of YouTube, the popular video sharing website and MixBit (video editing using smart phones). In October 2006, Hurley and Steve Chen sold YouTube for $1.65 billion to Google. Hurley worked in PayPal in eBay‘s division, and his work is designing the original PayPal logo, before creating YouTube, with co-founder and fellow PayPal co-workers Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. Hurley was primarily responsible for the tagging or internet bookmarking and YouTube video sharing aspects. Hurley received 694,087 shares from Google directly and another 41,232 shares in a trust fund, while his co-founders, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, received 625,366 shares and 137,443 shares, respectively valued at $326.2M and $64.6M. The report from Wall Street Journal was based on the filing on February 7, 2007′s registration statement of Google with Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In October 2010, Chad Hurley stepped down as YouTube’s CEO and stated he would stay on as YouTube advisor, allowing Senior Vice President of Video at Google, Salar Kamangar to take over the CEO position.Hurley is married to Kathy Clark, daughter of Jim Clark, noted Silicon Valley technology entrepreneur and founder of Silicon Graphics, Inc., Netscape Communications Corporation, Healtheon and myCFO. Hurley and wife Kathy, have two children together.
”Steve” Chen
Steve Chen age 35 YouTube co founder
Steven Shih “Steve” Chen is a Taiwanese-American Internet entrepreneur,born August 18, 1978, known as the co-founder and former YouTube Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Chen currently owns and runs the MixBit company when he was a PayPal employee, where he first met Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim. Previously, Steve Chen was also a Facebook employee, although after few months he left, to start YouTube. Chen and Hurley sold YouTube to Google Inc. for $1.65 billion on October 16, 2006. Chen received 625,366 shares of Google and an additional 68,721 in a trust as part of the deal, and the Google shares that Chen received were worth $485 million at Google’s closing stock price on December 28, 2012. Chen and Hurley have now started AVOS System which has acquired Delicious ((formerly del.icio.us, a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks) from Yahoo! Inc. On May 15, 2011, Chen has been listed as one of the 15 Asian Scientists To Watch by Asian Scientist Magazine. Chen is to married Park Ji-hyun ,now known as Jamie Chen, product marketing manager of Google Korea in 2009. The couple currently lives in San Francisco and have a son who was born in July 2010.
Jawed Karim
Jawed Karim, age 34
Jawed Karim is a Bangladeshi-German, Internet entrepreneur, born January 1, 1979, also known as YouTube co-founder. Karim designed and implemented numerous of the PayPal core components, including its real-time anti- fraud system. Jawed Karim met Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, while working at PayPal, and in 2005, Hurley, Chen and Karim created and founded the YouTube video sharing website. On April 23, 2005, Jawed Karim, uploaded the first YouTube video, entitled Me at the zoo. Karim enrolled at Stanford University as a graduate student in computer science, after developing and co-founding YouTube with Hurley and Chen, while acting as a YouTube’s advisor. Jawed Karim received 137,443 shares of stock, worth about $64 million based on Google’s closing stock price at the time, when YouTube was acquired by Google.
13)
Twitter, Inc.Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables users to send text messages limited to 140 characters and read tweets. Registered users 0f social networking Twittter, can read and post tweets but unregistered users can only read them. Twitter users access through the website interface, SMS, or mobile device app. Twitter Inc. headquarter is based in San Francisco and offices in San Antonio, Boston and New York City. In March 2006, Jack Dorsey created Twitter and the site was launched on July 2006. As of 2012, the Twitter service rapidly gained popularity worldwide, with 500 million registered users, who posted 340 million tweets per day. The Twitter service also handled 1.6 billion search queries daily. The social networking Twitter is now one of the ten most visited websites, and has been characterized as the SMS of the Internet.
Jack Dorsey
Jack Dorsey, age 36, founder of Twitter
Jack Dorsey is an American web developer and businessman, born November 19, 1976, creator and founder of Twitter, and as the founder and CEO of mobile payment company known as Square. Jack Dorsey was named in 2008, to the MIT Technology Review TR35, as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35. The Wall Street Journal gave him the “Innovator of the Year Award” for technology on 2012. Dorsey developed Square, a small business platform accepting payments of debit and credit card via mobile device, released in May 2010. The Square method of payment is by using a small, square-shaped device attaches to iPhone, iPad or Android devices via the jack headphone, and as a mini card reader allows a person to swipe the client’s credit or debit card, choosing an amount to give to the recipient and then sign his or her name for confirmation. In December 2009, the company grew from 10 employees, and by June 2011, the employees were over a hundred. The office of Square is located on Mission Street in South Market in San Francisco. The Business Insider magazine, ranked Square Inc. at $3.2 billion as of September 2012.
