The Facebook Effect: 1

In the first section of The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick, it explains how the insanely popular website was born. The website was made by a young college undergrad, Mark Zuckerberg, at Harvard University. Going into it, Zuckerberg never expected Facebook to turn out as great as it did. He developed the site more as just a fun little escape for him and his schoolmates. By making the site exclusive to people with Harvard email addresses, limited what the website would eventually turn into. Zuckerberg wanted bigger and better things for Facebook, but all the while none of it was about money. What I found to be somewhat endearing was the fact that Mark Zuckerberg really and truly cared about this site and wanted some good to come out of it. “This wasn’t like a get-rich-quick scheme. This was ‘Let’s build something that has lasting cultural value and try to take over the world.’”(p.47)

For the longest time Zuckerberg avoided any sort of revenue, but eventually when the bills were getting too high, he caved and used ads on the site. The fact that he never took for granted the billion-dollar website, is a true testament of his character. It seems a little ironic that someone so modest and geeky would develop a site aimed towards vanity driven youth, who’s social conscience is derived from superficiality. Granted he may have been one of those “youths,” when he developed it, but there is something to be said about how levelheaded this young billionaire is. To come from a status driven institute like Harvard, where everyone is pretty much exceptional in their studies, standing out in the pack is a hard feat. Mark Zuckerberg has done this by leaps and bounds in a progressive and unifying way.