In May 2012, after many years of reporting on Facebook, Business Insider's Nicholas Carlson obtained and published these private communications. As many look back on Facebook on its 10-year anniversary, we thought it worth revisiting the Mark Zuckerberg of 2004 - just another Harvard student far from the billionaire we know today.
When Mark Zuckerberg was a kid, he networked the computers in his home, and wrote a program so family members could send messages to each other.
Then came America Online, and Zuckerberg, like millions of other kids his age, joined up and claimed a screen name so he could chat with his family and friends online.
When he went to college, Zuckerberg used AOL Instant Messenger to keep in touch with friends and family.
Thanks to four years of reporting, we've been able to view and report on a number of these IMs.
Here, we've collected some of the best of them. These are illustrations of the IMs, not actual screengrabs.
They answer questions like:
- What is Mark Zuckerberg like behind closed doors?
- What was he thinking when, as Harvard sophomore, he created TheFacebook.com?
- What does he really think of Eduardo Saverin, the cofounder he kicked out of the company?
- What does he really think of the Winklevoss twins, the Harvard graduates who sued Zuckerberg?