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People can say what they want about Zuckerberg, maybe he doesn't have the amazing charisma of Jobs, or the genius of Torvalds, and Facebook gets constantly hammered in the press (and him as well), but this is a great gesture on his part, I applaud him.
== Why? Can you explain?
How is this not a PR exercise: Oopps. Here's $500MM.
I'm curious for someone to explain the choice of charity. It looks like Silicon Valley Community Foundation is an organization that specializes in helping people and companies set up large spendings of charitable donations. Does anyone else do that on this scale? It seems the alternative is spending a fair amount of mental overhead to set up a charitable foundation or donating to an existing foundation institutionall…
I'm not familar with the specifics of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, but it looks like SV Community Foundation, similar to most Community Foundations, does a lot of work managing what are known as donor-advised funds. Check out this Wikipedia page for some good info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donor_advised_fund
1. Private Foundations have a few different rules in place, including lower maximum deductibility for donors, required 5% funds disbursement to charitable organizations, etc. Check out this link for a comparison http://www.programforgiving.org/charitable/pages/considering...
I don't entirely understand why he donated shares of Facebook instead of dollars, can they sell the shares all at once and use the money or is there a catch to that? Did it cost him less money to donate shares in the long run? It's probably my lack of understanding of stocks and economics but it seems like it would be easier for everyone to just donate money.
Let's say Mark plans on donating $500M to an organization and this month he also wants to buy $300M of Christmas presents. He only has about $600M lying around, but he has a lot of FB stock. He can donate $500M cash, then sell stock to have enough money to buy the presents but he'll pay capital gains. Or he can donate the stock, avoid taxes, and use his cash for the presents instead.
I don't entirely understand why he donated shares of Facebook instead of dollars, can they sell the shares all at once and use the money or is there a catch to that? Did it cost him less money to donate shares in the long run? It's probably my lack of understanding of stocks and economics but it seems like it would be easier for everyone to just donate money.
Community Foundations[1] such as the Silicon Valley Community Foundation can receive stock donations that are tax-deductible to the owner. If the donation was in dollars it would also be deductible for the owner, but the owner would need to sell the stock first, which would mean paying capital gains taxes. 1. Differences between Community Foundations / donor-advised funds and Private Foundations can be found here: ht…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What wealth did Mark Zuckerberg create?
A large social network called Facebook.
2) Facebook is a weapon deployed against the integrity of human personality. Does facebook quality as wealth considering that it is a destructive force?
People can say what they want about Zuckerberg, maybe he doesn't have the amazing charisma of Jobs, or the genius of Torvalds, and Facebook gets constantly hammered in the press (and him as well), but this is a great gesture on his part, I applaud him.
Yeah, he deserves kudos for this, but he also deserves much of the shit that people talk about him. Facebook is a company that is loathed roughly in proportion to the degree that people understand what they actually do to make their money: adorn your baby or wedding photos with fart app ads, put your own face on various ads that you know nothing about, make you play whack-a-mole with their settings UI to preserve wha…
When a child grows into a teenager it becomes harder to blame the father for their actions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Community Foundations[1] such as the Silicon Valley Community Foundation can receive stock donations that are tax-deductible to the owner. If the donation was in dollars it would also be deductible for the owner, but the owner would need to sell the stock first, which would mean paying capital gains taxes. 1. Differences between Community Foundations / donor-advised funds and Private Foundations can be found here: ht…
Foundations can get tax-deductible gifts, they just have slightly different other rules.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A large social network called Facebook.
1) Myspace provided a large social network with free web hosting and some PHP doodads before Facebook did. Did Mark Zuckerberg create anything new? 2) Facebook is a weapon deployed against the integrity of human personality. Does facebook quality as wealth considering that it is a destructive force?
That's a lot of value to me. When I share something there, it has the broadest reach of real-world friends on any social network, but that's my personal experience.
Facebook is not a weapon. It's a product, definitely, and a medium to some degree. A corporate and focused vision of the internet, sure.
A weapon? No.