LESSON B (2) READING
Read the text.
Match the information 1-6 with paragraphs A-E.
- Zuckerberg doesn´t live life like a millionaire. ___
- His school didn´t like his original project. ___
- It is a risk for Zuckeberg to keep the company. ___
- Zuckerberg wants to hold on to his company. ___
- Facebook is expected to keep growing. ___
- Zuckerberg started Facebook at school. ___ / ___
A Mark Zuckerberg´s life so far is like a movie script. A supersmart kid invents a tech phenomenon while attending college. Just three years later, what started as a networking site for college students has managed to become a tool for 19 millions registered users. More than half of the users visit every day. It is now the sixth most visited site in the United States. If also rates as the number one photo-sharing site on the Web, with 6 million pictures uploaded daily. A recent report projected that Facebook would generate $969 million in revenue, with 48 million users, by 2010.
B However, on meeting Zuckerberg you find it easy to stop thinking of him as the head of a world-beating organisation. He still lives in a rented apartment, with a mattress on the floor and only two chairs and a table for furniture. He walks or bikes to the office every day.
C Zuckerberg doesn´t deny starting life as a computer hacker. One night early in his second year, he hacked into Harvard´s student records. He then opened a basic site called Facemash, which paired photos of undergraduates and invited visitors to determine which one was ´hotter´. Four hours, 450 visitors, and 22 000 photo views later, Harvard closed Zuckerberg´s Internet connection. Within a short time, he had set up the Facebook template and let students fill in their own information. Thefacebook.com, as it was originally called, launched on 4 February, 2004. Within two weeks, half the Harvard student body had signed up. Before long, it was up to two-thirds. In November 2004, Facebook passed the one million users mark. By the autumn of 2005, there were five million users who visited the site at least once a month.
D Facebook´s staggering success has resulted in quite a few concerned organisations trying to buy out the owners of Facebook. For example, it was reported that Yahoo had made a $1 billion offer to buy Facebook. Zuckerberg and his partners politely told them to look elsewhere. They didn´t even need time to stop and think. When asked, Zuckerberg seems uninterested in selling. „I´m here to build something for the long term,“ he says. „Anything else is a distraction.“ He and his colleagues are true believers.
E However, hanging over the Facebook talk is the ghost of Friendster, the first significant socialnetworking site. It reportedly turned down a chance to sell out to Google in 2002 for $30 million, approximately worth about $1 billion today. Now Friendster is struggling, trying to stay with the next generation of sites. The same thing could happen to Facebook.
Read the text again. Are these statements true or false, according to the text?
- Facebook is the most popular site for sharing pictures.
2. Mark Zuckerberg behaves like the owner of major organisation.
3. The original Facebook was only for students at his university.
4. Zuckerberg illegally used university records.
5. In less than a year there were five million users visiting the site.
6. Zuckerberg thought carefully about selling Facebook.
7. The story of another website shows that Zuckerberg is probably making the
right decision.