Mark Zuckerberg’s First Website

It isn’t provable, but it’s believable that Mark Zuckerberg’s first website is still on Angelfire.

Angelfire is an Internet service that provides free hosting and tools for building a website. In the 90s Angelfire was a big deal. Lots of people used it to get started doing something on the Web.

It’s totally possible that Zuckerberg’s first ideas that lead to the creation of Facebook started on this Angelfire site: https://www.angelfire.com/ny/mez51/

From the “About Me” page:

“I live in a small town near the massive city of New York. I am currently 15 years old and I just finished freshman year in high school. I have remodeled this website in an attempt that perhaps some search engine will recognize it. I am trying to promote my new AOL Program, The Vader Fader, which you can download elsewhere on this site. It is a decent fader. If you have any comments about this website, the java applets on it, or the Vader Fader which I am trying to promote, please contact me. My E-Mail address is at the bottom of this page. “

That email address at the bottom of the page is Themark51@aol.com, an email address connected to the username “ekzooks” according to Motherboard. That username is known to be used by Mark Zuckerberg’s dad, Dr. Edward Zuckerberg. The username is in the link to Dr. Zuckerberg’s Pinterest account: https://pinterest.com/ekzooks/pins/ which links to his Facebook profile.

A look behind the curtain at the HTML code reveals the Content Author as Mark Zuckerberg.

The Angelfire site was created in New York in 1999 exactly when Zuck was a freshmen in high school.

All of this is fascinating for sentimental reasons, but for those of us who are interested in how Facebook started and where it’s going this is an important find. An Applet on the site called “The Web” gives us insight into what young Zuck was thinking about how people could and should be connected on the Internet:

“As of now, the web is pretty small. Hopefully, it will grow into a larger web. This is one of the few applets that require your participation to work well. If your name is already on The Web because someone else has chosen to be linked to you, then you may choose two additional people to be linked with. Otherwise, if you see someone who you know and would like to be linked with but your name is not already on The Web, then you can contact me and I will link that person to you and put you on The Web. If you do not know anyone on The Web, contact me anyway and I will put you on it. In order for this applet to work, you must E-Mail me your name and the names of the two people that you would like to be linked with. Thank you!”

If this is really his first website, Mark Zuckerberg at age 15 wanted everyone on the Web to be linked, and he wanted to be in control of all those links.