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Changing Our Institutions

Monday, April 4, 2011


One night over dinner I asked Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook's effects
on society—especially politics, government, media, and business.
He responded by talking about the potlatch. That's a traditional celebration
and feast of native peoples on the northwest coast of North
America. Each celebrant contributes what food and goods they can,
and anyone takes what they want. The highest status goes to those who
give the most away.

Facebook and the World


Mark Zuckerberg is in a large van on the campus of the prestigious
University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain. It's October 2008 and he's
just finished speaking for an hour in the school's largest lecture hall.

Making Money


How would Facebook turn its social success into a lasting, moneymaking
business? It was a question that could elicit a surprisingly broad range of
answers even among senior executives at Facebook when Sheryl Sandberg
arrived.

$ 1 5 Billion


Opening Facebook up to everybody had been a huge success. By the
fall of 2007 more than half the site's users were outside the United
States. The explosive international growth was a powerful sign of Facebook's
growing universal appeal, since the company had done nothing
to make it easy for non-Americans to join. All the text remained completely
in English, for one thing.

The Platform


Mark Zuckerberg has had a particular obsession since Facebook's early
days. On the night that his early collaborator Sean Parker first met
Zuckerberg at that trendy Tribeca Chinese restaurant in May 2004, the
two got into a curious argument.

Privacy


How much of ourselves should we show the world? It's an important
question Facebook forces us to confront. Do I want you to know that I
am a longtime Fortune magazine journalist who covers technology and
is now writing a book about Facebook?

2006


The astonishing success of Facebook's photos application led to a bout
of soul-searching at the company. What was it, Zuckerberg and his colleagues
asked themselves, that made photos so successful?

The CEO


As Facebook kept evolving—and growing faster with every change —the
established powers of the technology and media world began paying
ever closer attention. This appeared to be the kind of irresistible consumer
website every executive had dreamed of owning since the Internet
took off in the mid-1990s.

Fall 2005


As the school year resumed in the fall of 2005, the company now named
Facebook had effectively blanketed the college market—85 percent of
American college students were users and a full 60 percent returned
to it daily.

Becoming a Company


Suddenly there seemed no limit to what Thefacebook could achieve.
Money had been removed as an obstacle. The service continued to
grow rapidly among students. Any lingering doubts Zuckerberg had
about Thefacebook had been vanquished. Now was the time to make it
into a real company! But wait—how do you make a company?