Facebook effect pdf free download

The whole culture works on this framework of mutual giving. He was never interested in making money, instead, he kept thinking about the most efficient way for people to stay in touch and share relevant information. This was translated into a very important principle for Facebook — a genuine identity. This fact ensured that each person would upload real information on the profile page. Having a real identity made it easy for friends to find you and you had no interest to upload fake information about yourself.

It simply expanded to other colleges and then high schools and eventually to anybody. It soon became international and within 5 years it became the most important social network. At some point, Zuckerberg knew that if Facebook became mainstream, it would change the world the same way the telephone or the telegraph had done. He started everything with his dorm roommates who became his closest consultants and friends, but later on he hired people with experience in similar start-ups or big companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo or Google.

Even if he had quit college in order to grow Facebook, he always looked for valuable persons to join him. At the same time, he always looked for young, smart people. He believed that they were more open and transparent — two core values of the company. Facebook is founded on a radical social premise — that an inevitable enveloping transparency will overtake modern life.

Even though Facebook was getting more and more successful, Mark Zuckerberg kept thinking ahead and added new features. The entire advertising world was redefined as Facebook became stronger. The consumers were the ones who are creating the content instead of the marketers.

And a product or service recommended by a friend was much more valuable than any ad. I just hate advertising that stinks. Advertising should always be useful for the user. Facebook did make history as Zuckerberg wanted because it was designed from the first place for the people and not for the money.

Vision, openness, and professionalism 2. A platform which changed the world 3. In effect, the entire country had been taken hostage, and this had been going on for decades. Morales spent a day asking himself if he was willing to go public on Facebook.

He decided to take the plunge, and on the 4th created a group against FARC. He overlaid it with four simple pleas in capitals running down the page, each one slightly larger than the last— no more kidnappings, no more lies, no more killings, no more farc. What had happened was unbearable.

But what should he call his group? They were juvenile. This was not a contest. This was serious. Yet he liked the idea of a mil- lion. The word voices sounded more literary. That was it. After midnight on January 4, Morales created the group. He made it public so that any Facebook member could join. His personal network included about one hundred friends, and he invited them all. He was tired. Fifteen hun- dred people had joined already! This was an even better response than he had expected!

That day at the beach he told his extended family about the group and asked them to invite their own Facebook friends to join. This is what I want! A committed community around the message. Morales soon bonded with several people who were posting there with special vigor. They exchanged instant mes- saging and Skype addresses and cell-phone numbers so they could con- tinue their conversations offline.

As more and more Colombians joined the group, members started talking not only about how mad they were about FARC, but what they ought to do about it. On January 6, just the second full day, a consensus on the page was emerging that the burgeoning group should go public.

Late on the afternoon of the 6th, his newfound Facebook friends, especially two he was speaking to by phone, convinced Morales that he should propose a demonstration. When he did, the idea was received on the wall and discussion board by acclamation. It would be February 4, one month after the formation of the group. Morales, who was used to being left out of things since he lived in a provincial city, insisted the march take place not only in Bogota, the capital, but also many other places throughout the country, including of course his hometown of Barranquilla.

He and his co-organizers, several of them already as consumed by the project as he was, immediately got pushback from unexpected quarters.

They wanted to be involved in this movement, too. So it became a global march. What ensued was one of the most extraordinary examples of digi- tally fueled activism the world has ever seen. On February 4, about 10 million people marched against FARC in hundreds of cities in Colom- bia according to Colombian press estimates. As many as 2 million more marched in cities around the world. Though several hundred thousand Colombians were already using Facebook, it had not appeared on the radar of the av- erage citizen.

Though Morales and his co-. After a week or two the local army commander began providing Morales with three bodyguards and a car, which he used through February 4. Mayors and city governments throughout the country worked closely with demonstration volunteers to grant march permits.

But what remains remarkable is the way so many Colombians on Facebook signed up on the group under their real names. By the day of the march there were , Even after news about the march had become a daily drumbeat in the press and the website had turned into a key promotional tool, Face- book remained central. It was the central command.

It was the labora- tory—everything. Facebook was all that, right up until the last day. He expected about 50, people to show up. They filled more than ten city blocks. At exactly noon, Morales read a state- ment that the group had jointly agreed upon. It was broadcast on televi- sion all over Latin America.

Demonstrators gathered even in remote places like Dubai, Sydney, and Tokyo. On local TV news, one woman was interviewed in the crush of the Bogota march. Had she been per- sonally injured by FARC, the interviewer asked? Morales and his group members had tapped into frustrations deep in the collective national psyche.

While pressure from President Uribe has played a major role in weakening FARC, the demonstrations seem to have struck their own blow. In a sign that the guerrillas were acutely aware of the impending march, on the Saturday before it took place they announced that they would release three hostages, all former Colombian congressmen, as a.

