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Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the world’s largest social networking site Facebook, made the Forbes list of top-achieving people under the age of 30. At 27, the Harvard dropout’s company has a net worth of $17.5bn and he is now America’s 14th-richest man. REUTERS

Forbes magazine has released its list of top-achieving people to watch under the age of 30.

Among those listed are Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, human rights activist Ronan Farrow and pop singers Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber.

Twenty-eight-year-old artist JR, who creates large-scale guerrilla photo installations is on the list, as is film producer David Ellison, the son of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison who funded films such as True Grit and the upcoming Brad Pitt movie World War Z.

The list, which is broken down into 12 categories, also features the future's most promising stars including Donald Glover, Jonah Hill, Jennifer Lawrence and 13-year-old Jaden Smith, the son of actor Will Smith,

British singer Adele and US pop stars Katy Perry and Rihanna and American rapper Lil Wayne made the list in the music category.

Other categories included art and design, energy, food and wine, media, social and mobile and technology.

Scottish born Pete Cashmore, 26, who is the founder and CEO of digital news site Mashable, took the gong for the media category and has been described as a "natural-born entrepreneur".

In a video interview on Forbes.com, Cashmore said his definition of success was a combination of a process and a journey. "You don't ever get there [to success] because you always see the next thing that you're excited about making better," he said.

Co-founder and CEO of photo-sharing app Instagram, Kevin Systrom, made the list for the social and mobile category. In the 14 months since the launch of Instagram, it has become one of the most widely used social media applications in the world, with about 15 million users.

"We worked hard on making it easy for people to share their lives in a beautiful way. It's one thing to share a photo. It's another for that photo to be gorgeous," Systrom said.

At 24, Alex Hodara made the list for starting the first student-run brokerage based in the US, while Kunal Shah, 29, made the finance list for becoming Goldman Sachs' youngest managing director when he was 27.

"While many on this list are well-known, others such as Danielle Fong, a Canadian-born science prodigy who entered a Princeton PhD programme at the age of 17 before founding alternative energy company Lightsail at 20, are just getting their first taste of the limelight," Forbes executive editor Michael Noer said.

"But it is nearly certain that we will all be hearing much more from them in the decades to come."

Twelve panels of industry experts along with Forbes readers were asked to vote on those likely to influence the world in the immediate future.

Brad Pitt Goldman Sachs Mark Zuckerberg Human rights