Mark Zuckerberg attacks Tim Cook over comments about social network ads

In an interview, the 30-year-old Facebook CEO also revealed he upbraided Bill Gates over some comments in a magazine and confronted the 59-year-old Microsoft founder by saying: "What's up dude?"

The article in TIME magazine details how Zuckerberg is not content with having more than one billion Facebook users - he wants to connect the whole world.

But picking a fight with Cook means that he has one less partner with which to do it.

Zuckerberg said: "A frustration I have is that a lot of people increasingly seem to equate an advertising business model with somehow being out of alignment with your customers…

"...I think it's the most ridiculous concept. What, you think because you're paying Apple that you're somehow in alignment with them?

"If you were in alignment with them, then they'd make their products a lot cheaper!"

Cook has inherited Apple founder Steve Jobs' legacy as the company's mouthpiece in chief and has sharply criticised its rivals in the past.

He has said that he is "offended" by the privacy breaches carried out by its arch rival Google and that he runs a "very different company" to them.

In September he attacked Facebook for harvesting information about users "to sell to advertisers"

Zuckerberg said that he spoke to Gates after he apparently criticised Internet.org, the home page for his global partnership for expanding Internet access.

He said: "I talked to him after that...I called him up and I was like, 'What's up, dude?'

"But he was misquoted, and he even corrected it afterward. He was like, 'No, I fully believe that this is critical.'"

Internet.org was unveiled earlier on this year and is a partnership between Zuckerberg and six major mobile phone companies.

Its aim is to give everyone on the world Internet access and is developing advanced technologies to make it happen.

Zuckerberg said: "We were thinking about the first decade of the company (Facebook), and what were the next set of big things that we wanted to take on, and we came to this realization that connecting a billion people is an awesome milestone, but there's nothing magical about the number 1 billion.

"If your mission is to connect the world, then a billion might just be bigger than any other service that had been built. But that doesn't mean that you're anywhere near fulfilling the actual mission.

"We feel like this is just an important thing for the world…. and there are no steps that are clear steps to make this an awesome business or to have it fully rolled out across the world, but I'm pretty confident we can do it. I'm pretty confident it's going to be a good thing."