First it was reality television that could make a plain Jane or Joe a super star overnight, now social media has given everyone, from the meek to actual celebrities, a louder voice. Thanks to the following league of extraordinary gentlemen, social media has revolutionized the way we relate to one another.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, is a social media guru who started Facebook in 2004 while attending Harvard University. He then branched Facebook out to other Ivy League schools. Zuckerberg was way too cool for the prestigious Harvard University and dropped out to grow Facebook. Let's just say it wasn't a bad move considering his company worth is in the billions. Facebook has over 750 million users world wide with over 50 percent of the users on this popular social media site daily.
Tweeting is defined as your 140 maximum character count statement made on the social media giant – Twitter. Even though it was created by Jack Dorsey in 2006, Dick Costolo is now the CEO. Costolo was once the COO of Twitter and before then, he was a co-founder of Feedburner which was bought out by Google. Another interesting fact about the head of tweeting, he actually dabbled in theater while at the University of Michigan.
Dennis Crowley originally co-founded Dodgeball in 2000. It was bought out in 2005 by Google and shut down in 2009. Crowley's successful follow up, Foursquare, has over 3.7 million users after being released to the public only a couple of years ago. This location-based social media site has its users “check-in” where they are hanging out at. Creepy? Maybe. Growing popularity? Definitely. Never-the-less, this Syracuse University and New York University graduate was named one of the "40 under 40": Business's hottest rising stars in 2010 by Fortune Magazine.
YouTube, video-sharing social media website, was founded by Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim and Steve Chen in 2005. These three social media musketeers met while working for Paypal (Hurley designed one of the Paypal logos which landed him a job there). After breaking records with YouTube from 2005 to 2006, they sold YouTube to Google for $1.65 billion. Hurley was the CEO of YouTube until October 2010. The CEO seat was then filled by Salar Kamangar, who was the 9th employee to join Google, with Hurley currently as an advisor. Before becoming CEO of YouTube, Kamangar was Vice President of Google's Web Applications.
The new kid on the interactive block is Google+. Even though it is the offspring of the Zeus of search engines (Google), it is still trying to find friends to play with on the social media playground where the cool kids, Facebook, Twitter and now Foursquare, are dominating. Larry Page is the CEO of Google and co-founded the algorithm giant with Sergery Brin in 1998. Page, a graduate of the University of Michigan and Stanford University, has monopolized the world wide web with software that fills most of your personal and business online needs. The creation of Google+ is an attempt to fulfill your social media needs as well.
Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, joined the professionals-to-professionals social media platform in 2008. With 16 years of experience which includes being the former Executive VP at Yahoo!’s Network division, an executive at Residence at Accel Partners and Greylock Partners, Weiner has been leaving a blazing trail of growing revenue at every major company he heads. LinkedIn has recently upgraded to giving account holders the ability to apply for jobs through this social media site (it isn't widespread as of yet).
These social media moguls continue to make life so convenient for us online. Whether it's sharing stories, music or videos online, social media has left no stone of digital activity unturned … or so we think.
by Bianca M. Bailey at B Culture Media
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