Book Review: The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That’s Connecting the World
Facebook is now the king of social media leaving competitors like Myspace, Hi5 and Orkut behind as the company grows at an incredible rate. Therefore, it is the perfect time to present a detailed study on the social media giant! Its history and state of affairs. It has gained half a billion users and this number continues to grow at the same time that it obtains a large amount of private funding. Facebook is, without a doubt, the most important social utility to ever hit the web.
In the book “The Facebook Effect,” former Fortune magazine technology editor David Kirkpatrick examines the structure of the company that has become strongly entrenched in the networking industry. He delves into the causes and inner workings that made Facebook the media giant it is today. All the famous stories, from the “borrowing” (theft?) of the original ConnectU and houseSYSTEM concept, to the breakneck growth, to the early stages of investor meetings, to the move from Harvard to Palo Alto.
The book seems to have received favorable support from most of the big names associated with the still very young company. There are multiple interviews conducted with Mark Zuckerberg himself. From all these ideas, David talks about the young company that went through all the turmoil that every young company faces while staying true to its goal of making society open, while he creates and maintains the “social graph” .
He also gives his thoughts on why some of the features and apps became smash hits like Farmville and Mafia Wars, while others became outright flops like Beacon. Other topics such as privacy, advertising vs. user experience that are related to the applications themselves.
The author also delves into the life of Mark Zuckerberg in relation to his company Facebook. He seems to have changed when investors wanted to infuse more maturity into the company. For example, he claims that when he found a girlfriend, he actually traded 100 minutes of time a week for her. That’s how detailed the book is about Facebook and everything related to it.
The revolutionary change in social behavior emanating from a 19-year-old student is the Facebook effect.