Facebook founder to give $100 million gift

Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg--who placed as the 35th richest person on the just-released Forbes 400 list-- is giving troubled schools in Newark, N.J., an enormous $100 million gift on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" on Friday.
As it happens, that's the same day an unflattering and much-buzzed-about movie premieres in which he's portrayed as a power-hungry and socially awkward genius
"The Social Network" premieres Friday at the New York Film Festival, and is already being compared to "Citizen Kane" and "The Godfather," two iconic portraits of powerful men felled by their own ambition.
The 26-year-old hasn't engaged in much high-profile philanthropy so far -- unlike fellow tech billionaire and education reformer Bill Gates -- which makes his Oprah appearance and $100 million gift more notable. Zuckerberg will announce the donation alongside Newark Mayor Cory Booker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, according to the New York Times' scoop. The money represents an eighth of the city's total education budget. Zuckerberg's net worth skyrocketed by 245 percent in the past year as Facebook's market valuation topped $23 billion.
Zuckerberg, described as a "wary and private" person in a recent New Yorker profile, has been forced to tear down some of the barriers between his life and the public. This new plunge into civic-minded activity seems designed in part to fend off bad publicity generated by the film and accusations that as a student, he hacked into private emails and stole the original idea for the site from fellow students. The movie is loosely based on an equally unflattering book by Ben Mezrich, who used a burned former Facebook investor (and former Harvard colleague of Zuckerberg) as his primary source.