The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World (pt. II)

      It is quite clear that Facebook’s popularity and success grew at a rapid rate, and the second section of the reading helps exemplify that acceleration even more. Within a short amount of time after the Facebook was launched, there were many people interested in making investment deals with Zuckerberg and his team. Soon, it began time for the team to make big and tough decisions. Zuckerberg was faced with choosing a company who would make him a great profit and a company who he trusted and believed would steer the company in the right direction. Zuckerberg chose money (125). In the beginning, one of Zuckerberg and team’s main issue and concern was money. They simply did not have enough of it to not only stabilize Facebook, but further it. With this problem now taken care of, they were able to hire more people and becoming something more than a group of friends with an intense hobby. The boys were smart in their decisions throughout Facebook’s growth. At such young ages, it is incredible that they were not taken advantage of earlier. One wrong decision could have left them with nothing. They were on their way to building an excelling, multi-million dollar company.
      Another great decision made by the team was “targeting” advertising (142). This type of advertising personalized what appeared on each users screen. This not only made Facebook more appealing to its users, but it also sparked an interest for more people to use it. Facebook was becoming a new form of communication. People were able to adapt and adjust to it so quickly and use it so frequently, it eventually making not only hard to fail, but hard to get rid of. In 2006, the team and the rest of the world were beginning to realize the impact the website was having. Facebook was not just another website, but a way of life. It was quickly changing the way we communicate and interact with one another.
      A common topic of the internet is privacy, and it was only a matter of time before Facebook had its own issues regarding the concern. Facebook great success is due to the openness of the website. Because “nothing on Facebook is really confidential”, if you post something, even if it is a mistake, it is fair ground, and this truly made Facebook unique and unlike any other website (204). When Facebook decided to add high schools to the website, they began to change the privacy settings to accommodate not just the new younger users, but other individuals with careers they wanted to protect.
      It is interesting to actually gain insight to the steps Facebook took to become what it is now. The addition of a photo sharing feature and a “news feed” were almost afterthoughts to Zuckerberg, and they are probably the most essential part of Facebook now (193). Many of us utilize Facebook just these uses. We use it to document our events and the snapshots we took at them. We even communicate with some friends only over Facebook. These features allow society to be intertwined into each others’ lives. From just reading the examples Kirkpatrick gives audiences about how much of an effect Facebook has had on random people’s lives, one can wonder “what we would do without Facebook?”