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Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook Creator, by Adam Woog. 48 pgs. Farmington Hills, MI: KidHaven Press, 2009. ISBN: 978-0-7377-4566-5

Zuckerberg, as CEO of the Facebook social networking service and the world's youngest billionaire, demonstrates the appeal of technologies that solve age-old human problems. In addition to the project he is best know for, the book describes his work on Synapse, a music recommender system, which attracted the attention of Microsoft and AOL before he enrolled in college. Zuckerberg went on to work on what he perceived as problems of students on the Harvard campus, including collaborative relational databases he created to allow students to pool notes to study for exams or to look up the other students enrolled in their classes. Zuckerberg demonstrated a strong interest in the potential of computing at a young age, as he began writing his own code in grade school. Zuckerberg's Facebook project is in essence a digital version of the print directory publications available at many schools. Since he hacked into the college's compuer directory to obtain photographs of the student body for the first incarnation of the site, Harvard was able to force Zuckerberg to shut down the site (known as Facemash). His next incarnation of the eproject incorporated the ability for user commenting. Zuckerberg launched the site in 2004 as part of his personal website and within 24 hours it had about 1500 members.

Like Microsoft's Bill Gates, Zuckerberg left Harvard for Silicon Valley before completing a degree. In the early stages, he was forced to sell stake in the company in exchange for server space to run the enterprise. The book details how a revenue stream later emerged from third-party applications with access to Facebook's more than 150 million active users, suggesting that Zuckerberg became a savvy businessman despite his uncomprosmisingly casual dress. The book discusses the appeal of Zuckerberg's invention. There is a suggestion of philosophical debate about whether social media sustains human connections or isolates individuals who engage directly with computers rather than peers. Facebook has been praised for its ease of use and clean and simple design. Also mentioned are areas of the world where read/write sites are banned by totalitarian regimes opposed to social networking. Supplemented with a list of "Fun Facts about Facebook"