I watched the movie "The Social Network" on the plane back from Taiwan, then saw Mark Zuckerberg's picture on one of the Time magazine issues that arrived while I was away, with the heading "Person of the Year" on it. So, Mark Zuckerberg is the man, and his Facebook revolution the talk of town nowadays, it seems.
Just how big is Facebook today, here are a few tidbits: With 550 million users, it would be the world's 3rd largest nation if it were one, only behind China and India; More people visit Facebook website daily than any other; More and more commercial products get their traffic referral through Facebook than through search engines such as Google or Yahoo... Another interesting statistics is that the fastest growing segment of Facebook users comes from women over 55, and women outnumber men in every age category of Facebook users. Some plausible explanations for such phenomena are women are by nature more social than men and they have found out online social network to be a safe and hassle free environment to conduct such activities; and some "moms" may be tempted to join the network for the possibility of "befriending" their children online when the offline contacts are diminishing.
Like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg is a Harvard dropout. (And he pleged to give away at least half of his wealth, estimated to be $6.9 billion today, over the course of his life time, also following Gates' example). Contrary to what's portrayed in the movie, Mark is not a nerdy, socially awkward young man who uses his extraordinary programming gift to acquire girls, money, and party invitations. In reality, he is sociable and well liked by his staff and partners, and already has a live-in Chinese girl friend who is now a 3rd year med student at UC San Francisco--they met at Harvard 7 years ago, before Mark started Facebook. His mother, a psychiatrist herself, attributes what she calls Mark's "sensitivity" to the fact that he was raised with three sisters. Mark himself majored in both Computer Science and Psychology in college. "For me, computers were always just a way to build good stuff, not like an end in itself." Whereas earlier entrepreneurs looked at the Internet and saw a network of computers, Zuckerberg saw a network of people.
The Internet was built in the 1960's with a decentralized artchitecture that engenders the anarchistic electronic no-man's land nature that allows users to take anonymous or pseudo identities to behave what they normally woudn't in real life--witness the proliferation of online pornographers, hatemongers, scammers, hackers, virus writers, etc. Early social networks like Friendster and Myspace carry on such "origin sin" by allowing malleable and playful identities in their communities as well. But Facebook was and is different. "We're trying to map out what exists in the world," Mark says. "In the world, there's trust. I think as humans we 'parse' the world through the people and relationships we have around us, so at its core, what we are trying to do is map out all of those trust relationships which are colloquially called 'friendships'."
The Internet was built in the 1960's with a decentralized artchitecture that engenders the anarchistic electronic no-man's land nature that allows users to take anonymous or pseudo identities to behave what they normally woudn't in real life--witness the proliferation of online pornographers, hatemongers, scammers, hackers, virus writers, etc. Early social networks like Friendster and Myspace carry on such "origin sin" by allowing malleable and playful identities in their communities as well. But Facebook was and is different. "We're trying to map out what exists in the world," Mark says. "In the world, there's trust. I think as humans we 'parse' the world through the people and relationships we have around us, so at its core, what we are trying to do is map out all of those trust relationships which are colloquially called 'friendships'."
Zuckerberg's vision is that after the Facebookization of the Web, you're no longer canvasing the Web on your own: Wherever you go online, you'll see your friends. On Amazon, you might see your friends' reviews. On YouTube, you might see what your friends watched or see their comments first. Those reviews and comments will be meaningful because you know who wrote them and what your relationship to those authors is. They have a social context. "It's a shift from the wisdom of crowds to the wisdom of friends," says Sandberg, COO of Facebook. Or from "words of mouth" to "words of friends' mouth"--"It doesn't matter if 100,000 people like x. If the three people closest to you like y, you want to see y."
Not that long ago, a post-Google Web was unimaginable, but the time may be near. With the rate it's growing, it's not unimaginable in the foreseeable future every Internet user may have a Facebook account. And the difference between a Facebook user and a Google user? While Google can only guess who its user is and what he/she is insterested in, based on their search history, Facebook knows exactly who they are and what they are interested in, because they told it themselves. In the world of targeted advertising, Facebook has a high-powered sniper rifle, so to speak, and can thus claim more bounty dollars from their advertisers. Now does anyone recall the news over 3 years ago that Google tried to buy off Facebook and was flatout rejected?
So is Facebook the best thing ever happened to Internet? Not everyone agrees. Though it is reinvigorating to know people prefer revealing their authentic selves and sharing socially online than hiding and ranting/shouting uncivil-like behind the Internet veil, the profile we provide in the cyber world is in many ways short of full and complete disclosure of ourselves, and the Internet infrastructure is lacking and even inhibiting in terms of conveying true intimacy that is needed in true friendship that can only be accomplished via real life contacts. If we run our social life fully online, we must be aware of the distortion it may create and the risk of becoming "a genie living within a bottle," where Facebook is the bottle, and we the genie.
Not that long ago, a post-Google Web was unimaginable, but the time may be near. With the rate it's growing, it's not unimaginable in the foreseeable future every Internet user may have a Facebook account. And the difference between a Facebook user and a Google user? While Google can only guess who its user is and what he/she is insterested in, based on their search history, Facebook knows exactly who they are and what they are interested in, because they told it themselves. In the world of targeted advertising, Facebook has a high-powered sniper rifle, so to speak, and can thus claim more bounty dollars from their advertisers. Now does anyone recall the news over 3 years ago that Google tried to buy off Facebook and was flatout rejected?
So is Facebook the best thing ever happened to Internet? Not everyone agrees. Though it is reinvigorating to know people prefer revealing their authentic selves and sharing socially online than hiding and ranting/shouting uncivil-like behind the Internet veil, the profile we provide in the cyber world is in many ways short of full and complete disclosure of ourselves, and the Internet infrastructure is lacking and even inhibiting in terms of conveying true intimacy that is needed in true friendship that can only be accomplished via real life contacts. If we run our social life fully online, we must be aware of the distortion it may create and the risk of becoming "a genie living within a bottle," where Facebook is the bottle, and we the genie.
Some more serious criticism on Facebook and its modern day ilks such as Twitter focuses on the new way of communication these social media promote--texting, instant messaging, and that "messages have to be seamless, informal, immediate, personal, simple, minimal and short" philosophy proclaimed by Mark Zuckerberg. As journalist/scholar Neal Gabler says in a recent LA Times opinion article: "The more we text and Twitter and 'friend,' ... the less likely we are to have the habit of mind or the means of expressing ourselves in interesting and complex ways." He also refers to social theorist Marshall McLuhan's book "The Gutenberg Galaxy," in which it posits that the "uniformity, immutability, rigidity, logic" of the print press Gutenberg invented in the 15th century that helped spread literacy throughout Europe also led to the remolding of the human mind, thus the rise of rationalism and of the scientific method. "In facilitating reason, print also facilitated complex ideas," he asserts, and "Print made us think better or, at least, with greater discipline," while "seamless, informal, personal, short...communications lack substances and drive out significant ones." His verdict: "Gutenberg's Revolution left us with a world that was intellectually rich, while Zuckerberg's portends one that is all thumbs and no brains."
That's a bit harsh, don't you think?
Do you Facebook?
* Do you know: The color scheme of the Facebook logo is blue and white because Zuckerberg is red-green color-blind: there are a lot of colors he can't see, but blue he can see.
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