14)
Instagram is a social networking online service, photo sharing and video sharing that users have the ability to take pictures and videos, apply digital filters to them, sharing them on a different social networking services, like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr. The Instagram characteristic feature is that it limits photos to a square shape, similar to Polaroid and Kodak Instamatic images, in contrast to the aspect ratio 16:9 now commonly used by mobile device cameras. Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger created Instagram, launched in October 2010. The Instagram service as of April 2012, rapidly gained popularity, with over 100 million active users, and distributed through the Apple App Store and Google Play. The Instagram Support was available originally for only the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, however, in April 2012, support was added for Android camera phones running 2.2 Froyo. Instagram originally is for photo-sharing service incorporated video sharing in June 2013, allowing users to record and share videos that lasts for up to 15 seconds. Facebook has seen this venture and attempt to copy and compete with Vine video-sharing application, a mobile app owned by Twitter.
Kevin Systrom
Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram, (image credit: www.businessinsider.com)
Kevin Systrom , age 29, is an American software engineer and entrepreneur, born December 30, 1983, best known as the co‑founder of Instagram, with co-founder Mike Krieger created in 2010. Kevin Systrom is also the founder of an HTML5 based location-sharing service known as Burbn. Systrom, got his first venture of the startup world, and when he was Mayfield Fellows Program member at Stanford University, and attend internship at Odeo (a directory and search destination website for RSS-syndicated audio and video, and employed tools that allow users to create, record, sharing podcasts with a simple Adobe Flash-based interface), the company that eventually made Twitter gained worldwide popularity. Systrom spent two years at Google, as he worked first on Gmail, Google Reader and other products, and second he worked on the Google Corporate Development team. After Systrom left Google, he co‑founded the Instagram photo-sharing service. Facebook purchased Instagram for $1 billion in cash and stock in April 2012. According to reports, Systrom net worth was $400 million based on his deal and ownership statement in the business. The actual amount that Facebook had to pay in acquiring Instagram was adjusted to 715 million.
“Mike” Krieger
Mike Krieger, age 27, (image credit: geeko.lesoir.be)
Michel “Mike” Krieger is a Brazilian software engineer and entrepreneur, born March 4, 1986, known as the co-founder of Instagram, along with co-founder Kevin Systrom. Krieger was born in São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, in 2004 he moved to California to attend Standford University, where he studied symbolic systems, where he met Kevin Systrom, and started to develop Instagram in 2010.
15)
Facebook is a social networking service online, where its name came from the colloquial name for the book. In February 2004, Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his roommates and fellow Harvard University college students, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. Facebook social networking service, gradually added support for students at different universities before opened to high school students, and now Facebook allows any users who declare themselves to be at least 13 years old and registered users of the site. Facebook service method, the users must register first, before using the site, after registering the users may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, exchanging messages, sharing photos and profiles and receive automatic notifications when users update their profile. Facebook users may join user groups with common-interest, organized by workplace, school, or other characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as Close Friends, or People From Work. Facebook has over one billion active users as of September 2012. Facebook joined the Fortune 500 list for the first time, based on its US$ 5.1 Billion revenue in 2012, being placed at position of 462 on the list published in May 2013.
Mark Zuckerber
Mark Zuckerberg age 29
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American Internet entrepreneur and computer programmer, known famously as one of five co-founders of Facebook, the social networking website. Mark Zuckerberg is the Facebook Inc. chairman and chief executive as of April 2013, and his personal wealth was estimated to be US$16.8 billion. Zuckerberg, with roommates Saverin, McCollum, Mozkovitz and Hughes introduced Facebook onto other campuses nationwide and moved to Palo Alto, California, afterwards. Mark Zuckerberg became a billionaire at the age of 23, in 2007, as a result of Facebook users worldwide that reached a total of one billion in 2012. Zuckerberg was involved in different legal issues that were initiated by others in the group, claiming a company share based upon their involvement during the creation and development of Facebook phase. Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan (Chinese-Vietnamese child of refugee) married, on May 19, 2012, along time girlfriend whom he was dating since 2003, in Zuckerberg’s backyard in a celebration also marking Chan’s graduation from medical school.
