Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s 30th birthday has triggered a barrage of online accolades and playful barbs.

The social media titan’s list of achievements is more than enough to make others in his age group feel like slackers.

The Harvard University dropout’s wealth was recently estimated to top $US25 billion ($A27.05 billion) and an Oscar-winning film was based the story of him bringing Facebook to life.

The face that inspired thousands start-ups has hit a milestone age. Photo: Getty

Zuckerberg is now chief of the world’s leading online social network. He married Priscilla Chan in 2012 after Facebook became a publicly traded company.

Zuckerberg has been dabbling in using his influence and cash for philanthropic and political goals.

Website Mashable featured a light-hearted graphic likening Zuckerberg to a typical 30-year-old.

Zuckerberg’s fortune was stratospheric compared with the less than $US9000 in net worth typical with others his age.

His 28 million followers crushed the 328 “friends” an average 30-year-old has on Facebook.

Some saw payback in reviving comments Zuckerberg had made in his 20s contending that folks over 30 aren’t as smart as younger people.

Quotes reportedly made by Zuckerberg to entrepreneurs at Stanford University in Silicon Valley in 2007 underscored “the importance of being young and technical”.

Young people have simpler lives and, as a result, can focus their brain power on “what’s important”, not like those old people distracted by families and such, according to his reasoning at the time.

“There is an incredible and weird kind of ageism that exists in tech start-ups in Silicon Valley,” a contributor commented in a Reddit forum devoted to the notion that Zuckerberg once deemed those over 30 as old slugs.

For the most part, throngs at Facebook, Twitter and other online forums wished Zuckerberg well, shared his quotes and remarked on the success of the man known in his formative days by his trademark hooded sweatshirt.

Quotes credited to Zuckerberg included “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” and “Move fast and break things”.

Zuckerberg is known for advocating boldly twisting software or systems in promising directions.

Depicted in the Hollywood drama The Social Network as a socially challenged computer geek, Zuckerberg has evolved into a confident chief executive presiding over an online community of more than a billion.

Zuckerberg has been Time’s Person of the Year and cracked the Forbes list of 20 richest people in the world.

Zuckerberg was raised in Dobbs Ferry outside New York, one of four children of a dentist father and a psychiatrist mother.

He began writing computer programs at the age of 11.

Zuckerberg launched Thefacebook.com, as it was then known, from his Harvard dorm room on February 4, 2004, with roommates and classmates Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin.

The stated goal: “Making the world more open and connected.”