I placed a teaser at the end of this week's
Tech Update column telling readers I would list the book that Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes said he thought most accurately told the story of the site's origins.
The book in question is “The Facebook Effect” by author David Kirkpatrick.
The subject came up last week at the Schwab Impact conference during the Thursday morning general session entitled “Social Media Revolution: The New Look of Business.”
Moderator Tyler Mathisen (co-host of CNBC's “Power Lunch”) had just asked Mr. Hughes for his opinions on “The Social Network,” the popular new film about the Facebook phenomenon.
“There is a lot more sex drugs and rock ‘n roll [in the movie] than there really was,” said Mr. Hughes.
He said he had been impressed by the amount of time Mr. Kirkpatrick had spent with other co-founders including both Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz during research for the book.
Of the film, Mr. Hughes said that it was largely a Hollywood interpretation of what had happened.
See the links below to three reviews of the book.
This excerpt, from a review by Michiko Kakutani that appeared in the
The New York Times (link below) this summer, sums up rather well both the review and book overall. I enjoyed some of the additional detail that David Pogue picked out in his own review of the book (second link).
“Mr. Kirkpatrick — who for many years was the senior editor for Internet and technology at Fortune magazine — was encouraged by Mr. Zuckerberg to write this book and was granted extensive access to him and his associates. Their cooperation has resulted in a mostly sympathetic — at times, gushingly laudatory — account of the company, though Mr. Kirkpatrick does not shy away from dissecting its missteps and successive disputes over privacy. He gives the reader a detailed understanding of how the company grew from a 2004 Harvard dorm-room project into the world's second-most-visited site after Google”
Biz Stone on JetBlue
Something I thought was interesting but did not have the space to cover in the current column was Biz Stone's overview of how the airline JetBlue had made what he considered engaging use of Twitter (for those not in the know and who missed the column, Mr. Stone is one of the co-founders of Twitter).
In a nutshell he began by explaining how a new guy came on board at JetBlue and began tweeting press releases but that everyone receiving them began giving him a hard time.
The guy responded by asking, “So what do you want me to tweet then?”
“Real stuff,” they replied, you are a regular guy so tweet about real stuff; and so the JetBlue tweetstream morphed from press releases to announcements of new flights being added to interesting destinations as well as links to travel odds and ends just peculiar enough to warrant a click through.
He then also brought up how he had once sent a tweet that said he was getting on a JetBlue flight and shortly thereafter received a reply from the JetBlue Twitter account:
"Try the smoked almonds."
This he referred to as being good customer service, as well as branding.
The overall take away being that those trying to use Twitter as some sort of marketing platform should be good
listeners who “pay attention and ask questions,” not just
broadcasters.
Five years out
I also thought there were some thought-provoking responses when each of the panelists was asked what they thought would happen to social media over the next five years.
Mr. Stone said that social media and networking on handhelds would become increasingly important.
“I'd like to see people a lot less glued to their computer screen,” he said, adding that with the increasing power and flexibility of handhelds, especially smart phones and other small devices, we should have ubiquitous access to the social network in our pockets.
“We can connect and then put them away and have face to face communications,” Mr. Stone said.
The futurist Gerd Leonhard said he foresaw social media and networking as distinct entities “evaporating” over time, meaning that they will essentially and ultimately become part of the Internet's “operating system.”
Mr. Hughes said that people are beginning to feel overwhelmed by social media ant that the filters that arise are going to become increasingly important.
In the end though, I was very much struck by a brief census taken of the thousand or so advisers in the audience. They were asked to indicate by a show of hands how many of them were already using social networking. A significant number raised their hands indicating “yes.”
The next question was how many do not use social networking. By far the majority raised their hands indicating “no” and a subsequent question asking how many would now go home and give them a try returned a pitifully small number of hands.
Read into this what you will but I interpreted it as a sign that while many advisers have a strong desire to leverage social media (as evidenced by the sheer number that attended the session looking for insights or answers) most are either outright unable (read forbidden) or at the very least fearful of the compliance and regulatory aspects.
Reviews of “The Facebook Effect” (the first two are from the New York Times and the last from The Washington Post):
Company on the Verge of a Social Breakthrough
Humanity's Database
David Kirkpatrick's 'The Facebook Effect,' reviewed by David Harsanyi
