Perspective On Zuckerberg

Quickly: you don't know what you're talking about George Colony

"The great CEOs in technology navigate their companies through product change, brutal competitive threats, shifts in architecture, and highly fickle customers". -You

FB started out as MySpace for .EDU emails. News Feed, Platform, Connect, Photos, etc built around Zucks idea of 'Social' has revolutionized the way we interact and build our products online.

Little do you know, everything Mark has done is playing right into his hands, especially with the 'Like' button. Facebook AdSense for publishers is just around the corner and will disrupt a major portion of Google's business. His master plan has yet to even be completed. Social has only just started.

The entire post can be summarized in its last line - "Eventually we'll find out if he's Jeff Bezos . . . or Jerry Yang."; and it is definitely a perspective, not a conclusion. So, no need to go high for/against Zuckerberg.

The way Facebook has been growing amidst all its Privacy issues, there is no denying to the fact the someone out there has been taking some amazing decisions and has been working really hard. I think information sharing (photos, status updates et al.) is just the beginning. With the volume of data that Facebook has, it can potentially do things like targeted search results, targeted shopping suggestions, targeted music suggestions and what not!

What impressed me about Zuckerberg was when I read about the reported offers throughout Facebook's young history. Millions here, a billion here, MTV, Yahoo, Microsoft. It was alleged that Ballmer casually dropped the "$15 billion offer" while walking with Zuckerberg.

And still, he turned them all down. It leads me to believe he knows something we don't, because you'd have to be insane to reject that much money at that age. And still, Facebook grows, rakes in more money, and becomes worth even more.

One could certainly make the argument that Zuckerberg is suffering from a form of business myopia. He's leveraging the main competitive advantage he has, which is the social graph. Perhaps he should think more broadly and take advantage of Facebook's financial resources and intellectual capital. Companies such as Apple and Microsoft thought beyond their narrow set of competencies to become full fledged technology companies. It will be interesting to see if Facebook will move in the same direction.

In all fairness to Zuckerberg, one could also make this argument about Google. While both Google and Facebook dominate their areas because of powerful network effects, nothing lasts forever. Imagine what the Union Pacific Railroad company could have been if they stopped thinking of themselves as a railroad company, and started thinking like a transportation company. It's tempting to stick to riding the one horse you have, but rarely has this worked out long-term in the tech industry.

I'd like to think the kid is pretty smart. Facebook has really only been "on the scene" for a few years now, growing in popularity enormously over a 24-36 mo. glaze.

I say it's too soon to judge anything. Give him more time to actually prove himself as a high quality (or poor-quality) leader.

15 seconds of thought went into this linkbait.

Vanity Fair interviews people it wants to be amazing, so it makes them look good; the author of a book about Zuckerburg is hardly likely to say he's not worth writing about; and the Social Network is a movie about the drama of the guy's life, not a business commentary. These are terrible sources to claim the guy has is 'overrated'. And he hasn't had anywhere near the time yet to show whether he's Bezos or Yang, as the writer points out, while at the same criticizing him for not doing the things great CEOs have done. Sheesh.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

i think a lot of his problem is one of perception. i also think his youth works against him sometimes. personally, i'm not a huge fan. sometimes it seems like he's trying to squeeze the facebook social graph for as much as he can.

but then, like the majority of people, i only see a small subset of his personality. he is in a very competitive industry and it's the young, type-a/ultra-competitive/greedy capitalist/smart guy trying to wear the [big] shoes of a modern visionary that is often in the spotlight.

it's hard to imagine how i might act were i the youngest billionaire in america and the creator/founder/leader of what many consider to be one of the biggest tech. revolutions in recent years. i would probably try to act as admirably as possible, given the various constraints. but even then it's hard to control public perception. mr. gates for example, who i think is a pretty admirable and visionary guy, was vilified for the longest time.

edit: clarification.