The Facebook Effect Part 1

David Kirkpatrick's book, The Facebook Effect, describes the history of Facebook and its creator, Mark Zuckerberg. Kirkpatrick's book shares a very close representation of the movie, The Social Network. The book starts by introducing an interesting story about Oscar Morales and his opposition to FARC, a guerilla group of Colombian terrorist who take citizens and outstanding political figures to make their point more disturbing. Morales, an avid Facebook user used the site to create a group opposing the hostiles. To his (and my) surprise, the group attracted followers by the thousands in a very short amount of time. Soon enough, action was in store, and Morales organized a global march against the group with participants reaching to the millions. This one example exemplified the exquisite power of the social networking tool known as Facebook. Facebook was originally meant to just be social networking site has become a very powerful political tool. As Kirkpatrick stated, “Despite decades of fear and intimidation, Facebook gave Colombia’s young people an easy, digital way to feel comfort in numbers to declare their disgust.” (Pg. 5)

The author then goes on to describe the origins of the sites creator, Mark Zuckerberg. Describing him as a “geek”, Zuckerberg was also a genius. He was the graduate of a very prestigious high school and was highly involved with the innovation of highly intricate software. Before facebook, Zuckerberg had created several other forms of software that was very addictive and promoted loyalty among its users. The software use ranged from studying for an Art final to linking similar music together (much like Pandora.)

Kirkpatrick eventually got to the creation of thefacebook (pg. 27). This was obviously the star of Zuckerberg work as it was a collaboration of past social networking sites like Friendster and MySpace. Other creations of Zuckerberg included facemash and course match, all of which shared a similar algorithm with that of facebook. Many of his friends blamed the creation on his introverted personality (pg. 29)…as the Kirkpatrick states, “of you’re a geek who is a little uncomfortable relating to other people, why not create a website that makes it easier.”

What I find so interesting in this book, and in the movie, is Zuckerberg’s composure when it came to making expensive business decisions. As a college kid with little money, how can you deter advertising deals that are priced in the thousands or even millions!? As indicted on page 33, Zuckerberg wanted to keep the seriousness of facebook exclusive, while making it more fun than anything…