"My goal was never to just create a company." -Mark Zuckerberg

The last seven chapters of David Kirkpatrick's book The Facebook Effect presented some interesting concepts that Mark Zuckerberg has in regards to the usage of Facebook. Zuckerberg wanted Facebook to be a platform for other companies to create applications for it; this strategy has been successful "As more and more software companies embrace the platform as Facebook's dominance of social network computing spreads around the globe..."( pg 233). By the end of 2009 180 countries were using Facebook and the number of people using it "was growing about a million...per day"(pg 275). And so, Zuckerberg's resistance to advertisement had to cave in despite Microsoft's $15 billion investment in order to afford and manage enough servers to support Facebook. With the help of Sheryl Sandberg, advertising became Facebook's revenue with $300-$400 revenue in 2009 (pg 273). To respect Zuckerberg's wish to avoid bombarding users with advertisement the way television commercials do, Facebook uses the strategy of charging a comparatively low advertisement fee but displaying many advertisement (pg 273); this provides users with advertisements that are more personalized for users based on algorithms.

David Kirkpatrick's discussion of society's "sense of tribal separation" is very interesting; the question of whether Facebook reinforces this separation or disables it is left for the reader to consider. I personally believe that Facebook is erasing this tribal separation because users are able to broaden their social network through the use of commercial pages. For example, if two people "Like" the same band on Facebook, they might "Friend" each other and build a friendship. The "global village", as Kirkpatrick puts it,is more connected through the technology of Facebook and therefore the tribal separation is lessened. Zuckerberg's goal to partake in a gift economy instead of a market economy with Facebook users is another interesting concept. My personal opinion is that with the growing population of the Facebook community, a gift economy cannot continue to carry on. This is because the "freeloader" of this gift economy that Zuckerberg mentions is essentially Facebook itself. It's true that Facebook has provided the agency for easier social networking but when the gains of Facebook is compared to the gains of users, there is an obvious imbalance. This is not to say that users will discontinue their association with Facebook but instead, users may demand their share of profits from Facebook. This will shift the economy of Facebook from a gift economy to a market economy.

Eric G. Swedin and David L. Ferro discuss in their book Computers how the invention of the computer was an international effort because people throughout the world and ages have had a fascination with computational skill and devices. Kirkpatrick's concept of the global village can be used to support this convergence of ideas and innovation; fitting the entire world into the context of a village makes the world seem smaller and more connected. Thus, the American culture is one that seeks to connect with people around the world and through the use of technology, this culture is supported and magnified.