David Kirkpatrick: The Facebook Effect
I recently met up with David Kirkpatrick to discuss his upcoming book on Facebook. In the below video, he identified three things you might not know about Facebook:
1- Identity. Facebook doesn’t want to be a website, but the identity infrastructure of the Internet. In time, Facebook has the potential to pose a threat to the governments in terms of identification documents. Imagine one day printing out your Facebook ID instead of using a passport.
2- Mark Zuckerberg controls everything about Facebook. As a direct reflection of Zuckerberg’s beliefs, Facebook is constantly trying to push the boundaries for privacy online. Zuckerberg generally believes that people’s perception of privacy will change over time.
3- Monetization. The lack of an actual business model has had people questioning whether Facebook really is a business – or just a phenomenon. The answer is found in Facebook’s corporate strategy, which is more concerned with improvements and growth than monetization. Once they are large enough, however, there will be many, many ways of monetizing the platform.
More insights into the phenomenon of Facebook can be found in David’s book “The Facebook Effect” that comes out in June.
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Thomas Crampton was a correspondent for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times for more than a decade, reporting from five continents, writing a column on Asia and covering Asian politics, economics and culture. Currently based in Hong Kong, he writes here about China, the Internet and New Media seen from Asia, while also advising companies on digital communication strategies. For more information click here...
I wonder how independent Mark Zuckerberg really is. After all Russian DST now owns 10% of FB; 32% of DST are hold by Alisher Usmanov, who is known as the hard man. Hence, guess Mark might have to obey to more business interests as it seems from the surface.
All the best
Joern
http://www.strongquickly.com
http://www.mydecision.eu
Mark Zuckerberg has control of 3 seats out of 5 at the board. So whatever the sharholders say (DST, Accel etc) he gets the final word because he has the majority of votes.
Regarding #3: Perhaps I'm naive, but many of these social-media “phenomena” are being started by teens and young adults. Forgive me, but what do they know about owning a business? Most have only worked on paper routes, let alone operating the world's highest-trafficked website. I understand they have advisors, but still…
There are books on the “eBay economy” and the like, and really, when journalists title their pieces this way, it's sort of misleading. There's a good deal of things going on that are more essential, that transcend proprietary systems and brands. In this, there's descriptions and narratives of extraordinary events, real world, actual events of often political significance; these events are seemingly facilitated by Facebook. But really, any technology might suffice. It just so happens Facebook's the branded system of choice, currently. But there were riots in the streets of Manila and the greater metro areas, when EDSA 3 broke out, and all that was coordinated at the grass roots by text message. And those protests resulted in ousting President Estrada!
There are books on the “eBay economy” and the like, and really, when journalists title their pieces this way, it's sort of misleading. There's a good deal of things going on that are more essential, that transcend proprietary systems and brands. In this, there's descriptions and narratives of extraordinary events, real world, actual events of often political significance; these events are seemingly facilitated by Facebook. But really, any technology might suffice. It just so happens Facebook's the branded system of choice, currently. But there were riots in the streets of Manila and the greater metro areas, when EDSA 3 broke out, and all that was coordinated at the grass roots by text message. And those protests resulted in ousting President Estrada!