Shakers and movers of the tech industry climbed their way to the dominant position of America's wealthiest for the year 2011, with perennial frontrunner Microsoft Corporation co-founder Bill Gates heading the list again with his estimated net worth of some $59 billion.

Yet according to Forbes, the big news this year was reserved for Facebook top honcho Mark Zuckerberg, who not only became a billionaire in so short a time and at a very young age but also impacted the lives of millions worldwide.

Zuckerberg established Facebook with his Harvard colleagues in 2004 and since then, the hugely popular and successful social networking site was able to attract global membership of more than 750 million as of last reckoning.

The incredible expansion Facebook has seen on its seven years of existence so far has translated to billions of windfall for the geeky Zuckerberg, who this year alone, Forbes said, earned a whopping $10.6 billion that catapulted him to the top 20 list of richest Americans this year.

The publication noted that Zuckerberg is also one of the youngest members of the elite club and has eclipsed the net fortunes of his closest tech competitors, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, by racking up a total net worth of $17.5 billion this year to place number 14 on the list.

The Google duo, on the other hand, occupied a notch-lower ranking as Forbes reported that the duo's preoccupation for the past fiscal year only netted them an identical net haul of $1.7 billion, obviously not enough to keep them nestled on the number 10 spot they secured in the previous ranking.

Most noteworthy on the latest billionaires list, Forbes said, is the entry of known tech world personalities who all accumulated their fortunes starting from scratch thus highlighting this year's richest circle who mostly earned their keeps mainly based on merits and not on entitlements.

Leading the pack are Facebook majority shareholders Jim Breyer and Sean Parker, the latter already a familiar figure in the tech industry for his earlier works in the controversial and now-defunct music-sharing site Napster.

Facebook co-founder Dustin also barged in to the billionaires' club, which carries a minimum net worth requirement of $1.05 billion this year to be counted, as Forbes noted that since he is eight days younger than Zuckerberg, he easily is the youngest billionaire included in the list.

Rounding up the new tech billionaires are LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman, Groupon's Eric Lefkofsky and Zynga's Mark Pincus, who all found their gold mine sinking their teeth on the lucrative tech industry but whose combined net worth hardly makes a dent on the fortunes of two tech titans occupying slots in the top 10.

Gates and Oracle founder Larry Ellison together had amassed some $82 billion between them with the latter getting the number three spot owing to his $33 billion net worth as of this year.