Eduardo Saverin
Eduardo Saverin Facebook co-founder
Eduardo Luiz Saverin is a Brazilian investor and Internet entrepreneur, known as one of the social networking service Facebook, along with Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum and Chris Hughes. According to Forbes magazine, Saverin owns less than 5% of shares from Facebook and has a net worth of $2.2 billion as of 2012. Eduardo Saverin, has also invested in Qwiki, an early-stage startup automated video production company. which released an iPhone app recently, that automatically turns the pictures and videos from a camera of user, roll into movies to share and Jumio. Since 2009, Saverin has been living in Singapore. Eduardo Saverin renounced his U.S. Citizenship in September 2011, changing citizenship may have reduced the capital gain taxes, he would have paid after the Facebook IPO. US Senator Chuck Schumer, introduced Ex-PATRIOT ACT, in response in denouncing citizenship, which could have prevented Saverin from ever entering the United States again, but this proposed bill died in committee. The Ex-PATRIOT Act is a proposed United States Federal Law, to raise taxes and imposing entry bans on certain former citizens and departure of permanent residents (Greencard holders) of the United States. Saverin met Mark Zuckerberg, a sophomore and fellow Harvard undergraduate, during his Junior year. Zuckerberg and Saverin, noted the lack of a social networking website for Harvard students, the two decided to worked together and in 2004, The Facebook was launched. Saverin as the co-founder, held the role of Facebook’s business manager and chief financial officer. Facebook filed a lawsuit against Saverin and Saverin also filed a countersuit against Facebook, but the case were settled out of court. Although, settlement terms of the case were not disclosed, the company affirmed Saverin’s title as Facebook co-founder. After the settlement, Eduardo Saverin signed a non-disclosure contract.
Andrew McCollum
Andrew McCollum, Facebook co-founder (image credit:svco.sbs.ox.ac.uk)
Andrew McCollum is an angel investor (an affluent person providing business’s capitalization for a start-up, commonly in exchange for ownership equity and convertible debt or convertible bond) and best known as a co-founder of Facebook. He met Mark Zuckerberg when he attended Harvard University and others on the founding team. From Facebook launching in 2004 until September 2006, he worked at Facebook, and also worked on a file sharing application known as Wirehog with Adam D’Angelo. McCollum is also the founder of JobSpice, an online resume preparation tool. In 2007, Andrew McCollum returned to Harvard, and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. McCollum acts currently as Entrepreneur in Residence at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), an investment firm focused on venture capital and investments of growth equity, and Flybridge Capital Partners.
Chris Hughes
Chris Hughes age 29
Chris Hughes, also co-founded Facebook, an American entrepreneur and served as spokesman for the online social directory and networking site Facebook, with roommates Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz and Eduardo Saverin. Hughes purchased majority share of The New Republic magazine in 2012, and currently the magazine’s publisher and editor-in-chief. Chris Hughes graduated as Harvard University’s magna-cum laude in 2006, with a Bachelor of Arts in history and literature. Chris Hughes was the Barack Obama’s online organizing coordinator in 2008 presidential campaign on My.BarackObama.com, the online social networking for campaign website. Hughes is also the founder and the Executive Director of Jumo, a non-profit social network organization which he founded in 2010, which “aims to help people find ways to help the world”. Hughes is openly gay, and attended President Barack Obama’s first state dinner in 2009, with his partner Political Director of Freedom to Marry, Sean Eldridge. In January 2011, Hughes and Eldridge announced their engagement at a reception in support of Freedom to Marry, and married on June 30, 2012. The couple bought a $2 million residence in the 19th District of New York, and according to some reports, the purpose of purchasing house in New York is permitting Eldridge to run for the Congressional seat there.
Dustin Moskovitz
Dustin Moskovitz, age 29 Facebook co-founder
Dustin Moskovitz is also one of the co-founder of Facebook, with Zuckerberg, Sverin, Hughes and McCollum, is an American Internet entrepreneur, was born on May 22, 1984. Dustin Moskovitz, left Facebook in 2008, co-created Asana with co-founder Justin Rosentein. Forbes magazine, ranked Moskovitz in March 2011, as one of the youngest self-made billionaires in the world, on the basis of his 7.7% share in Facebook. He graduated from the IB Diploma Programme, and attended Harvard University as a major in economics for two years before he moved with Mark Zuckerberg to Palo, Alto, to work full-time on Facebook. Moskovitz announced in October 3, 2008, that he was leaving Facebook to form a new company with Justin Rosentein named Asana. Justin Rosenberg worked with Facebook as an engineering manager, and worked formerly with Google, and whom Moskovitz had recruited. In 2011, Dustin Moskovitz also is the co-founder of the Good Ventures philanthropic organization with fiance, Cari Tuna, a former Wall Street Journal. Good Ventures announced in June 2012, a close partnership with GiveWell, a charity evaluator.
