This interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is a surprising look into both the mannerisms and the story of the creator of the multi-billion dollar social media empire, Facebook. While he seems to summarize the history of Facebook rather quickly in the short interview, in reality the inception of the revolutionary social media tool was pretty simple. Zuckerberg started Facebook as an undergraduate at Harvard in February of 2004. Despite being a declared Psychology major, he had always been a talented computer programmer. It was originally intended to serve the Harvard community, and went on to spread worldwide in just two years. How rapidly this one idea gained momentum is quite astounding.
While rumor has it that 23 year old Zuckerberg is widely considered to be a ruthless businessman, within this short interview the young man appears unexpectedly humble and friendly. We find out that the Facebook website originally ran from a few rented computers as opposed to the massive headquarters that most large websites use. To me, the most striking part of the video is when he explains that while most large websites are lucky to get users to return within the month, Facebook has over 70% of its users return every day. This truly shows the impact Facebook has had on the lives of its users and their reliance on the website as a way of social communication.
One thing the interview did not touch on was privacy policies, and the struggle the rapidly growing corporation has experienced with accommodating the wishes of its users to keep their content private and unreachable. In just the five years that Facbeook has been in existence, the privacy policies have evolved immensely. In 2005, Facebook pledged to its users that their private information would never be given to any company that was not a member of the site. With 2006 and 2007 came the ability for users to control their own privacy settings and whether or not your profile can be viewed by your entire network. Following the evolution of these policies, in the later few years Facebook started to itemize each portion of a user’s Facebook profile, giving different options for audiences. For example, users may have their photos available to “everyone,” “friends of friends,” or “just friends.”
It is hard to say where privacy policies will go in the future, but many users are concerned with the fact that Facebook insists on making general information available to applications, or third party users of the website. General information includes gender, name, profile pictures, and other key elements of a Facebook profile. Looking back into Facebook’s simple history, it will be interesting to see where this battle goes, and what creative ways Mark Zuckerberg will discover to face complaints.
SOURCES:
1) Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg Interview
2) Facebook’s Eroding Privacy Policy
3) A Brief History of Facbeook
5) 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know
