The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World Hardcover – June 8, 2010

The Facebook Effect provides an insider's view of what Facebook was like in the early days. One of the most interesting aspects of the story is how uncertain the success of the company was. At many points it seemed like the company bordered on the line of crisis, but Zuckerberg and his team were able to adapt and handle the challenges.

The book is engaging as it tells the story. One of the more interesting stories was when one of the original owners of Facebook decided to not pay the bill for the Facebook servers. Tensions around this event ran high and the company was fortunate to survive this event unscathed.

It seems this is the only novel which was granted behinds the scenes access to the actual story and provides some insight to Zuckerberg's thought process.

I found the parts about the impact of Facebook on society to be less impressive as many of the insights seemed like common sense to me. It would have been nice to see more analysis of the role Facebook plays in society. Although it appears the goal of the book was to focus on the Facebook story.

What features of facebook led to its instant success, and who deserves the credit? Why has facebook continued to grow while other social networks faltered at earlier stages? How did facebook make money at various stages of development? What caused facebook's various missteps? Does facebook really care about privacy? David Fitzpatrick gives convincing answers to these questions that have been hotly debated among users for years. The book suffers at times from gushy editorializing, but overall the reporting is balanced (with a few exceptions), and readers can weigh the facts on their own.

Fitzpatrick identifies several features that differentiated facebook from the rest. School networks offered a controlled community. Users felt comfortable projecting their true identities online in this setting. The site was easy to use, and didn't try to do too much too soon. Long-run growth was always a stronger priority than short-term ad revenue. Mark Zuckerberg's immaturity during his college age years is clear, but he ultimately nails the most important strategic decisions. He was not a mere caretaker of a simple idea at the right time.

The book touches on the personal conflicts made famous by the Social Network movie. The motives behind Eduardo Saverin's sacking are carefully reported. In contrast, key facts are missing in Fitzpatrick's treatment of the Winklevoss/Narendra ConnectU lawsuit. Fitzpatrick makes a convincing case that ConnectU's business plan was inferior to thefacebook's, but he glosses over how Zuckerberg sabotaged their site for months. Zuckerberg's AOL IMs from this era (referenced in the 12/30/10 NYT) reveal he viewed them as a competitor, and this calls into question Fitzpatrick's judgment that Zuckerberg was merely guilty of being "rude" and "uncooperative." Future editions of the book should incorporate more accurate information about the case.

Another weakness is the book's failure to address contradictions in facebook's views on privacy. For example, he asserts in the prologue that facebook "has always been explicitly conceived and engineered by Zuckerberg and colleagues as a tool to enhance your relations with your real-world friends" But later we learn that Zuckerberg is always pushing people to be more transparent, and that voyeurism was part of facebook's success from the beginning at Harvard. Who seriously believes facebook has never encouraged voyeurism outside of your circle of real friends?

Yet the book's most lasting impression is Zuckerberg's resolve in prioritizing facebook's utility over its profits. Knowing how close friend Sean Parker lost control of his past ventures, Zuckerberg is careful not to let future investors take control of his baby. Understanding this is also crucial to understanding the controversy behind facebook's delays in going public. Without Zuckerberg's patience, facebook would have been far less useful as a tool of Viacom, News Corp, Yahoo, Microsoft, or Wall Street. For this, Zuckerberg is worthy of the rosy picture painted in this book, despite his sins.

"The Facebook Effect" by David Kirkpatrick divulges an immense amount of information of all aspects of Facebook, including its birth, growth, struggles, and visions. The author aims to present an unbiased story of how Mark Zuckerberg's company has been completely changing the world since its very beginning.

He begins his story by explaining the current use of Facebook and its vast usage among countries for political and cultural events and issues, using an extremely radical story of FARC in Columbia. He goes on to explain (in entirely too detailed of description) exactly how Facebook emerged, struggled, grew, and triumphed. Most of the history I had recalled from "The Social Network," so it seemed like it took too large of a portion of the book. He quotes many numbers and employees that readers are really not so interested in, and soon forgot after the page was turned.

He goes on to talk about the future of Facebook and how the company is evolving as a whole for far too small a portion of the book. In my opinion, for this book being about Facebook's effect, it spends far too little time actually talking about how it is currently changing our world and also how it is expected to continue to change our future. Instead, he dwells for slightly too long on details and amusing anecdotes of Zuckerberg's peculiar behavior.

For most of the book, the author is arguing for his readers to realize the greatness within Mark Zuckerberg and all he has done for us with Facebook. It deemphasizes some of the big squabbles and lawsuits he has encountered from his early behavior. It appeared as if he was being slightly biased toward Mark's view of everything versus the views of his employees, friends, foes. It almost seemed as if the author did not fully try to get an unbiased opinion as he aims for. For example, his comment about the Winklevoss twins' lawsuit nonchalantly says "I guess we will never know." The author should know and take time to get their side of the story, or else I will just have to assume "The Social Network" was the most accurate.

However, Kirkpatrick does an excellent job of portraying the "real life Mark." He was a CEO before he was a legal drinker and therefore bound to make mistakes. Older, more experienced companies were slightly perplexed by Mark's actions and that affected the way they handled this young CEO. One confused senior executive quotes "Either this guy is being very strategic... or he's just got his sandbox and he's playing in it." The way the author depicted Mark and his "tee-shirt, shorts, and Adidas flip-flops" really gave you the picture of the adolescent, yet focused atmosphere he lives in. He was also awkward, introverted and stubborn and that was reiterated over and over within these pages.

The ideas proposed for the future of Facebook, however, I found extremely intriguing. While some did seem quite far-fetched like that "Facebook "credits" (virtual currency)...[could] begin operating as a truly global economy", and some caused the wheels of potential to turn inside my brain. He brought up many different points that made me worry slightly about my privacy on Facebook in the future, but also about the amazing possibilities that may be possible due to social networking. One amazing (and frightening) example Kirkpatrick proposes is of "our GPS having the ability to recognize a name and connect to your Facebook profile and find your house." Crazy right? It will probably one day be possible, but am I then going to put my address on my profile for the world to find my house? Probably not.

The author makes a great case for why Facebook was so successful: Zuckerberg dedicated his time to his users happiness over monetary value. He states over and over again how it was about the users' experience and wanted to avoid ads, and that he didn't care about monetization. I think his dedication to this philosophy was one of the biggest reasons it lead to huge success. Even to this day, the advertising is limited to the bottom-right side, and embedded in the News Feed by companies we follow. However, it is ironic how Kirkpatrick comments on how Zuckerberg wanted to remain in control, and that he would only possibly start to lose that control if Facebook went public, and only a year or so later the company had gone public.

Though I have some critical views on "The Facebook Effect," overall it was an extremely interesting book that opened my eyes to the realities of Facebook and all that had happened even before I joined the site in 2007. It gave too many numbers, costs, and names to remember, but the overall point and message was clear and caused me to change my overall view of Facebook. It has thoroughly earned my respect even more so than it had. Facebook has fought hard to become the company it is today and it is definitely due to the way Zuckerberg handled his business, even if his colleagues did not all agree. I will most definitely be looking out for future evolutions of Facebook, and how users, like myself, react to them. There are likely to be more significant political and social effects as Facebook spreads even larger globally. We should all be looking out for Facebook and its proposed eventual world domination.