Justin Rosenstein
Justin Rosenstein, co founder of Asana
Justin Rosenstein is an American entrepreneur and software programmer, born 1984, who co-founded Asana, the collaborative software company along with Dustin Moskovitz. As of October 2012, Asana has 35 employees with company valuation at USD 280M at its latest round of funding. Rosenstein dropped out in 2004, of a computer science graduate program at Stanford University to join Google as a software engineer. At Google, Rosenstein also worked in Google as Google Page Creator‘s product manager. However, the Page Creator was later restricted to new sign ups to just 3 million users as new users were asked to use Google Sites instead. In order to focus on Google Sites, another Google Webpage-publishing service, all existing content on Page Creator was moved in 2009 to Google Sites. In 2006, Rosentein, was working on project code called Platypus. Rosenstein left Google in 2007, and became the Engineering Technical at Facebook.com (from May 2007 to November 2008) working closely with Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz. Justin Rosenstein was compensated with 4,863,335 Class B shares of Facebook, ($130 million at $27/share), which he has deposited into a trust. At Facebook, Rosenstein was technical lead in charge of Facebook pages, Facebook’s Like button, and was responsible for Facebook Beacon, the controversial advertising site program that was terminated in a 2009 class-action lawsuit. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, stated in November 2011 on the Facebook Blog that Beacon was a mistake.
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Daniel Ha Disqus co-founder (image credit:http://www.inc.com/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ha)
Disqus is an online community that used networked platform for blog comment hosting service for websites. The platform of the company which includes different features, such as social networking, social integration, user profiles, spam and moderation tools, analytics, email notifications, and mobile commenting. Disqus was founded by Daniel Ha and Jason Yan in 2007, as a Y Combinator startup ( started in 2005, an American seed accelerator. Y Combinator provides seed money, advice, and connections at two three-month programs per year). Disqus is featured on many major publications, like Telegraph, CNN and IGN and websites with estimated 750,000 blogs. Disqus competes with Livefyre (a technology company helping bloggers, publishers and brands create online communities through conversation and social media), Echo and IntenseDemate. Daniel Ha is co-founder and CEO of Disqus blog comment platform with co-founder Jason Yan, a classmate he had known since the 7th grade.
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Digg is a news aggregator or news reader, with a front page editorially driven, which aims to chose blogs, headlines, or content specifically for the Internet audience such as science, trending political and movie industry issues, and viral phenomena Internet issues. Digg was launched in July 31, 2012, with its current form, with support for sharing content to other social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Formerly, Digg had been a very popular social news website, allowing users to vote web content up or down, they named as digging and burying. Digg’s monthly U.S. unique visitors and users are estimated at 3.8 million according to Quantcast, thus, because of Digg’s popularity, this prompted Reddit to be created, a copycat social networking website with story submission and voting systems. Digg, the former company took part in advanced acquisition talks with Google for a reported $200 million price tag in July 2008, but the deal failed. On July 12, 2012, after four years Digg was sold in three parts, such as the Digg brand, website and technology were sold to the current owner, Betaworks (a startup studio and seed stage venture capital company that invests in network-focused, consumer-facing media businesses based in New York) for an estimated USD $500,000, staff were transferred to the SocialCode of Washington Post for a reported $12 million, and a patents suite were sold to LinkedIn for about $4 million. In November 2004, Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky and Jay Adelson, created and started Digg as an experiment, while the original design by Dan Ries has freeadvertisements. Digg company added Google AdSense (Google sorted, maintained and administered advertisements, and they can generate revenue on either a per-impression or per-click basis) early in the project but switched in 2007 to MSN adCenter (Bing Ads (formerly Microsoft adCenter and MSN adCenter) is a service that provides pay per click advertising on both the Yahoo! search engines and Bing). The Digg website’s main function is to allow users discover, share and recommend web content, and community members can submit a webpage for general consideration. Other members can vote that Digg page up or bury down, which usually, voting takes place on digg.com, some websites add to their pages the digg buttons, to allow users to vote while browsing the web.
