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In today's Brain Storm! Business Podcast, we will discuss the 22 year old entrepreneur who left Harvard to market his wonder-creation, Facebook.

This is a great, fairy-tale business story (well, except for the fact that some other Harvard students are suing him, saying he stole their idea) about someone who made it right out of the gate. His story is a combination of kismet, hacking, and determination to keep what is his.

Once a hacker, always a hacker, Mark Zuckerberg started programming in high school, and made it into Harvard, only to hack Harvard's computers.

To clarify the story, Mark had an idea for Harvard to show profiles for the people on Campus so you could know who was there. Harvard refused. Mark said he would program it for them. Harvard refused. So Mark hacked their system and put a version of it up to see the reaction. Students loved it - Harvard pulled his internet connection.

He decided to launch his own version, allowing students to voluntarily post their information, and in 2 weeks, half the student body had done so!

Starting small and moving in concentric business circles, other colleges starting asking for a place on his site. Then came schools further away, and then high school students, and finally work networks. At 19 million users, their RSS feeds generate more news than any other news entity.

So we will follow the lessons they learned, and from whom they learned them (Napster is involved, as is Friendster), and what kismet landed them venture capital.

Will will find out the boo-boo they made that sent 700,000 customers into a frenzy. We will also find out who offered them a billion dollars to sell out, why he responded as he did, and also what we can do to apply these lessons to our own businesses. Yes, all in this business podcast! (smile)

So tune in and let me hear from you.

Let me know what you think of today's podcast, and even more importantly, let me know if you would ever be interested in brainstorming with me live for the show. I'd love to collaborate with some other brainstormers, so contact me if you are interested. Until next week...

Penny Haynes, 1st Podcast Publishing & Online Community Magazines

P.S. Sorry for the distortion on the audio - I tried recording on my new laptop and I thought the speakers were just buzzing. Wrong - I was recording too hot. Hopefully, it's not too bothersome.