Ingrid Betancourt and fourteen other hostages were rescued in a commando operation by the Colombian army in July In interviews she recalled listening to a radio in the jungle on February 4, surrounded by her FARC captors. Oscar Morales is telling me about this in a cof- fee shop in Manhattan in late As he does, his voice catches. Tears well up. His group and the subsequent demonstration made him into a national and international celebrity.

Today he devotes his entire life to the anti-FARC crusade. Though Facebook was not designed as a political tool, its creators ob- served early on that it had peculiar potential. During the first few weeks after it was created at Harvard University in , students began broad- casting their political opinions by replacing their profile picture with a block of text that included a political statement. In fifteen years maybe there will be things like what happened in Colom- bia almost every day.

Facebook, along with Twitter, famously played a. And when a young woman was tragically killed during one of those protests, it was on Facebook that video of her murder emerged, to be shared worldwide as a symbol of Iranian government repression.

The Iranian government, embarrassed, tried several times to shut off access to Facebook. But it is used so widely in the country that it was difficult to do so. Why should Facebook turn out to be a uniquely effective tool for political or- ganizing? And in what ways do its unprecedented qualities help explain the rapidity with which Facebook has become a routine part of the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world?

As the rest of this book will explore, many of the an- swers lie in a set of phenomena I call the Facebook Effect. As a fundamentally new form of communication, Facebook leads to fundamentally new interpersonal and social effects. The Facebook Effect happens when the service puts people in touch with each other, often unexpectedly, about a common experience, interest, problem, or cause.

This can happen at a small or large scale—from a group of two or three friends or a family, to millions, as in Colombia. Ideas on Facebook have the ability to rush through groups and make many people aware of something almost simultaneously, spreading from one person to another and on to many with unique ease—like a virus, or meme.

You can send messages to. Large-scale broadcast of information was formerly the province of electronic media—radio and television. But the Facebook Effect—in cases like Colombia or Iran—means ordinary individuals are initiating the broadcast. Twitter is another service with a more limited range of functions that can also enable powerful broadcasting over the Internet by any individual. It too has had significant political impact. This all may be either a constructive or a destructive force.

Face- book is giving individuals in societies across the world more power relative to social institutions, and that may well lead to very disruptive changes. In some societies it may destabilize institutions many of us would rather stay the same. But it also holds the promise—as is starting to be shown in Egypt, Indonesia, and elsewhere—of posing challenges to long-standing repressive state institutions and practices.

Facebook makes it easier for people to organize themselves. In mid- a Facebook group organized a huge water fight in downtown Leeds, England. And in September more than a thousand people spent twenty minutes or so smashing each other with pillows in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They heard about the pillow fight on Facebook. Public pillow fights became something of a fad around the world as Facebook-empowered young people embraced a new way to blow off steam.

The Facebook Effect can be no less powerful as a tool for marketers, provided they can figure out how to invoke it, a topic we will explore in greater depth later.

Similarly, the Facebook Effect has potentially profound implications for media. On Facebook, everyone can be an editor, a content creator, a producer, and a distributor. All the classic old-media hats are being worn by everyone. The Facebook Effect can create a sudden convergence of interest among people in a news story, a song, or a YouTube video. The best games take advantage of the Facebook Effect, with the result that some games are played by as many as 30 million members per week.

PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Wii were the platform choices of the previous genera- tion. Now, however, all the video-gaming consoles are starting to build in Facebook connectivity as well. As Facebook grows and grows past million members, one has to ask if there may not be a macro version of the Facebook Effect.

Could it become a factor in helping bring together a world filled with political and religious strife and in the midst of environmental and economic breakdown?

A communications system that includes people of all coun- tries, all races, all religions, could not be a bad thing, could it? Thiel is a master contrar- ian who has made billions in his hedge fund betting correctly on the direction of oil, currencies, and stocks.

He is also an entrepreneur, the co-founder, and former CEO of the PayPal online payments service which he sold to eBay. Facebook is perhaps the purest expression of that I can think of. I knew that would be interesting, so I agreed. But when this young man—then just twenty-two—joined me at the fancy Il Gattopardo Ital- ian restaurant in midtown Manhattan, it was at first hard to accept that he was CEO of a tech company of growing importance.

He wore jeans and a T-shirt with a line drawing of a little bird on a tree. He seemed so unbelievably young! Then he opened his mouth. He was very fo- cused on commanding my attention for his company and his vision. And he succeeded. The more I listened the more he sounded like one of the successful—and much older—CEOs and entrepreneurs I talked to regularly in my job.

In my mind it was a huge compliment, one I did not give lightly. But he acted insulted. His face scrunched up with a look of distaste. From that. That announcement began to change how the world perceived Facebook. Zuckerberg, now twenty-six, remains CEO. As a result of his determination, strategic savvy, and a fair dollop of luck, he maintains absolute financial control of the company. Buyers have repeatedly offered astounding sums of money—billions—if he would agree to sell it.

