Book Review: The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company Connecting the World
Facebook is now the king of social media outpacing competitors like Myspace, Hi5, and Orkut as the company grows at an incredible rate. So it’s the perfect time to present a detailed study on the social media giant! Its history and state of affairs. It has gained 500 million users and this number continues to grow at the same time as it obtains a large amount of private financing. Facebook is without a doubt the most important social utility that has ever existed on the web.
In the book “The Facebook Effect,” former Fortune magazine technology editor David Kirkpatrick looks at the structure of the company that has taken a strong hold in the networking industry. Delve into the causes and inner workings that made Facebook the current media giant that it is. All the famous stories, from the “borrowing” (stealing?) From the original ConnectU and houseSYSTEM concept, to the skyrocketing growth, to the first investor meetings, the move from Harvard to Palo Alto.
The book appears to have received favorable support from most of the big names associated with the still very young company. There are multiple interviews with Mark Zuckerberg himself. From all these ideas, David talks about the young company that went through all the confusion that every young company faces while remaining faithful to its goal of making the society open, while creating and maintaining 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 failures like Beacon. Other issues such as privacy, advertising vs. user experience that is 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 himself when investors wanted to instill more maturity in the company. For example, he claims that when he found a girlfriend, he actually negotiated 100 minutes of time in 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.
