10 Things You Didn't Know About Mark Zuckerberg

Did you know that Facebook is blue because Mark Zuckerberg is red-green color blind?

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Neither did we – till we read Jose Antonio Vargas's excellent profile of the company's CEO and cofounder in this week's New Yorker.

Facebook CEO and cofounder Mark Zuckerberg
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mauriz/2928171735/sizes/l/">mauricesvay</a>
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Zuckerberg lists "Ender's Game" as one of his favorite books.

Ender's Game

 It's about a whiz kid who masters computer war games only to later learn they are real.

Zuck doesn't own a TV.

television
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Why is Zuck so awkward on stage? He hates it.

Zuckerberg Meltdown
All Things D

 Asked at a public appearance, "You don’t like doing these kinds of events very much, do you?” Zuckerberg said, “No.”

In 1996, Zuck built an instant messaging program in Atari BASIC for his dad's dental office.

atari slide

His family used it to communicate. They called it ZuckNet.

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AOL and Microsoft offered to buy a music program Zuckerberg wrote in high school.

AOL, America online, welcome screen, main menu

Zuckerberg admits he wrote the "embarrassing and damaging" IMs we published last spring.

Mark Zuckerberg
Wikimedia Commons.

He "absolutely" regrets them. If you’re going to go on to build a service that is influential and that a lot of people rely on, then you need to be mature, right?” he tells Vargas. “I think I’ve grown and learned a lot.”

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Zuckerberg used to list "The West Wing" as one of his favorite shows on his Facebook profile.

Eisenberg is Zuckerberg

That changed after he learned that "The West Wing" was written by Aaron Sorkin, who also wrote the upcoming ficational movie about Facebook's cofounding, "The Social Network."

Mark drives a black Acura TSX because it is "safe, comforatable, not ostentatious."

Acura TSx
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Facebook is blue because Zuckerberg is red-green color blind.

Thefacebook.com

"Blue is the richest color for me. I can see all of blue," he tells Vargas.

Facebook has conference rooms named after bad ideas.

BeaconVas

 Some of the names are hilarious: "Knife at a Gunfight," "Subprime Mortgage," and, our favorite, "Beacon."

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