After reading Peter Thiel’s book Zero to One (which is actually a love letter to Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, if you read in between the lines), I became interested in learning more about Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder & CEO. So I decided to snoop around for a good book on Zuckerberg, and settled on The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick. This book was written five years ago in 2010, which makes it positively ancient by internet standards, especially when you consider that the timeline of the entire book is just seven years. However, after skimming other books and Amazon reviews, it seemed like the best one to dive into. Besides, I was primarily interested in the story line from Facebook’s conception to its opening to global users, which would all be covered in the timeline.
Unlike the Yahoo / Marissa Mayer book, the Facebook story was one I was relatively familiar with in the fact that I had been a user of the product from fairly early on. It was interesting to reflect on how I had used Facebook personally through the years. I recalled the frenzy and excitement of Facebook coming to my university, using it to connect with other students from massive lecture courses to form study groups, and establishing silly campus groups to join. I also recalled the shift in my perception of Facebook, when it became open to everyone; it went from a place to connect with friends and be silly, to a place where I really started to police my tone, because anyone from my 8 year old niece to my 80 year old great aunt was watching. It changed from the cool hip thing, to this really uncool thing. But interestingly enough, this uncool thing is actually really difficult to leave. So many of my friends and family have transferred their regular lives into Facebook, that I was going to miss out on engagement announcements and baby shower invites if I left. So I stayed.
Interestingly, according to this book, Zuckerberg wanted Facebook to pass out of the realm of cool eventually. Not in the sense that nobody uses it anymore, but in the sense that it is just another utility that we have, that we can’t really live without. Nobody is loosing their mind over how bad ass electricity is every time they turn on a light in their house. Back in the day people totally used to! Electricity IS BAD ASS. But now, we just expect it. It is better than cool; it is an expected part of life that can not be removed. I felt kind of lame when I read all this in the book, because my Facebook experience has basically played right into this whole idea! I am just a mindless drone being controlled by Zuckerberg’s genius. Great! ?
This book also did a good job relating Zuckerberg’s personal philosophy about your online personality. Basically, he wants everyone to be their authentic self all the time; I should not have a Work Kelly, a Family Kelly, a Friends Kelly and an Online Kelly. I should just be The Real Kelly all the time, no matter where I go. This mindset has governed most choices for Facebook, as Zuckerberg tries to coerce people bit by bit into abandoning these facades and just being the real them everywhere they go. I’d always kind of thought of Zuckerberg as this data monger, that just wanted all members’ info for big data analysis, so it was interesting to get this different perspective on his motives.
I think it is interesting to analyze how well Facebook has really led us to ultimate transparency. On the one hand, I see it working. I’m sure everyone has learned WAY more about their acquaintances thanks to Facebook. People just tend to share more when its sent into the internet void, than when you are talking to somebody face to face.
However, on the other hand it’s creating a new and terrible version of Keeping Up with the Jones’. Most people tend to steer away from being whiny and depressing on social media. So instead they share the good times only. Now they are definitely not sharing their authentic self, but just sharing Everything Is Awesome part of themself. This article from a few years ago does a good job of explaining it.
I also think it is interesting how this “ultimate transparency” wasn’t really his initial goal when he first built Facebook. It seems to me that as the platform and Zuckerberg both matured, the vision of Facebook’s purpose morphed it into what it is today. He didn’t start out with a massive vision, but developed a massive vision over time.
One interesting story from this book was about Yahoo’s attempted purchase of Facebook. In the Yahoo book, Carlson paints the story like Semel screws over Zuckerberg, causing Facebook to pull out of the deal. In this book, Kirkpatrick paints it like Zuckerberg never ever intended to sell, he was more interested in getting a high valuation of his company so he could get a higher amount of funding. I’ll never know who’s right, but it just goes to show that you’ve got to take everything you hear with a grain of salt!
Another interesting tidbit I am picking up with these tech company books are these two main philosophical foundations for how one thinks about tech:
- Machines replace people
- Machines compliment people
For example, Google is in the first camp. They have the machines do the work that people used to do. Instead of a person hand-curating a list of results tailored to you, a machine has a brilliant algorithm that processes patterns in your behavior in order to serve up relevant results. In fact, that big argument that Mayer lost at Google was related to exactly this; she felt their search project should have a human element (ie, if somebody is searching for ways to kill themself, the suicide hotline should be the first item returned, even if the algorithm didn’t return it), while the other lead thought the human aspect tainted the results, and only the algorithm should be trusted.
Facebook is in the second camp; Facebook is a tool to help people communicate. It’s not replacing people, but attempting to bring them closer together. For what its worth, Thiel mentions in Zero to One that the companies that will pull ahead in the long run are the “machines compliment people” ones.
There were a few key life lessons I picked up from this book, which have actually been recurring themes in many books I’ve read lately:
- Who you know is SO IMPORTANT
- You still have to be good at what you do, but people have to know you are good (and better yet, the RIGHT people have to know you are good).
- PERSISTENCE IS KEY
- To use my favorite Yogi Berra quote, “It ain’t over til its over.” And even then, it isn’t really over.
While Kirkpatrick’s constant praise of Zuckerberg was kind of annoying, there was one thing that made this book really hard to read: THE TYPOS. This book was RIFE with typos! Really, terrible stuff, like amall instead of small, or don’s instead of don’t. It was literally like the guy tore through it without even running spell check. Ugh.
If you can make it past the typos and sort of biased perception of Zuckerberg, this book is a fast read and provides an interesting history of Facebook’s early years.