The Facebook Effect

April 19, 2010
There's never been a Web site like Facebook: more than 350 million people have accounts, and if the growth rate continues, by 2013 every Internet user worldwide will have his or her own page. And no one's had more access to the inner workings of the phenomenon than Kirkpatrick, a senior tech writer at Fortune
magazine. Written with the full cooperation of founder Mark Zuckerberg, the book follows the company from its genesis in a Harvard dorm room through its successes over Friendster and MySpace, the expansion of the user base, and Zuckerberg's refusal to sell. The author is at his best discussing the social implications of the site, from the changing notions of privacy to why and how people use Facebook—increasingly it's to come together around a common interest or cause (the eponymous “Facebook Effect”). Though significantly more informative, thoughtful, and credible than Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires
, it may be hamstrung by its late entry; the furor over Facebook has more or less subsided, and potential readers are more likely to be using the site than to be reading about its origins.

Starred review from July 1, 2010
The greatest measure of the appeal of a business narrative is its story-ability, that is, the ways in which the tale of a corporations ups and downs grabs its readers. Such is the case with Fortune magazine journalist Kirkpatricks look at Facebook and its growth. The reason? In part because its co-founder now CEO Mark Zuckerberg allowed almost unprecedented access to the authornot one but several times. The results seems to mirror Zuckerbergs insistence on an open and transparent dialogue with itself and with its customers. Starting from a 2003 Harvard campus Web site created to keep track of schoolmates, Facebook has grown in less than a decade to nearly a half billion users and multimillions in revenues, a growth trajectory credited to its C-suites unwavering vision and its continual innovationsincluding News Feed, multiple applications, and self-service advertising. Talented people, too, add to the explosion that is Facebook; Kirkpatricks pages are populated with names like Steve Ballmer, Lawrence Summers, Larry Brin, and lesser-known others whove contributed to this social networking phenomenon. Kirkpatrick also keeps his superlatives in check, weaving stories about Zuckerberg and his cadre while clearly showing the warts as well. An intriguing, almost participatory, read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)

June 1, 2010

Fortune senior editor for Internet and technology Kirkpatrick delivers a data-heavy, analysis-light biography of the Internet's second-most-visited site.

Facebook grew from 10,000 users in early 2004 to 350 million users as of January 2010, essentially redefining social networking in the process. Considering that founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook as a sophomore in college, the author's awestruck tone is forgivable, though eventually exhausting. How Facebook managed such a meteoric rise while (so far) avoiding the Friendster effect is Kirkpatrick's central subject. The author chronicles the defining events that made Facebook what it is today—its portentous tussles over privacy with its birthplace, Harvard; the sustained exponential growth of Facebook's user base; the adolescent growing pains of its office culture; the personal clashes among its founders and executives; its massive, unprecedented financial valuation and subsequent courting by investors like the Washington Post Company, Accel and Microsoft. Kirkpatrick makes it abundantly clear that Facebook owes its success primarily to Zuckerberg, and the author devotes nearly equal attention to illuminating Zuckerberg's (in)famous reticence and surprisingly shrewd business sense as he does to charting the rise of his brainchild. Disappointingly, the author sidesteps sociological analyses of how Facebook influences its users. Though Facebook owes its existence to Zuckerberg's tenacity, prescience, intelligence and apparent commitment—typically at the expense of short-term profit—to building nothing less than a new mode of communication, far more interesting would've been deeper examinations of Zuckerberg's new mode of communication as it shapes our societies, governance and our personal identities. In the introduction, Kirkpatrick promises to explore these questions, but readers hungry for a meaty cultural critique may feel cheated by what is essentially a lengthy corporate biography.

Comprehensive but one-sided and surprisingly bland.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

May 15, 2010
This business history and biography of Facebook's founders, especially visionary Mark Zuckerberg, chronicles Facebook's surprising Ivy League beginnings in a Harvard University dormitory and how it spread to other college campuses and high school audiences before opening up to the general public. Despite Facebook's phenomenal growth, Zuckerberg claimed the goals were to increase networking and the sharing of information among individuals. Zuckerberg's vision, however, has made him and his fellow founding innovators multibillionaires, yielded Facebook competitive advantage and economies of scale, and made Zuckerberg one of the youngest CEOs of a company with such a large market capitalization. VERDICT This book, describing how Facebook kept evolving, the controversies it has faced, and what the future holds, was written with Zuckerberg's knowledge and is based on extensive interviews with him, so it is highly recommended for readers who want to understand better what drives entrepreneurial passion and risk taking. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 2/15/10.]Caroline Geck, MLS, MBA, Somerset, NJ

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.