Dressed in his usual attire of jeans, a fleece vest and Adidas sandals, Mark Zuckerberg looks as if he would be more at home stalking the halls of a college dormitory after a late-night coding session than at the helm of the internet's next multibillion-dollar company.

Yet at just 23, the founder and chief executive of Facebookis being hailed as a potential new internet mogul. Reports this week that Microsoft - and possibly Google - are mulling an investment that could value Facebook at $10bn (£5bn), are an astonishingly rapid endorsement for the fast-growing social network Mr Zuckerberg launched from his Harvard dorm room four years ago. With daily visitor numbers on Facebook having overtaken those on Ebay, some observers have drawn comparisons with Steve Jobs, the mercurial chief executive of Apple, and Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft. Indeed, it is from this older generation that Mr Zuckerberg has drawn inspiration.