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Zuckerberg’s Dinners with Girlfriend Help Spur Life-Saving Facebook Tool (1330L)

Notes on my thoughts,

Zuckerberg, 27, has made a fortune on the idea that people want to share everything - from

reactions and questions as I

photos, to the intimate details of their romantic lives. Yet, Zuckerberg himself is famously

read:

private, keeping details of his personal life under tight wraps.

But he revealed some small details of his personal life, lighting up when talking about the

dinnertime chats he had with girlfriend Priscilla Chan that helped lead to the donation

initiative. "She's in medical school now," Zuckerberg said of Chan. "She's going to be a

pediatrician, so our dinner conversations are often about Facebook and the kids that she's

meeting." Chan told him stories about patients she meets "getting sicker as they don't have

the organ that they need." But there were other stories too, of children who ultimately

received transplants. Stories, Zuckerberg called, "unbelievable."

From Chan he learned of one boy in need of a heart transplant. His skin had turned blue

from lack of oxygen, but within weeks of receiving a transplant he was out again playing

sports. "How can that not make you happy," he asked. Chan inspired Zuckerberg to try to

learn Mandarin Chinese in one year. That venture, he admitted, was unsuccessful, but he

picked up enough to natter with Chan's elderly grandmother.

Zuckerberg said he was further prompted make Facebook an important tool to encourage

donors to register following the death of Steve Jobs, whom he called a "friend." Though

Zuckerberg never talked with Jobs specifically about a Facebook donation tool, he said

many of the people involved in the project were inspired after Jobs' death. "That definitely, I

think, was something that we all had in mind as we were building this out... His story is just

one of many, of people who both were able to have an organ transplant that made his life

longer and he was extremely thankful for that," Zuckerberg said.

Facebook was initially developed by Zuckerberg while still an undergraduate at Harvard.

The site was initially conceived as place for college students to socialize. Recently,

however, Zuckerberg said he's been surprised by the power of the network and the way

users use its tools creatively in times of crisis, like finding loved-ones following tornadoes

in the Midwest or the tsunami in Japan. "People are using the same social tools that they're

using just to keep in touch with people on a day-to-day basis to solve these important

issues," he said.

The technology behind the donation application, Zuckerberg said, is a "pretty simple thing."

But the ability to link people across hundreds of miles and save their lives? That, he called,

"amazing." Both the company and organ donation advocates are hopeful the new tool could

change the landscape of the organ donation process. I think it's possible that we will see an

impact over the next couple of years, where we would imagine eliminating the transplant

waiting list," said Dr. Andrew Cameron, Transplant Surgeon at Johns Hopkins University

School of Medicine.

Newsmakers, ABC News, Zuckerberg’s dinners with girlfriend help spur life-saving Facebook tool. Available at abcnews.

com. May 1, 2012.

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