Mark Zuckerberg's most valuable friend is/was Sean Parker. Thanks to Sean, Mark retained control of the board, and thus was able to avoid the utter disaster of a $1b sale to Yahoo.
Sean got to see what happens when shortsighted VCs get control before (at Napster and then Plaxo); he's smart enough to not get screwed the same way thrice.
As a response to the movie, they know it would be a good time to put a human face in front of the press. Hence, they're pushing her forward rather than Zuckerberg. And the NYT slurped it up.
I wonder how long the back-and-forth over how the story was to be structured took.
[edit: I'm not saying Zuckerberg is not human, just that he's overexposed in the media at the moment, and they need to connect Facebook to something else.]
I'm betting it's an overarching PR strategy that will be executed over the next few months. To try to fix Zuck's reputation by association, rather than directly.
Oh Jesus, can't we all stop gawking at Facebook bullshit? No one can figure out what Facebook is, but if you haven't succumbed to it, you're intimidated by it. It's worth billions of dollars and for what? The pure evil of having everyone's marketing data?
In the mindset of Rodney King, can't we all just move on? Can't we all just get past not being Zuckerberg? Can't we all get back to being hackers who do things because they make our minds happy?
Downvote the above if you will, but there is truth in those words, if only masked behind palpable bitterness...
...and honestly - I feel the guy.
We humans have a tendency towards the shameless worship of heroes. We seem to need to create legends and demigods and to praise and glorify acts that upon careful examination are little more than the progeny of good fortune and timing. Providence itself isn't worthy of our praise nor our consideration - which makes the ascension of men of 'lesser stuff' a bitter pill to swallow for those few 'in-the-know'.
I think back to first grade, and recall how desperately I wanted to be a scientist/composer/hero/great man/demigod. I had no idea what these things were really, but in my mind, they were the people who knew; and what they didn't know they sought. They were the gatekeepers, arbiters, discoverers, and composers of knowledge, truth, and frankly most of what mattered. A few years later, when asked who/what I wanted to be when I grew up, beyond my father I could think only of Newton, Einstein, Maxwell, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, et al...
My, how quickly things change. The pursuit of knowledge and beauty for its own sake is an ideal which has perhaps never existed, or existed in so few men as to have practically never done so. But we're waaay past that. A man not too long ago solved Fermat's Last, how many know his name without Wikipedia? What impresses us now? What is deemed worthy of our 'shameless worship"?A man not too long ago solved Poincare's; beyond the story about his rejecting a million dollars, who gave a shit?
No one. We save our shits for the pirates of Silicon Valley these days.
That, if I am ever blessed with a son or daughter, and they are one day asked in their youth who or what they want to become when they grow up, and in turn respond with Gates, Jobs, Zuckerburg, et al, we have all failed. And I, them.
Also, can we stop to consider the fact that a company that is worth billions of dollars can only barely eke out a profit, despite having access to the personal lives of 500 million people? It's not like they lack the capability to be evil. More likely, they're a paper tiger. They don't have much time to build the killer app that people will pay for before their investors start gettin anxious.
The approach to social networking they've taken simply isn't a particularly profitable approach, the profitable approach hasn't been invented yet. Eventually, people will realize that, and while they're running and begging venture capitalists for another $100 million just to keep the lights on in their server farms, someone else is gonna build the next big thing, and Facebook will go the way of Friendster and Myspace. If we've learned anything, social networks are fickle, and it doesn't take long for a trickle of users to become a flood.
Zuckerburg won't ever starve, and the company probably won't ever fold (heck, even AOL is still around), but the idea that his wealth and any perceived power is in any way stable just doesn't check in with reality.
Looking at Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg from a positive perspective is the new flavour of the month. It's a novelty compared to a few weeks or months ago where Facebook was the bloody piñata of the internet.
I don't think that this new angle is a bandwagon like deriding Facebook was - maybe it's just a sign of the new nuanced approach to thinking about Zuckerberg and Facebook.
I don't mind the Facebook coverage as long as it is original, independent and not just a flailing industry's attempt at staying relevant and interesting by jumping on a bandwagon.