Kevin Rose
Kevin Rose, age 36, Digg
Robert Kevin Rose is an American Internet entrepreneur, born February 21, 1977, best known as co-founder of Digg, Revision3, Pownce and Milk, and also served as co-host and production assistant of The Screen Savers TechTV . Kevin Rose, is a venture partner at Google Ventures as of 2012, and also worked for two dot-com startups through CMGI ( now known as ModusLink Global Solutions, Inc., formerly CMGI Inc., is an American company). In 2013, Kevin Rose, married Darya Pino Rose, Ph.D, an American author, webbloger, and neuroscientist, also known as the founder of weblog Summer Tomato, and as a health and food contributor to The Huffington Post. In 2004, Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson created a technology link website they named Digg, and the website was publicly launched on December 5, 2004. Kevin Rose was named in 2007 to the MIT Technology Review TR35 as one of the top 35 world’s innovators under the age of 35. Rose was replaced as CEO, on September 1, 2010, by Matt Williams, a former Amazon‘s general manager of consumer payments. Kevin Rose resigned on March 18, 2011 from his position at Digg.
Jay Adelson
Jay Adelson, age 43 Digg
Jay Adelson is an American Internet entrepreneur, born Jay Steven Adelson, on September 7, 1970, known as co-founder of Digg, Equinix and Revision3. Jay Adelson’s other Internet career were; Netcom, DECs Palo Alto Internet Exchange, and SimpleGeo, Inc. CEO before they were purchased by Urban Airship. Adelson was named in 2008, as a member of Top 100 Most Influential People in the World for Time Magazine, and was listed as a finalist on the same list in 2009. Kevin Rose was producing an episode of The Screen Savers when Jay Adelson and Rose met in 2003 and interviewed Adelson then at Equinix. In April 2010, Jay Adelson left Digg over disagreements with Rose and the board of directors over the leadership and direction of the company.
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Skype is a freemium (combined the two aspects of the business model as free and premium) voice-over IP (Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service and instant messaging client developed by the Microsoft Skype Division, originally the name was derived from sky and peer. In August 2003, Skype was first launched written by Estonian developers Ahti Heinla ( Estonian entrepreneur and computer programmer and one of the developers of Skype), Priit Kasesalu ( Estonian programmer and software developer) and Jaan Tallinn ( Estonian programmer who participated in the development of Skype), and Danish co-founder Janus Friis, and Swedish co-founder Niklas Zennström, who had also originally developed Kazaa Media Desktop or Kazaa. As of 2010, Skype had 663 million registered users. In 2011, Skype was purchased by Microsoft for $8.5 billion. The headquarter of Microsoft’s Skype division is in Luxembourg, but 44% of overall division employees and staff, and the development team, are still situated in Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia. The Skype service allows users to communicate with peers by voice chat using a microphone, video by using a webcam and instant messaging (IM) via the Internet. Phone calls may be placed to recipients on the traditional telephone networks, and calls via Skype service to other users are free of charge, while landline telephone calls and mobile phones are charged via a debit-based user account system. The Skype software was developed by the computer programmers Heinla, Kasesalu and Tallinn, and the first public beta version was released on August 29, 2003.
Ahti Heinla,Toivo Annus and Priit Kasesalu (Skype Developers)
Janus Friis
Janus Friis, Skype co-founder (image credit: www.123people.ca)
Janus Friis age 37,is a Danish Internet entrepreneur, born June 26, 1976, best known as the co-founder of KaZaA or Kazaa, the file-sharing application, and Skype, the peer-to-peer telephone application. Janus Friis and his partner Niklas Zennström sold Skype to eBay for $2.6 billion, in September 2005. Friis has maintained Skype ownership interest through Sliver Lake Partners (a US-based private equity firm deals on leveraged buyout and growth capital investments in technology), which sold Skype in May 2011, to Microsoft Corporation for $8.5 billion. Friis and Zennström also developed Joost, an interactive software application for distributing TV shows and other forms of video content over the Web. In November 2009, the assets of this service were sold to Adconion Media Group. In 2011, Friis is also the founder of Vdio, a video streaming startup, the co-founder of Altnet, a network that sells commercial music to KaZaA users.
Niklas Zennström
Niklas Zennström, Skype co-founder and Kazaa (image credit:www.ebbemunk.dk)
Niklas Zennström age 47, is a Swedish Internet entrepreneur, born February 16, 1966, known as co-founder of Skype and Kazaa with partner, Janus Friis, and for founding several high-profile online ventures. Niklas Zennström founded the technology investment firm Atomico recently, and has become a significant figurehead for entrepreneurs in the tech sector. In 2000 Zennström and Janus Friis co-founded the peer-to-peer file sharing application, Kazaa, which Zennström served as CEO and the program became the most downloaded Internet software in the world in 2003. Kazaa was sold to Sharman Networks, after the members of the music and motion picture industry in the United States filed lawsuits. Skype was purchased by Microsoft for $8.5 billion in its biggest ever cash deal, on May 10, 2011, and according to reports that Zennström and Friis will make approximately $1 billion between them from the sale. In 2007, after the sale of Skype, Zennström to launch Joost, an online video distribution service (where Zennström was co-chairman).On December 17, 2008, Joost sent an email to its clients explaining that the project was moving to a website-only model, and that the Joost application would stop working on December 19, 2008, Friday. The Joost majority content is restricted to UNited States of America users only, due to lack of international licensing arrangements.
