Now it was out there. She changed her relationship status from “single” – to – “in a relationship”. That sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach clenched, writhing into a wad of regret. For some reason, they remained friends after their breakup, and she moved on. He knew better than to react at all. Holding back his comment, he clicked “Like” and logged off.
The above story is fiction, but there was a place in your mind where you knew exactly where it was taking place. Facebook.
Methods of Prosperity newsletter is intended to share ideas and build relationships. To become a billionaire, one must first be conditioned to think like a billionaire. To that agenda, this newsletter studies remarkable people in history who demonstrated what to do (and what not to do). Your feedback is welcome. For more information about the author, please visit seanallenfenn.com/faq.
Last week on Methods of Prosperity: Reid Hoffman is a co-founder of PayPal. After eBay acquired PayPal, Reid Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn with Eric Ly in 2003. Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly envisioned a platform that would do three things. Help individuals find jobs. Connect with professionals in their field. Enhance their career prospects through online networking.
LinkedIn’s focus on professional networking and career development set it apart. Unlike Facebook and Myspace, LinkedIn emphasized users’ professional connections. Profile pages showed resumes, job listings, and networking opportunities. In its early days, user adoption was slow. Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in 2016 for more than $26 billion. This was the largest acquisition in Microsoft’s history.
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Part 38:
Mark Zuckerberg
founder, chairman and CEO of Meta
originally founded as Facebook in 2004
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TL;DR
Out of his Harvard dorm in 2003, Mark Zuckerberg built Facemash. Inspired by a hot-or-not kind of website, it allowed users to compare photos. Facemash showed male and female undergraduates’ photos from Harvard. Based on their attractiveness, users became the arbiter of their fate. Who was hot versus who was not. Controversy over the hacked intranet systems wasn’t the only problem. Privacy issues resulted in an immediate takedown of Facemash. But it also got the attention of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. They approached Mark Zuckerberg to be their web developer for The Harvard Connection. They wanted it to be a social networking site exclusive to Harvard. Mark Zuckerberg allegedly led them on without working on it. Instead, Mark Zuckerberg created “TheFacebook”, which the Winklevoss twins believed was their idea. Mark Zuckerberg co-founded Facebook in 2004. His co-founders were classmates Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Zuckerberg moved the company to Silicon Valley in the summer of 2004, dropping out of Harvard.
Key lessons:
• Billionaires don’t need money.
• Execution matters most.
• Be where the action is.
• Privacy is an illusion.
• Push boundaries.
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Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook as a student at Harvard University. Three of his classmates helped him. Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. The idea for Facebook stemmed from an earlier project called Facemash. Mark Zuckerberg created Facemash. It was a website that allowed users to compare photos. Users judged photos of male and female Harvard undergraduates based on their attractiveness. The site used ID photos of students scraped from the university’s online directories. It presented users with pairs to rank. Zuckerberg hacked into the online intranets of Harvard Houses to gather photos. He formulated algorithms for the site in less than a week. The Elo rating system was an algorithm designed for ranking chess players. Mark Zuckerberg based the Facemash algorithm on the Elo rating system. He modified it to determine the attractiveness ranking of the girls (and guys) on the site. Users would choose the more attractive guy or girl in each pair presented. The selected photo rating increased while the other’s decreased based on user votes. David Fincher directed the movie adaptation, The Social Network (2010). For dramatic effect, students compared only girls.
Facemash faced immediate backlash from various student groups at Harvard. They protested against privacy violations and breaches of security and copyrights. Due to these concerns, the university’s Administrative Board reprimanded Zuckerberg. They took Facemash down after about two days.
Facemash also attracted the attention of the Winklevoss twins, along with Divya Narendra. They approached Mark to code for them. The twins and Narendra were working on a social network idea for Harvard students and alumni. The Winklevoss twins, Divya, and Zuckerberg held their first meeting in late November. It was in the dining hall of Harvard College’s Kirkland House. During this meeting, the trio discussed their plans for their social networking site. They called it the Harvard Connection.
Keep in mind that it wasn’t the first social network. Friendster and MySpace already existed. What was different about Facebook? Mark Zuckerberg wants to connect the whole world and doesn’t ask for permission.
Comedian Emo Philips has a joke that reminds me of Mark Zuckerberg.
“I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.”
In this metaphor, you can replace “bike” with “privacy”.
Depending on who you ask, Zuckerberg didn’t steal anything. Don’t ask the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler. They gained prominence for their involvement in the founding of Facebook. They’re also famous for subsequent legal battles with Mark Zuckerberg.
For whatever reason, Mark blanked them and never worked on their project. Instead, he went ahead and built TheFacebook, registering the URL in 2004. In return, the twins filed a cease-and-desist order against Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg didn’t surrender. Instead, he expanded. TheFacebook went beyond Harvard. TheFacebook let in students from Columbia, Stanford, and Yale in March 2004.
The Winklevoss twins sued Mark Zuckerberg. They alleged that he stole their idea for a social networking site. Which later became Facebook. The twins, along with Divya Narendra, claimed that Zuckerberg had wronged them. They claimed he stole their concept for what would become Facebook. They believed that Zuckerberg had violated federal law. They claimed he hacked into their website and creating a fake profile to mock them.
The reality is, it doesn’t matter if someone steals your idea. This is my opinion, but what matters is how you execute and scale your idea. Mark Zuckerberg is a master of execution.
He was born on May 14, 1984 in White Plains, New York. In his youth Mark Zuckerberg designed a computer version of the board game Risk. Where rival forces battle for global domination. Synapse was a music recommendation platform. Zuckerberg and his friend Adam D'Angelo developed it. They were students at Phillips Exeter Academy. The software learned users’ listening habits and recommended music based on their preferences. Synapse attracted attention from major corporations like Microsoft, AOL, and WinAmp. All of which wanted to buy the program. Zuckerberg and D’Angelo received offers reaching up to $2 million. They decided to keep the platform free for users and declined the offers to work for these companies.
Money doesn’t motivate Mark. He’s going after something bigger. In fact, he’s going after the whole world. For someone trying to connect the whole world to each other, it’s necessary to move away from your college town.
In the summer of 2004, Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard in his sophomore year. Facebook (still named “TheFacebook”) was starting to gain traction. But he couldn’t grow at Harvard. He had to be in the epicenter of tech startups: Silicon Valley.
To be continued...
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– Sean Allen Fenn
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