In keeping the company independent he has kept it imbued with his own ideals, personality, and values. From its dorm-room days, Facebook has looked simple, clean, and uncluttered. Zuckerberg has long had an interest in elegant interface design.

Facebook is all information all the time. Each month about 20 billion pieces of content are posted there by members—including Web links, news stories, photos, etc.

Not to mention the innumerable trivial announcements, weighty pronouncements, political provoca- tions, birthday greetings, flirtations, invitations, insults, wisecracks, bad. Popular though it may be, Facebook was never intended as a sub- stitute for face-to-face communication. Though many people do not use it this way, it has always been explicitly conceived and engineered by Zuckerberg and colleagues as a tool to enhance your relationships with the people you know in the flesh—your real-world friends, ac- quaintances, classmates, or co-workers.

As this book explains in detail, this is a core difference between Facebook and other similar services— and has introduced a particular set of challenges for the company at every turn. The Facebook Effect most often is felt in the quotidian realm, at an intimate level among a small group. It can make communication more efficient, cultivate familiarity, and enhance intimacy.

When Facebook is used as it was originally designed—to build bet- ter pathways for sharing between people who already know each other in the real world—it can have a potent emotional power.

It is a new sort of communications tool based on real relationships between individu- als, and it enables fundamentally new sorts of interactions. Several other factors make Facebook unlike any Internet business that preceded it. First, it is both in principle and in practice based on real identity. On Facebook it is as important today to be your real self as it was when the service launched at Harvard in February Ano- nymity, role-playing, pseudonyms, and handles have always been rou- tine on the Web—AOL screen name, anyone?

But they have little role here. If you invent a persona or too greatly enhance the way you present yourself, you will get little benefit from Facebook. Unless you interact with others as yourself, your friends will either not recognize you or will not befriend you. A critical way other people on Facebook know you are. These friends, in effect, validate your identity. To get this circular validation process started you have to use your real name.

Closely connected to its commitment to genuine identity is an in- frastructure intended to protect privacy and give the user control. But if you know who is around you, you can authoritatively determine who you would and would not like to see your information.

They often have not felt that it was sufficiently protected, and have periodi- cally revolted in order to say so. Facebook has generally weathered these controversies well. Recently the company has set about simplifying and improving the controls that determine who sees what about you. The social changes that will be brought about by the Facebook Ef- fect will not all be positive. What does it mean that we are increas- ingly living our lives in public?

Are we turning into a nation—and a world—of exhibitionists? Many see Facebook as merely a celebration of the minutiae of our lives. Such people view it as a platform for nar- cissism rather than a tool for communication. Could it lead to greater conformity? Are young people who spend their days on Facebook losing their ability to recognize and experience change and excitement in the real world? Are we relying too heavily on our friends. Does Facebook merely contribute to information over- load?

Could we thus become less informed? The average Facebook user has about Can you really have friends, as many do? For some, Facebook may generate a false sense of companionship and over time increase a feeling of aloneness. So far there is little data to show how widespread this problem may be, though as our use of electronic media continues in coming years it will certainly remain a widespread concern.

As other tables emptied out, we moved on to coffee and the staff started mop- ping the floor. Zuckerberg was, as always, wearing a T-shirt, but since it was a little chilly he had on another of his staples—a fleece jacket. His answer was all about transparency. Ap- propriately enough, Zuckerberg himself is almost compulsively candid. And you think about things in this abstract way. Very idealistic. Very liberal at this institution.

So a lot of these values are just around you: the world should be governed by people. A lot of that stuff has really shaped me. And this is a lot of what Facebook is pushing for. But we had no idea we would play a part in it. We were just a group of college kids. Mark Zuckerberg was never one to defer to authority figures. But what he built turns individuals into the authority. The entire service revolves around the profile and the actions of people.

Facebook empowers them at the expense of institutions. It has become an overarch- ing common cultural experience for people worldwide, especially young people. Despite its modest beginnings as the college project of a nineteen-year-old, it has become a technological powerhouse with unprecedented influence across modern life, both public and private. Its membership spans generations, geographies, languages, and class.

It may in fact be the fastest-growing company of any type in history. Facebook is even bigger in countries like Chile and Norway than it is in the United States. It changes how people communicate and in- teract, how marketers sell products, how governments reach out to citizens, even how companies operate. It is altering the character of political activism, and in some countries it is starting to affect the processes of democracy itself.

This is no longer just a plaything for college students. If you use the Internet, you are increasingly likely to use Facebook. It is the second-most-visited site, after Google, and claims more than million active users as of February Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses.

The Facebook effect : the inside story of the company that is connecting the world Item Preview. EMBED for wordpress. Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! In half a decade, Facebook has gone from a dorm-room novelty to a company with million users. It is one of the fastest growing companies in history, an essential part of the social life not only of teenagers but millions of adults worldwide. As Facebook spreads around the globe, it creates surprising effects--even becoming instrumental in political protests.