The very beginning of this book really implicates the effect Facebook has had on the world. The fact that Oscar Morales, a computer-savvy, civil engineer from Columbia could create a National March against FARC with just a few words and mouse clicks on Facebook is fascinating. He essentially created a world-wide event that literally brought over 300,000 people together to voice themselves against this organization. "Now, two years after Morale's stunning succes, one can find Facebook-fueled activism and protest in every country and community where the service has caught on-and that is pretty much all of them in the developed world," (6). Therefore, because of Facebook, this one event (although extremely effective and large-scaled) has changed the way society thinkes, acts and lives.
Mark Zuckerberg was just your all-around average Harvard student. With a lot of luck, a lot of skill and a lot of patience, he managed to create a social networking website that forever changed the ways of communicationing with one another. He did this while sitting in his dorm room, slugging beers and ocassionally, sleeping. With the help of his friends/suitemates Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Billy Olson, Zuckerberg started off testing his social networking programs with wesbites like Course Mash, Facemash and Thefacebook. With his intellect and input of his friends' ideas, the websites were essentially a hit throughout the Harvard campus. "It was a very basic communications tool, aimed at solving the simple problem of keeping track of your schoolmates and what was going on with them," (29). People could not get enough of using them and would spend hours logged onto these sites rating the hottness of people, as well as sharing personal and educational information. Thefacebook was the one social networking site that really took off. After going live, it spread like wildfire throughout the campus. Kirkpatrick calls this a "viral explosion," (31). People would get an e-mail asking to be a friend, then they could invite friends to join as well. This domino effect had more than 650 students connected after just four days (31). Zuckerberg (with the help of Moskovitz) then figured out a way to launch the incredibly popular site throughout other universities and also created a template for connecting students within different universities by mutual agreement (the basis of Facebook connections today). Zuckerberg quickly became prime meat for interviews and school magazines. He also settled some financial and business deals with investers who were interested in his site. While attending meetings in NYC to meet with different executives and venture capitalists, "a financier offered Zuckerberg $10 million for the company," (41). Mark was twenty years old. Then came the ad companies (like Mastercard) who wanted a piece of the action, as well as investment firms. There were some who were willing to give Zuckerberg's site millions of dollars because of the site's potential and popularity, but Mark himself was more ineterested in keeping the users happy and changing the world rather than money. Zuckerberg constantly says, " 'I think we can make the world a more open place'," (43). Zuckerberg moved to California and later named Sean Parker, a young entrepreneur because of Napster, president of the company. With Parker's help and expertise, Zuckerberg managed to make Thefacebook one of the most rapidly growing websites in the world. Kirkpatrick compared it to Google but says, "Their site was about people; Google was about data," (54). While partying hard and working hard in a house in Palo Alto, Zuckerberg was deciding, with the persuasion of his friend and business partner Saverin, whether or not to turn Thefacebook into an Interent company. Yet after Zuckerberg's decisions to change Saverin's percentage share to zero, they quickly became negotiating and legal enemies. Also, Zuckerberg was faced with lawsuit actions from Tyler and Cameron Winkelvoss and Divya Narendra, claiming he stole their idea. Yet, as Kirkpatrick tells us, the social networking "idea" has been around for quite some time now. Websites like Friendster and MySpace got the boat rowing. Yet the first social networking site aimed specifically at college students was Club Nexus, which began at Standford University in 2001, (77). As for the Winkelvoss brothers and their idea on Harvard Connection, well, Zuckerberg basically took it into his own hands to develop something similar without the crappy ideas these brothers seem to have. Although Zuckerberg helped them at first, he slowly realized what his pontential could be on his own. "From sixdegrees to Friendster to Facebook, social networking has become a familiar and ubiquitous part of the Internet," (85).
The first part of this book is fascinating so far and the story about Mark Zuckerberg's ideas are incredible. Although he seems like such a shy person with little social qualities, its bizarre that he is the creator of the most popular social networking site in the world. Obviously he is brilliant. He has amazing computer programming skills and has a well-rounded education from an Ivy League school. This helps him become successful in my opinion. He is not just the average college student, he is a genius. His business skills and his website ideas are the foundation for why has come so far in such a short amount of time. Although Thefacebook was just the beginning of such a huge and popular phenomenon, it is clear that the basic and simple structure is what drives Facebook. People who have an account and who use it often, as well as Zuckerberg himself, thrive on the easy user interface and the idea of having fun. These are such simple terms and Mark Zuckerberg knew and understood that that's all you need to have a successful social networking site.
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