How to become someone like the creator of facebook, iphone apps, wordpress etc?

[DurianBoy]

I want to be one of them, but i dont know where to start? And what area study? Webdesigner? well.. I have a friend and he is a web designer, he is kinda dumb.

I want to be a creator with lot of ideas. But I dont know where to start?

I will finish hi school this year, and I dont know what major to take in college.

I heard the creator of facebook was majoring in psychology? I don't wanna take psychology. I want to be someone who create something, and sell it to the market.

thanks.

[Professor Will]

Sounds Like an engineer to me.
If your into all the technology stuff, I'd suggest going into a computer engineering or software engineering program. This will give you the background information needed to create your own software/hardware to eventually sell.

I'd suggest taking a few business courses in college if your thinking of an entrepreneur

[LolCat]

I am a professional LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) developer with a B.S. in Web Design and Interactive Media. I make sites and applications like facebook, wordpress, etc. every day. For iphone apps I would suggest learning Flash/Actionscript as they will be converting from objective-c to flash. Most of those sites became largely successful due to major advertising campaigns backed by serious investors.

Things to learn:
xhtml
css
php
mysql
javascript/ajax
actionscript 3.0

with those tools you can make nearly everything you see on the internet.

[Darron Burow]

LolCat is right on the money when it comes to specific technologies needed to begin creating web portals like facebook. Facebook runs on a variety of platforms whcih basically were developed over time as the site grew and grew. They now have launched there own open source platform using proprietary development tools like scribe and thrift just for that reason.

Facebook was started by some Harvard students for Harvard students then went to other Ivy league schools, then other colleges and universites, then other folks, until it is what it is today. Just like myspace, it didnt go commercial until just recently when paypal invested in them.

As for getting started, there are all kinds of open source platforms available that can help you begin learning server-side and front end technologies. I suggest starting small. As you go, you'll learn more and more. Start by building a blog site or a static html site, then try your hand in other Content Managment systems....have fun! Each time you need to do something new, google it or ask, learn it, then move on. Soon enough, you'll be an expert as well.

For some open source options available to begin building your own website online or even to create a local server on your computer (using XAMPP), go here: