facebook: Part 2

In the second part of David Kirkpatrick's book, The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World, he continues his story about the rise of a ground breaking Web site and the young men responsible. Kirkpatrick writes about the amazing job Sean Parker did to recruit several investor for Facebook. Say what you will about the man’s personal behavior, he was a good talker. Zuckerberg's personality was another matter all together. Kirkpatrick’s descriptions of Zuckerberg’s characteristics bring the reader face to face with the young man. Although I could understand why his employees worried about all the meets he took with all those companies who wanted to buy Facebook. As CEO of the company, open communication with his employee would have stop their fear of Zuckerberg selling Facebook.

I found the second part of the book exciting following Kirkpatrick’s written map of Facebook’s rise to a "real" company. The picture of all the employees pushing their office chairs, full of their equipment, to their new office was really funny. What really interested me was all this money offered for Facebook, billions of dollars, and yet they were going through the money they had borrowed from Accel.

Through all the wheeling and dealing, Zuckerberg and his fellow workers stayed firm. Aaron Sittig, the graphic designer said it best, “We wanted to get the site out of the way and not have a particular attitude. We didn’t want people to have a relationship with Facebook so much as to find and interact with each other.” (pg. 145) Zuckerberg only liked working with young people, because they were smarter, but I think, like his ambition for Facebook, he wanted to interact with people he enjoyed being around. So, I’m sure it was sad when he had to ask Sean Parker to step down. He had contributed a large part of Facebook’s success.

When Zuckerberg added the photo feature to Facebook, the Web site took off! This step in Facebook’s journey most definitely assisted in people interacting with each other making the world a little smaller and closer to Zuckerberg’s dream of socializing the world. The success of the “photo-hosting application” on Facebook “...was magic of overlaying an ordinary online activity with a set of social relationship.” (pg. 156) By adding photos to the Web site, Facebook gave their customer “a sense of companionship” never felt from the Internet before. (pg. 157) With this success, Zuckerberg now wanted to open Facebook to adults and from there the world. Zuckerberg’s dream was very close to becoming a reality. While I continue to read this book, I could not help think of the book, Made to Break, and planned obsolescence. Zuckerberg has successfully made the world vastness obsolete, it is now just a button away and you can now have a relationship with a large number of friends.