Facebook, Part 1

In David Kirkpatrick's book, The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World, he describes the history of Facebook and its creator, Mark Zuckerberg. With an unusual twist Kirkpatrick starts his book in the middle of the story. The book begins with a story about Oscar Morales and his hatred for FARC, terrorist located in Colombian. Morales used Facebook to form a group against the hostile guerillas and because of that, the group attracted thousands of people, in the end millions. The story ends with a march against the guerillas. This was thanks to Facebook. By starting the book with this story, Kirkpatrick demonstrates how powerful Facebook has become.

While Facebook took several people to get it off the ground, it is Mark Zuckerberg tenacity that is the backbone of Facebook. Kirkpatrick describes Zuckerberg as a “geek” that wore jeans and tee shirts, as a matter of fact; Kirkpatrick describes all the collaborators of Facebook as “geeks”. Yet, each person involved with the creation of Facebook did their jobs extremely well. But like all college students, Zuckerberg and his group of “geeks” wanted to have fun and creating Facebook was fun, up until egos got in the way.

What I found interesting was that Zuckerberg was not that interested in making money, but he did want Facebook to be its best and for people to reach out to each other. Another aspect of Zuckerberg’s personality that aided in Facebook’s success was his commonness in making huge executive decision. Kirkpatrick attributes this to Zuckerberg vision on where he wanted Facebook to go.

While reading this book, I could not help but think about the young people who created the website, Texts from Last Night. They too are college age, and started a website for the fun of it, much like Zuckerberg and his group of friends. Another thing Ben Lator and Lauren Leto have in common with Zuckerberg is these young people have tapped into a market that student can identify with and they share this with millions of people worldwide. Lastly, you cannot overlook the money these two sites have brought into the lives of these students who just wanted to have fun.