It doesn't matter, because we'll criticize anybody who isn't Steve Jobs for thinking they're Steve Jobs, but Zuckerberg is largely responsible for Facebook's formation, from what I've read, and for all his criticism he's managed to get a hell of a lot done for his company. So I'm willing to give him a chance and see if he's as good as he thinks he is - and failing that, if he falls I'll hope he pulls an SJ and comes back in 10 years with something even better.
Having just heard about Sam Altman a few days ago I am already much more impressed:
I saw Altman's speech and was pretty impressed. He doesn't dick around. He's also a more confident speaker than Zuckerberg. But with respect to him, Facebook is better designed (Loopt is horrendously generic), and it's done more to change the web than most web sites. The Facebook Platform changed a lot. Making money isn't the only part of design.
Part of being a great CEO is being a cheerleader. You can't do that being hidden.
There are many different types of leadership, some of which Zuckerberg has. Making Facebook into the culture mainstay it is has been a huge accomplishment. I am sure a lot of this is due to him. But he needs to be an effective communicator both internally and externally in order to succeed. He can have awesome ideas that are technically groundbreaking, but he needs to make others believe.
There are good reasons to be social to people. I'm a social person. That said, I respect immensely the people who don't feel pressured to talk to every person that writes to him.
1) When it started, there were already many social networks
2) Because it positioned itself as a social network for college students, it got the early growth and adoption any "social" website needs to survive
3) They've grown REALLY fast since then, and have started to really lock in the users
4) It's not unthinkable for them to have a billion users. Once they have all the users they want, they can pick and choose their business model.
5) Mark Zuckerberg can't be removed from the CEO position, and probably holds more than 20% of the company
6) Facebook is hiring top talent, on par with Google and probably better than Microsoft.
These things don't just happen out of the blue. For someone who has consolidated power in a company that could rival Google, I don't think Zuckerberg gets enough credit. If I were pg, I would have put him in my top 5.
I think you may be getting ahead of yourself on that one.
Why? Popularity as a free service doesn't necessarily imply that said popularity will be retained upon introduction of a monetary fee.
Like it or not, facebook has real utility (just like central park), and people are willing to pay for real utility in one way or another.
A lot of people don't think Facebook is a business either.
Moreover, if every user loses money for Facebook, what's the financial model of the company? Even if I like Facebook, if I'm not providing it with cash flow, when it does it have to bail out of its business?
Only sites with a lot of users, like Myspace, could quickly become a threat to Myspace. Facebook has surpassed a critical mass of users, so they probably would have time to respond to any technical challenges.And Myspace seems to have a different and less successful focus than Facebook that would need to be changed. I don't really care about telling everyone who my top friends are, designing my page, or using Myspace as a blog. Basically, I just want to quickly and easily find out the major events in my friend's lives. It does not matter how brilliantly designed a site is, I cannot adequately meet my needs with a site until it has a good portion of my friends as users.
So to go against Facebook successfully, a company would need to start in an extremely small niche and grow, or provide value unrelated to social networking. It is a lot easier to reach critical mass in a very small niche. And if you aren't solely in social networking, people are going to be using your network before it provides decent social value.
You're out of your mind.
Looking at things now I wouldn't say that Facebook would rival Google, but it's definitely not out of their mind to imagine that they could.
Really? I've never heard this. Is there a condition in the companies charter that forbids it?
Usually all you need is a majority of the board to vote the CEO out and since he only has one vote and there are more than 2 people on the facebook board it seems like he could be voted out.