The Facebook Effect

"Well, I have to have a book about Facebook. I can’t think of another example where a business that is less than 10 years old is the subject of a major Hollywood movie. Kirkpatrick is a brilliant journalist and he writes extremely well. He’s got access and clearly gets on very well with Zuckerberg, and he’s evidently spent a lot of time with him and with senior executives of Facebook. I think it’s a fair book – a warts and all look at the company, including the privacy issue. He deals well with that. What I find so fascinating about Facebook is that it’s almost like the early years of Microsoft and Bill Gates, and it’s interesting how similar Zuckerberg and Gates are. They both come from very well-off families, both are computer whizzes, both were at Harvard, both dropped out to start their companies and took Harvard roommates with them. They are both completely ruthless in an American way that one associates with the founders of successful American corporations, like Ford and Rockefeller, and now we’re seeing it in the technology world. Yes. But it’s based on the fact that American universities all have a facebook, a year book that tells you a little bit about the person and gives you a photograph. What is exciting for young Americans is finding your suitable partner. What Zuckerberg did, and it wasn’t an original idea, was put it online. You can put a thousand universities online in a way you couldn’t do with a book because it would be too heavy to lift. Like many young students, Zuckerberg wanted to find pictures of the opposite sex. He was. It’s described in some detail in the book, and of course the early stages of Facebook took place in a courtroom, as you know. As we all know."