The Facebook Effect pt 2

The second required reading of David Kirkpatrick’s “The Facebook Effect” was as interesting as the first. I was very excited to be reading about something I have direct knowledge of using, just as I did with “The World and Wikipedia”. Finally, reading something I knew about and enjoyed. The second part of the book picks up where the first left off, with the story of Mark Zuckerberg’s somewhat sketchy creation and first years of the Facebook. It speaks of Accel’s investments in Facebook as well as the work of Kevin Efrusy, who made the deal happen. They then recieved more money to add new and exciting features to the burgeouning platform, such as the new (in?)famous News Feed. They even began work on an API for 3rd-party developers. With all of this, Facebook grew tremendously and now commands an incredible mindshare over the developed world at large. Currently, every respectable business of a certain size owns and operates a Facebook profile, regardless of their trade. Social networking, once considered a gimmick by web analysts, is now at the forefront of everyones Internet and many consider Facebook to be the only real contender to Google as the world’s gateway to the internet. This is truly incredible for a company that began its roots just 6 years ago at the time of this writing. From 1 to 500 million+ users, the Facebook is one of the most important companies, both on the Web and in the entire world.