Mark Zuckerberg Wants to See the World Online

There seems to be no such thing as a 'tall order' for social media guru Mark Zuckerburg who is now setting his sights on adding 5 billion people to the Internet community.

Facebook and its boundless ambition to take over the world is now recasting its visionary gaze to meet its goal of seeing the world’s approximately 7 billion people all online.

Through a collaboration with some of the world’s most prominent mobile technology companies like Samsung, Nokia, and wireless chip manufacturer Qualcomm Inc., Facebook Inc. announced its latest project called Internet.org on Wednesday.

In Internet.org’s video teaser (that plays like a glossy world-tourism commercial), it reveals that "Today, the Internet isn’t accessible for two thirds of the world." The group aims to bridge that chasm between the tech-haves and the tech-have nots, aspiring to connect those 5 billion left in the proverbial dark.

To see that goal come to fruition, the alliance aims to develop low-cost smartphones and devices that would mitigate the amount of data needed to run apps.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg asserts that his latest undertaking stems from a humanitarian impulse. On his Facebook page, he penned a paper titled Is Connectivity A Human Right? along with a blurb about the project.

"For nine years, we've been on a mission to connect the world. We now connect more than 1 billion people, but to connect the next 5 billion we must solve a much bigger problem: the vast majority of people don't have access to the internet," he wrote.

Internet.org is already receiving backing from Swedish technology and telecommunications company Ericsson, Norwegian software company Opera Software, and from wireless communications company MediaTek.

Facebook’s public-spirited initiative, however, isn’t the first of its kind.

Google is also looking into using a grid of balloons to provide Internet access to underserved and far-flung areas, calling the mission 'Project Loon'.