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LinkedIn is a social networking website for people in professional occupations, used for professional networking. founded by Reid Hoffman and founding team members from PayPal and Socialnet.com (Allen Blue, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Lee Hower, Konstantin Guericke, Stephen Beitzel, David Eves, Ian McNish, Yan Pujante, and Chris Saccheri), in December 2002 and launched on May 5, 2003. Jeff Weiner is the CEO of LinkedIn, a former executive of Yahoo! Inc. LinkedIn reports more than 225 million users in more than 200 countries and territories as of June 2013. The LinkedIn site is available in 20 languages, for users such as English, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese,Korean, Malay, Portuguese, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog and Turkish. LinkedIn had 33.9 million unique visitors, in June 2011, up 63 % from a year earlier and surpassed MySpace. In January 2011, LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering and traded its first shares on May 19, 2011, under the LNKD NYSE symbol. LinkedIn has 65.6 million monthly unique U.S. visitors and 178.4 million around the world as of July 2, 2013 according to Quancast report. LinkedIn allows users and help users to research companies with which they may be interested in working. Potential employees can apply for job positions using their LinkedIn profiles as resumes with the new plugin, and the Saved Jobs tab will save all applications. In October 2012, the LinkedIn Influencers program was launched and brings together 300 plus of the top leaders in the world, to share their professional insights with LinkedIn’s 225 million members. Influencer is an invite-only program that features notable leaders and influential people such as, Richard Branson (founder of the VIRGIN GROUPS), Arianna Huffington (Greek-American author and columnist of The Huffington Post and former wife of Huffington co-founder Michael Huffington) the 55th and first Jewish Chicago Mayor, Rahm Emanuel, he current JP Morgan Chase, one of the Big Four Banks of the United States, chairman and president and CEO Jamie Dimon, Indian-American physician Deepak Chopra, American author, business executive and chemical engineer, chairman and CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001 Jack Welch, and former chief executive and current Microsoft chairman Bill Gates,the largest personal-computer software company in the world, which he co-founded with Paul Allen.
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
Reid Hoffman, age 46, Linkedin founder
Reid Garrett Hoffman is an American Internet entrepreneur, author and venture capitalist, also known as the co-founder of LinkedIn, a social network service, used primarily for business connections and job searching. Hoffman was a member of the board of directors at the founding of PayPal, an electronic money transmission service, while working at SocialNet. In January 2000 he left SocialNet and joined PayPal full-time as the company’s COO. During the time eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5B in 2002, Hoffman was executive vice president of PayPal. In December 2002, Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn with two former SocialNet colleagues (including Allen Blue), a former college classmate and a former Fujitsu colleague, and was launched on May 5, 2003 as one of the first business-oriented online social networks. Jeffrey “Jeff” Weiner is an American businessman, and the Chief executive officer (CEO) of LinkedIn, a social networking business-related website. He started as the Interim President of LinkedIn in December 2008 .
