The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World

In August, 2008, Facebook signed up its 100 millionth user. Eight months later its 200 millionth user signed up. Today it is closing in on 250 million users. This phenomenal growth rate is unprecedented and shows the allure and power of Facebook. It has become an essential part of the social life of a generation, all around the world. David Kirkpatrick traces the Facebook story from its origins in Mark Zuckerbergs dorm room at Harvard, where a handful of 19-year-olds devised a way for Harvard students to connect with one another, then with other Ivy League students, then college students more generally, and so on until it became the #1 social networking site on the internet that it is today. For five years Zuckerberg has focused on growth and not profit. His goal was and is for Facebook to dominate (he uses this word) the way people communicate. Drawing on his exclusive inside access, Kirkpatrick tells the story of the handful of friends who came together to make Facebook work, the falling-out among some of them, and the lawsuits over Facebook, threatened and real, that have made news. He describes from the inside the vision, the tenacity, the refusal to compromise - and the immaturity - that have made the company what it is. Facebook aims to change the internet, including internet advertising and marketing, and even mighty Google recognizes the challenge that Facebook poses. Kirkpatrick shows how users around the world have made Facebook a part of the social and political culture of the 21st century, organizing protests against the FARC in Colombia on Facebook and, more recently, against the 2009 Iranian election. This is the inside story of one of the greatest business and social tales of our time.

Author: David Kirkpatrick

Language: English

Binding: Hardcover

Pages: 384

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Publication Date: 2010-06-08