Facebook Building a Business from the Social Graph 11 29 2012 The Rise of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg Just two weeks after Facebook launched the firm had four thousand users Ten months later it was up to one million Zuckerberg owns an estimated 20 to 30 percent of the company and controls three of five seats on the firm s board of directors That means he s virtually guaranteed to remain in control of the firm regardless of what investors say social graph the global mapping of users and organizations and how they are connected The site was one of the first social networks where users actually identified themselves using their real names realness brought about a degree of safety and comfort that enabled Facebook to become a true social utility and build out a solid social graph consisting of verified relationships strong network effect without it Facebook wouldn t exist powerful switching costs A move to another service means recreating your entire social graph Facebook as a Platform Facebook published a set of application programming interfaces APIs that specified how programs could be written to run within and interact with Facebook Apps could be cobbled together on the quick feeds made them spread like wildfire and the early movers offered adoption rates never before seen by small groups of software developers
View Full Document
Unlocking...