Facebook

In chapters 5 to 10, David Kirkpatrick summarizes how Thefacebook transformed into Facebook, a multibillion company with big-time investors. In these chapters, Mark Zuckerberg’s values and leadership skills are presented. The description of Facebook as Zuckerberg’s baby and the interest Zuckerberg had in the Washington Post because “it’s just such a long-term focus there, and that they’re so focused on the brand of Washington Post and the trust it has”(pg 109) shows Zuckerberg’s attachment to Facebook. The final decision to make an investment deal with Accel because of an $80 million postinvestment valuation proves that the Facebook is a business first and even Zuckerberg could not resist a high offer over a moral dilemma.

Although Zuckerberg wanted Facebook to be a social network and that alone, pressures and need for income through advertisement lead to the development of algorithms to establish which Facebook users were target consumers for advertisers (pg 143). The declaration of Facebook as “a utility” by Zuckerberg gave it an “affinity with the telephone network and other communications infrastructure of the pas…a new communications medium”(pg 144). This ensured that Facebook would not die off because of the sole reliance on its coolness the way that Friendster had. The reason why Zuckerberg continued to have so much power and authority during the development of Facebook is because Sean Parker gave Zuckerberg his board seat after he stepped down from his position as president of Facebook; this resulted in Zuckerberg’s control of a total of three board seats.

The "ethos of openness and transparency that was at the heart of the company's values" (pg 158) is admirable and is the root of Zuckerberg's vision for Facebook; this vision is to allow users to only have one identity on Facebook so "that may allow people to recognize things about you that they never previously knew, whether for good or ill"(pg 194).Niel Postman states in his book Technopoly the fear that "Cultures may also suffer grievously from information glut, information without meaning, information without controlled mechanisms.”(pg 70). Zuckerberg has made all information of Facebook users available in the "News Feed" but users have the ability to control what they put out on Facebook and who can access their information. Therefore, it can be argued that Facebook is not to blame for the suffering that results from the broadcast of personal information but the person himself/herself who did not edit what they broadcast.