PayPal is an e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made via the Internet, or online money transfer, that serves as alternative electronic payments with traditional paper methods, such as money orders and checks. PayPal is an acquiring bank, or acuirer,(bank or financial company that processes payments for auction sites, commercial users and payments for products or services for online clients or contractors charges via credit or debit card payments, for which it charges a fee. PayPal also charge a fee for receiving money, depending to the amount received, and the fees also depend on the currency used, option used for payment, the country of the sender and the country of the recipient depending with convert of currency, the amount sent and the recipient’s account type. eBay purchases made by credit card via PayPal may incur extra fees if the buyer and seller use different currencies. PayPal became a fully owned by part-owner of eBay on October 3, 2002. PayPal headquarter is located in San Jose, California, at eBay’s North First Street satellite office campus, and also operated across European Union as a based bank of Luxembourgh from July 2007. PayPal was created after Internet financial services company called X.com founded by Elon Musk, and later acquired in March 2000 the money-transfer system company, Confinity. In December 1998, Confinity was founded by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Luke Nosek and Ken Howery, and launched a money transfer service in 2000 named PayPal. The money-transfer system, PayPal, was only two months old during the time X.com acquired Confinity, however, Elon Musk, founder of X.com felt, PayPal had a promising future. But Bill Harris, then president and CEO of X.com disagreed with Musk’s, and in May 2000, Harris left the company. Elon Musk made the decision that X.com would terminate other Internet banking operations in October and focus on the X.com online money service, and was then renamed PayPal which expanded rapidly as result of its use on eBay in 2001.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk, age 42
Elon Musk born June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa, is an American engineer, business magnate, investor and inventor, founder and CEO of SpaceX, Tesla Motors and co-founded PayPal. Elon Musk co-founded X.com in March 1999, an online financial services and e-mail payment company, after a year, the X.com company acquired Confinity, which operated a partly owned firm known as called PayPal. Elon Musk developed and renamed PayPal, the payment platform of person-to-person mode of payment. The success and early growth of PayPal, was because of Musk’s campaign he created in large part to a successful viral growth ads. Musk owned 11.7% of PayPal shares, the largest shareholder of the company, before PayPal was acquired by eBay in October 2002, for US$1.5 billion in stock. Elon Musk met Canadian author, Justine Musk (born Jennifer J. Wilson) and married his first wife in 2000, while they were both students at Queen’s University. In September 2008, the couple announced their separation. Elon Musk have five all boys children, his twin sons who turned seven years old in March 2012, and his triplets who were five years old during that time, where he shares custody with his ex-wife Justine. The bibbionaire entrepreneur, Elon Musk married his second wife, British actress Talulah Riley, on September 25, 2010 at Dornoch Cathedral in Scotland. Musk announced in January 2012 that he had recently ended a four-year relationship with his second wife, Talulah Riley. After the divorce was filed, Riley settled for $4.2 million out of Elon Musk’s reported at that time estimated as $2 billion net worth. Musk currently resides in the Bel Air area, Los Angeles, Calfornia.
Max R Levchin
Max Levchin, age 38
Max Rafael Levchin, born July 11, 1975, is a Ukrainian-born American computer scientist, Internet entrepreneur and best known as one of the PayPal co-founders, with Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, and he served as the former PayPal’s chief technology officer (CTO). Levchin founded Fieldlink in 1998, with John Bernard Powers (who left the company shortly) and Peter Thiel. After changing the name of company to Confinity, the team developed PayPal a popular payment product. After Confinity a merged with X.com, the combined entity was renamed PayPal Inc. Max Levchin, married his longtime girlfriend, Nellie Minkova in 2008, together they have two children. As of 2012, Max Levchin’s net worth is $1 billion.
Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel age 45
Peter Andreas Thiel is a German-born US Internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist and hedge fund (a collective investment scheme) manager. Thiel is the co-founder and served as the CEO of PayPal with Max Levchin, and followed by Elon Musk. Peter Thiel is also the co-founder of Palantir Technologies, Inc. founded in 2004 , which he is the current chairman. Thiel was the first Facebook outside investor, the popular social-networking site, with a 10.2% profit acquired in 2004 for $500,000, and sits on the board of directors of the company. In 2011, Peter Thiel was ranked on March 2012 as #293 on the Forbes 400, with a net worth of $1.5 billion. Thiel co-founded PayPal in 1998, an online payments system, with Max Levchin, and later merged with X.com, headed and founded by Elon Musk. On February 15, 2002, PayPal went public and was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion that year. At the time of eBay’s acquisition, Thiel’s 3.7 percent stake in PayPal was worth approximately $55 million.
Luke Nosek
Luke Nosek age 38
Luke Nosek is a Polish-born American entrepreneur, co-founder of SponsorNet New Media Inc., while still studying in college in 1995, with Max Levchin and Scott Banister, his fellow UIUC students. Luke Nosek formerly worked for Netscape Communications Corporation. Luke Nosek co-founded PayPal in 1998, with Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Ken Howery, serving as its marketing vice president. After eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002, and PayPal went public, Nosek left PayPal to travel and pursue angel investing. Nosek, together with Peter Thiel and Ken Howery, they started Founders Fund in 2005, a venture capital company based in San Francisco with over $1billion under management. Luke Nosek sits on the boards currently for SpaceX, Pathway Genomics and ResearchGate.
