Yesterday it seemed like facebook was just some start up company with couple kids working there, but tomorrow it seems like facebook might rule the world. In the third part of The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick, David discusses how facebook began expanding into much more than just a mere website. He begins by talking about the transformation of facebook into a platform, which according to David had been a goal for Zuckerberg ever since he first made facebook. Turning facebook into a plateform expanded its potential exponentially. It turned facebook into a system off which other software and applications could be run. Also, with the addition of the news feed, after a relatively small protest from users, facebook’s usage began growing even more rapidly. After this expansion of facebook’s abilities, David Kirkpatrick discusses how facebook was turned into a highly profitable enterprise. This was highly due to the acquisition of Sheryl Sandberg, who was hired as the COO of facebook and took charge of facebook’s ad campaign while Zuckerberg was traveling around the world. This new movement in facebook ads led to a serious increase in revenue for the first time. Up until then, although facebook was held at very high standards and valued at a very high worth, it really wasn’t making that much money. After discussing facebook’s road to monetary success, David Kirkpatrick talks about the new direction Zuckerberg began taking facebook in, world expansion. This is where I think David Kirkpatrick makes his main arguments during this part of the book. During this time in facebook’s life, Zuckerberg mainly concentrated on expanding it to the entire world. It had already spread to many parts of the world other than the United States, but it was only used by people who could speak English. Zuckerberg began creating translations of facebook so that it could be used by speakers of other languages. This led to a global expansion of facebook. It is in this expansion that I think the main argument was made by Kirkpatrick. With this great expansion of facebook, users all around the world now held a great deal of power in their hands and could right the wrongs that before they would have to just accept.
Although expanding facebook globally was a arduous task, it allowed facebook to attain a level of power that no other internet company has. It is in this power that I feel David Kirkpatrick makes is main argument. This power facebook users now possessed was the power of common goals. Now that facebook was so large and expansive, all around the world people could virtually come together to protest about any issue they wanted. If anyone wanted to protest about something, they could start a group about the issue and it would be almost certain they would get thousands of members within days that would share their views. According to David Kirkpatrick, it seems like this power is a wonderful thing that allows people around the world to fight injustices that before they could not. A prime example of this is Oscar Morales, who started a group against the FARC. After a short amount of time, the group had 350,000 members and led to a 10 million people march against the FARC (pg. 1-6, 288). Although in this case and admittedly numerous others, facebook gave people the power the fight back against injustices, overall I would still have to disagree with David Kirkpatrick’s argument. Facebook may be a tool that can help many people come together to fight a good cause, but I think by far the larger percentage of users do not use facebook for anything so noble. I think this technology just further supports Neil Postman’s views about technopoly. As with all technology, the potential for it to be used to help humanity and do the world good is always there. But the ease, convenience, and shear quantity of it causes most people to use it for selfish reasons. Facebook has the option of being used to fight causes and injustices, but from my own experiences it is much more often used just to satisfy people’s want for attention and fame.
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