Facebook Founder to Meet Obama

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will meet with President Barack Obama on Thursday. He is among several high-tech executives to meet with the President for a discussion.

The founder, whose 500-million-member social-media service doubled in size since July 2009, will be among an undisclosed number of top Silicon Valley executives meeting with Obama in a private residence. Facebook played a key role in the revolts that toppled Tunisian and Egyptian governments last week. The company had no comment about Mark Zuckerberg, but a source familiar with the guest list told several news organizations that the 26-year-old is scheduled to be at the residence.

The White House said it would release the full list Friday. The executives and the President will discuss an agenda Obama outlined in the $3.7 trillion budget he released this week to keep up government funding of education and research. The plan is to ensure U.S. economic competitiveness and they will also discuss sustainable energy.

Obama’s budget includes a proposal to increase U.S. education department funding to improve student competitiveness, make permanent a research-and-development tax credit and spend $148 billion in federal research. The President cited Facebook in his Jan. 25 State of the Union address as being part of a history of inventive power. It’s part of an innovation that helped make the United States strong and would, he said, continue to drive its growth.

“We’re the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices — the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers, of Google and Facebook,” Obama said. “In America, innovation doesn’t just change our lives. It is how we make our living.” Social networks and the Internet in general increasingly play roles in U.S. foreign policy.