Ken Howery
Ken Howery, age 37
Ken Howery is a co-founder and partner of a venture capital firm Founders Fund, based in San Francisco with over $1 billion under management, co-founder of PayPal with Peter Thiel, Luke Nosek, Elon Musk and Max Levchin. Ken Howery served as CFO for PayPal, from 1998 until 2002, followed by PayPal’s acquisition by eBay. After eBay acquired PayPal, Howery served as Director of Corporate Development for eBay until 2003, and in 2004, he rejoined Peter Thiel at Clarium Capital Management, where Howery served as vice president of private equity, as well as a research and trading team’s member. Ken Howery, Peter Thiel, with Luke Nosek, a fellow PayPal alumnus, started Founders Fund in 2005. The VC Journal named Ken Howery one of the Top 10 VCs under 35, in 2010 and he was named Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in March 2012.
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Reddit is a social news and entertainment website, stylized as reddit, based in San Francisco, California, where registered users submit content in the form of either a link or a text or self post. Other users vote the submission of up or down, used for ranking posts and determine its position on the front and site pages. The Subreddits is the areas of interest, where content entries are organized. Steve Huffman is the founder of Reddit with co-founder Alexis Ohanian. In October 2006, Reddit was acquired by Condé Nast Publications. Reddit was split from Condé Nast, in September 2011 and now operates as a subsidiary of Advance Publications, Condé Nast’s parent company.
Steve Huffman
Steve Huffman, age 29, co-founder of Reddit and Hipmunk (image credit:www.therichest.com
Steve Huffman age 29, is an American web developer and co-founder of Reddit website, born November 12, 1983. More recently, Huffman also co-founded the Hipmunk airfare search site. In 2005, Steve graduated with a computer science from the University of Virginia. In October 2006, after graduating, Huffman teamed up with Alexis Ohanian, a classmate, to start reddit website which was funded by Y Combinator.In 2006, Reddit was later acquired by Condé Nast. Huffman teamed up with Adam Goldstein to create the travel site, Hipmunk in 2010, which was also funded from Y Combinator.
Alexis Ohanian
Alexis Ohanian, age 30
Alexis Ohanian is an American internet entrepreneur, investor and activist, born April 24, 1983, based in Brooklyn, New York, best known as the co-founder of reddit, the social news website, also helped launch hipmunk, travel search website. In 2007, Ohanian launched breadpig (produces a variety of items that appeal to geeks, most notably publishing the xkcd sometimes stylized as XKCD, a webcomic created by Randall Munroe, the tagline of webcomic describing a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, language and math book). The breadpig, is an uncorporation that produces merchandise for geeks and donate the proceeds to charity. As a Founder and Chief Swine Defender, Ohanian continues to run breadpig currently. Ohanian also helped launch hipmunk, a travel search website in 2010, and now acts as an advisor.
Adam Goldstein
Adam Goldstein co-founder of Hipmunk (image credit:betabeat.com)
Adam Goldstein started GoldfishSoft, his own online software company at age 14, and at the age of 16, he began writing for The Missing Manual series with David Pogue. Goldstein was born January 22, 1988, and he is from South Orange, New Jersey, and a graduate of The MIT and Pingry School. Goldstein co-founded hipmunk, a travel startup with Steve Huffman, Reddit co-founder in 2010. Goldstein has served for BookTour.com as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO), which he co-founded along with Chris Anderson and Kevin Smokler.
Hipmunk is a consumer-oriented online travel company based in San Francisco, California, was co-founded by
Adam Goldstein and
Steve Huffman, Reddit co-founder in 2010
. The hipmunk company concentrates on the visual organization of flight search
results. Hipmunk gained higher media attention when
Google announced in September 2011 its
flight search service. Hipmunk raised $15M in Series B funding led by Institutional Venture Partners, in June 2012, raised $20 million in their total funding. Hipmunk presents search results arranged in the order of time and of day on a single page. Flights are ranked according to price, schedule, and agony, a score based on factors such as flight duration and number of stops. The search engine also ranks hotels, filtered by price, reviews, and an intense feeling rating. Aside from researching and booking flights and hotels, the service looks up
airbnb (is an online service that provides a platform for a person referred to as
hosts, generally private parties, to rent unoccupied venues or space and other short-term
lodging to guests. Before using the site, users of the site must register and create a personal
online profile) results and sorts relevant train routes provided by
Amtrak. The hipmunk company makes money by collecting commissions for direct flights ticketing and hotel purchase traffic to airlines, hotels, and other travel-search sites. For example
Orbitz pays
Hipmunk its $3 standard rate per flight sold.
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