The Facebook Effect (Part I)

The age of social networking has arrived, and in this age Mark Zuckerberg and his creation reign supreme. That is the feeling I get when reading The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick. Saying something like that sounds a little weird, but it feels true when reading through this book. The way David Kirkpatrick speaks of Mark Zuckerberg, it really seems like this kid can do no wrong. Kirkpatrick really seems to put this guy on pedestal and make him out to be more innocent and pure of heart than he probably is. In the first part of this book, David Kirkpatrick starts of by giving the reader a brief idea about the usefulness of facebook, then moves on to tell about the history of how it started. Part way through the facebook history lesson, he takes a break to tell about the other various social network type website that were started before facebook, most of which failed and ended up being shutdown. It is interesting to read through this book, because although David Kirkpatrick seems to make Mark Zuckerberg out to be a genius and brilliant strategist in an almost biased manner, the history he tells of facebook seems to argue that there was quite a large amount of luck in the success of facebook. Although not many arguments were made in the first part of this book, being that it was mostly about this history of facebook and social networking, I think the main argument made is that there has always been a demand for social networking and the facebook just happened to be created when the technology could properly support this demand.

Although facebook was a well designed and interesting website, the biggest key to Mark Zuckerberg’s success with his website was probably just being at the right place at the right time. What Mark Zuckerberg created when he made the facebook website really wasn’t extremely original or unique in anyway, but what was very special was the time in which he did it. Before facebook, there were numerous website created with very similar social network purposes created. Two particular examples are sixdegrees and friendster. Both were website created with intentions very similar to facebook. Both websites came out before facebook, but due to technological limitations such as lack of Ethernet connections and digital photography, neither made the kind of impact facebook did. Still though, it’s clear that people wanted to be able to connect with other people over the internet in this kind of format, because both sixdegree and friendster became very popular and had many users. Sixdegrees was started in the late nineties, so its time was way off and it didn’t have the technology to support a proper social network at all, but it still ended up with 3.5 million users before it was shut down. (pg. 69) Also, friendster came out just a year or so before facebook, and it was extremely popular. Actually it was too popular, people joined so fast that the servers couldn’t handle it and the website became very slow and unstable. (pg. 71) Regardless of the poor ending of these websites, the instant success both of them had, even though they were made approximately five years apart, shows that almost as soon as the internet became public, people were looking for methods to create social networks with other people. When Mark Zuckerberg started the facebook, although Ethernet connections weren’t standard yet, enough people were using them that the facebook website did not get bogged down in loading times and the servers were able to keep up. Also, Mark Zuckerberg did not plan it this way, but since he just began the website as a college based social network, this allowed him time to add more servers before adding more colleges to the website and keep things stable. Ever since the internet became popular, American culture became one that was thriving for social connectivity through that medium; Mark Zuckerberg just happened to be the guy at the right place and time to properly take advantage of it.