Introduction

Hello all and welcome to my blog on the book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich. You probably have all heard of the award winning movie, The Social Network, starring Jesse Eisenberg. Well, this terrific movie was based off the book, The Accidental Billionaires.

There are many topics in the book that relate to the information society so my blog posts will focus around different aspects of the information society.

Summary of Book

The Accidental Billionaires is about the founding of Facebook, and all of the issues, struggles, and controversies that surrounded the creation of Facebook. These issues include who had the rightful idea of Facebook, the expansion of Facebook, how/when to create revenue for Facebook, and stock distributions of Facebook.

Before the creation of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg is a computer programming genius, and was able to hack into the Harvard network just to create a website for fun. Mark created Facemash, a website that allowed people to rate the "hotness" of undergraduate girls at Harvard. Facemash became so popular that in under 2 hours, the site had already logged 22,000 votes. Eventually, the Harvard network crashed due to the influx of usage on the network.
This stunt gained attention in the Harvard newspaper, The Crimson, where Zuckerberg gained the reputation of a computer genius. 
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and Divya Narendra had an idea for a social networking site called “Harvard Connection.” The central idea was simple: Put Harvard’s social life online, so guys could meet up with girls without all of the inefficient, time wasting wandering around campus that real life usually necessitated. They had the idea, and they knew Zuckerberg had the computer programming skills to make this idea a reality.

Divya Narendra sent Mark an e-mail expressing interest in using Mark as their computer programmer for Harvard Connection. Mark's initial reaction was "it might be interesting."

The Harvard Connection crew officially thought Mark was on their team however, after 52 e-mails, half a dozen calls and no progress, it appeared Mark was not being responsive and would most likely not be working for them. Instead,  Mark went to his best friend, Eduardo Saverin with an idea for a website where "people put their own pictures up-and not just pictures, but also profiles. where they'd grown up, how old they were, what they were interested in. Maybe the classes they were taking. what they were looking for online- friendship, love interests, whatever."

 The book claims that Zuckerberg stole the initial idea of a social networking site throughout a college network when he created Facebook.

A Message From Ben Mezrich

Exclusivity/Internet Privacy

What made the Harvard Connection idea and Facebook so similar is the idea of exclusivity. In order to create a Facebook account, initially, one needed a Harvard.edu e-mail address. Although this feature does not allow many people to use the website, it created more of a real life social circle feel. Exclusivity would make the site more popular; it would also enhance the idea that your info would remain in a closed system. Privacy online is important; people want to have control over what they put on the web.
According to the article Trending: The Promises and Challenges of Big Social Data by Lev Manovich, with the rise of social networking and public data, people are able to see and comment on images, videos, and read blogs posts and tweets without asking for anyone's permission. Facebook's exclusivity allows for somewhat more privacy in a very public, big data online world.

Information Labor

Zuckerberg's best friend and CFO of Facebook, Eduardo Saverin initially owned 30% of the company. As more investors came in, his percentage of the company naturally decreased. Facebook was diluting him out of the company. This entire issue over the ownership of Facebook and who exactly is the rightful owner and creator of this multi billion dollar company deals with the topic of information labor: the work that goes behind the creating and accessing information, particularly on the web. Now put this in the context of Facebook. As of 2011, there are 500,000,000 active facebook users in the world. But out of all of these users, how many of them ever think about the work, the money, and the controversy put into the creation of Facebook? In fact, "social networking sites like Facebook demand constant human content moderation and censorship of photos, videos.."(Downey, Pg. 4) Due to the high amount of work required to run facebook, facebook currently has around 4,300 employees.

Labor Distribution

The reason Savarin’s stock ownership declined is because he was not active for a lot of the production and maintenance of Facebook. Eduardo was never fully involved in the working and action in Silicon Valley because he was too busy finding advertising and working in New York. This shows the controversy that comes with information labor. When distribution of labor is unequal, stock shares change (possibly in an unfair manner), and this can potentially lead to law suits. Due to this unfair change of stocks, Savarin went from owning 30% of Facebook to owning .03% of Facebook. Because of this, Savarin sued Zuckerberg.

Advertising

Another topic this book brings up is the idea of advertising. From the beginning, Eduardo wanted to make money through advertising where as mark was only concerned with how cool the site was. The tension between having advertisements while making money and appealing to users was a prominent issue in the initial stages of facebook.

Competition

This book shows the importance of getting the word out first when it comes to competition in the information technology industry. Reffered to as “first mover advantage”, it wasn’t about quality of the product or corporate strategy, it was about who got there first. While the Harvard connection team was trying to launch their own website, Facebook kept expanding to new networks. The more networks exposed to Facebook, the less valuable and less likely Harvard connection was to succeed.

Presence in Absence

So why exactly was Facebook is so popular to the college demographic? Facebook is an actual social network, online, and continually connected. Even when the computer is sleeping, the social network is awake. It isn't static, and neither are college students. With all of the work and activities that college students are involved in, it is difficult to always physically be with friends. Facebook allows the college students to virtually stay connected and communicate, while not physically being in the same place (presence in absence.) As Craig Watkins states in his article The Very Well Connected, presence in absence allows people to effortlessly conduct multiple conversations with people in various locations. In a college environment where socialization is key, the ability to be "present in absence" is extremely important and beneficial.

Concluding Thoughts

Author Ben Mezrich

Overall, I really enjoyed the book The Accidental Billionaires because as an avid Facebook user, I am very interested in the history and creation of Facebook. My one critique would be that the book itself focuses too much on social life and being in "high society" when it comes to Finals clubs (similar to fraternities.)  I did not focus on those aspects of the book in my project because it has little to do with the information society. However, this book is for entertainment value, so it is understandable that it is not completely related to the information society.

However, the aspects of the information society that Mezrich does touch on are extremely accurate and he presents them in an easily understood and interesting manner. It is often difficult to go in depth about complicated concepts relating to the information society when Mezrich's books are typically made for entertainment purposes, but Mezrich makes these concepts known and easily understood even for a person that is completely uneducated on the information society.


If you are interested in reading the book, here are some reviews of the book and of Ben Mezrich:

negative review-"The author’s lack of contact with his central character seems to have stupefied his storytelling skills."
positive review-"The Accidental Billionaires is a crisp, enjoyable ride.."
negative review-"Accidental Billionaires is neither a hard-hitting analysis nor a shocking expose of Facebook's origins"

Interesting articles related to the Accidental Billionaires:

LA Times article
NY Times article

 
Looking for where to buy the book? Go to Amazon.com!

Interested in the movie, The Social Network? Click this to see the movie trailer

Just for fun

What The real life people look like compared to their  Social Network characters

A Word On This project

Overall I really enjoyed this project. Not only did it allow me to analyze and consider many topics in the book that I otherwise would not have done, but it also was a genuinely fun project. I really enjoyed creating a blog and designing it and adding fun things to my specifications. I definitely recommend assigning this project for future semesters!