The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World by David Kirkpatrick (2011, Paperback)

Key Details
Author:	David Kirkpatrick
Language:	English
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Format:	Paperback
ISBN-10:	1439102120
ISBN-13:	9781439102121

Size
Length:	372 pages
Thickness:	1 in
Weight:	14.4 oz

Publisher's Note
IN LITTLE MORE THAN HALF A DECADE, Facebook has gone from a dorm-room novelty to a company with 500 million users. It is one of the fastest growing companies in history, an essential part of the social life not only of teenagers but hundreds of millions of adults worldwide. As Facebook spreads around the globe, it creates surprising effects—even becoming instrumental in political protests from Colombia to Iran.

Veteran technology reporter David Kirkpatrick had the full cooperation of Facebook’s key executives in researching this fascinating history of the company and its impact on our lives. Kirkpatrick tells us how Facebook was created, why it has flourished, and where it is going next. He chronicles its successes and missteps, and gives readers the most complete assessment anywhere of founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the central figure in the company’s remarkable ascent. This is the Facebook story that can be found nowhere else.

How did a nineteen-year-old Harvard student create a company that has transformed the Internet and how did he grow it to its current enormous size? Kirkpatrick shows how Zuckerberg steadfastly refused to compromise his vision, insistently focusing on growth over profits and preaching that Facebook must dominate (his word) communication on the Internet. In the process, he and a small group of key executives have created a company that has changed social life in the United States and elsewhere, a company that has become a ubiquitous presence in marketing, altering politics, business, and even our sense of our own identity. This is the Facebook Effect.

Industry Reviews
"Throughout this fast-paced book, Zuckerberg holds center stage, the one constant amid a bewildering array of supporting but ultimately disposable characters. The story of how Zuckerberg hatched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room - and managed to overcome largely spurious complaints over code theft by jealous Harvard undergrads - makes for gripping reading."
(06/13/2010)

"Facebook users who think that they are addicted to the site don't have anything on Mark Zuckerberg....Mr. Kirkpatrick doesn't coddle his subject, yet he presents Mr. Zuckerberg's point of view much more comprehensibly than we have seen it before."
(06/08/2010)