I think a great deal of Facebook's recent, and coming, success is not just that Sheryl Sandberg was brought on, but when she was brought on. They allude to the rapid growth that Facebook has seen lately, but Mark Zuckerberg may not have been able to effectively handle that growth without her. She joined on at the crucially perfect time, which is a credit to both of them.
If my XPath is correct, there are 168 people with the Graham last name that are noteworthy enough to merit their own wikipedia pages.
Either Paul Graham and his immediate family[1] have done well for themselves, or maybe, just maybe, it's one of the top 10 most common names for people from the British-Isles.
[+] [-] rdl|15 years ago|reply
Sean got to see what happens when shortsighted VCs get control before (at Napster and then Plaxo); he's smart enough to not get screwed the same way thrice.
[+] [-] adrianwaj|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mturmon|15 years ago|reply
I wonder how long the back-and-forth over how the story was to be structured took.
[edit: I'm not saying Zuckerberg is not human, just that he's overexposed in the media at the moment, and they need to connect Facebook to something else.]
[+] [-] jv22222|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikedanko|15 years ago|reply
In the mindset of Rodney King, can't we all just move on? Can't we all just get past not being Zuckerberg? Can't we all get back to being hackers who do things because they make our minds happy?
[+] [-] najirama|15 years ago|reply
...and honestly - I feel the guy.
We humans have a tendency towards the shameless worship of heroes. We seem to need to create legends and demigods and to praise and glorify acts that upon careful examination are little more than the progeny of good fortune and timing. Providence itself isn't worthy of our praise nor our consideration - which makes the ascension of men of 'lesser stuff' a bitter pill to swallow for those few 'in-the-know'.
I think back to first grade, and recall how desperately I wanted to be a scientist/composer/hero/great man/demigod. I had no idea what these things were really, but in my mind, they were the people who knew; and what they didn't know they sought. They were the gatekeepers, arbiters, discoverers, and composers of knowledge, truth, and frankly most of what mattered. A few years later, when asked who/what I wanted to be when I grew up, beyond my father I could think only of Newton, Einstein, Maxwell, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, et al...
My, how quickly things change. The pursuit of knowledge and beauty for its own sake is an ideal which has perhaps never existed, or existed in so few men as to have practically never done so. But we're waaay past that. A man not too long ago solved Fermat's Last, how many know his name without Wikipedia? What impresses us now? What is deemed worthy of our 'shameless worship"?A man not too long ago solved Poincare's; beyond the story about his rejecting a million dollars, who gave a shit?
No one. We save our shits for the pirates of Silicon Valley these days.
That, if I am ever blessed with a son or daughter, and they are one day asked in their youth who or what they want to become when they grow up, and in turn respond with Gates, Jobs, Zuckerburg, et al, we have all failed. And I, them.
[+] [-] jlgbecom|15 years ago|reply
The approach to social networking they've taken simply isn't a particularly profitable approach, the profitable approach hasn't been invented yet. Eventually, people will realize that, and while they're running and begging venture capitalists for another $100 million just to keep the lights on in their server farms, someone else is gonna build the next big thing, and Facebook will go the way of Friendster and Myspace. If we've learned anything, social networks are fickle, and it doesn't take long for a trickle of users to become a flood.
Zuckerburg won't ever starve, and the company probably won't ever fold (heck, even AOL is still around), but the idea that his wealth and any perceived power is in any way stable just doesn't check in with reality.
[+] [-] kmfrk|15 years ago|reply
I don't think that this new angle is a bandwagon like deriding Facebook was - maybe it's just a sign of the new nuanced approach to thinking about Zuckerberg and Facebook.
I don't mind the Facebook coverage as long as it is original, independent and not just a flailing industry's attempt at staying relevant and interesting by jumping on a bandwagon.
[+] [-] aspir|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NZ_Matt|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jv22222|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dchs|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aspir|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ebaysucks|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mahmud|15 years ago|reply
Either Paul Graham and his immediate family[1] have done well for themselves, or maybe, just maybe, it's one of the top 10 most common names for people from the British-Isles.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_%28surname%29