DISQUS

dlstern · 2 months ago

Matt: Thank you for finally inserting a real story, by a real journalist, into the world of tech blogs. Covering tech can be incredibly droll. And written from the perspective of most on the tech blog side, it tends to be. But tech, like politics, sports, entertainment, fundamentally is about people. Too often, that is forgotten. Thanks for creating hope that our favorite tech blogs in the Bay Area can actually produce stories in the fashion of the great media properties that are rapidly crumbling.

Name · 2 months ago

Nice puff piece. Reminds me of the articles on Enron in the late '90's.

FacebookLover · 2 months ago

Puff? Not even. Just a huge gust of wind. Zuck drove those hiring decisions? My money is on his board and investors. Seems like someone is priming for Zuck's biography.

LIAD · 2 months ago

great article matt - really nicely written.

TheContrarian · 2 months ago

It's way too early to conclude that Zuck is a good CEO and this article fails to convince me he is one right now. He might become one but let's wait until Facebook's organic growth levels off and some tough challenges of growth and profitability show up down the road, then we'll see if he's that great leader.

Right now, successfully convincing some ex-Google, ex-Mozilla, ex-Genentech folks to join a the silicon valley darling du jour (with a chance to hit the "jackpot", again) is hardly indicative of a great CEO. Again, I'm not saying he will never be one. Zuck is obviously a very very smart guy. But an excellent CEO, not there yet.

John E. Bredehoft (Empoprises) · 2 months ago

In a sense, it's impossible to judge whether Zuckerberg will be a great CEO, and it may take years to determine whether he is or is not. Perhaps the real test will come when Zuckerberg DOESN'T control the company; when the pension funds own Facebook, will they still vote to retain him as CEO? What we do know so far, however, does seem like he has a chance of claiming the title.

nik · 2 months ago

"Zuck the great"...wow

He deals people (college homies!!!) like playing cards, but it is justified cause facebook is finally profitable?

All this will be over one day and if it were me I'd like to have my college buddies there at the end.

When everyone else stops caring you'd want your true friends around...but then I guess you can always make more friends on facebook.

AndreaF · 2 months ago

I was one of the critics until about 6-9 months ago about both Zuck and the company. I am not anymore. I think Zuck was surrounded by the wrong people at the beginning and perhaps it took sometime to get them out and the right ones on board. We all know that it takes time to hire well and to understand the nuisances of hiring and managing, especially at such a scale.
I do now respect Zuck and I think he's doing a tremendous job, at least from what I can understand from the outside. I still have some questions about the business model as I am personally dead against advertising and I can't see much more than that at the moment.
I wish Zuck and the team best of luck in achieving what they are aiming at.

Rokhayakebe · 2 months ago

One of the greatest post in Tech today.

Tim Read: Ripplenet web design · 2 months ago

... structure affects psychology. Absolutely. And its the other way round too - the relationship between people also affects psychology, which affects structure. People are key - I guess that's why companies are called companies and not structures.

Don Jones - VentureDeal · 2 months ago

I sure hope Facebook does something better with its business pages. To me, it is the orphan now, especially after the site wide redesign.

Devin Reams · 2 months ago

Great article, Matt. Nicely done...

csun · 2 months ago

Great article. Mark Zuckerberg has done an outstanding job of growing the company, hiring the right people, growing Facebook's user base, and building the Facebook Platform for developers.

Jawad Shuaib · 2 months ago

Nicely written Matt! :)

dk · 2 months ago

Agreed very good, refreshingly detailed and well written piece.

Chris Stewart · 2 months ago

I've been reading Michael Gerber's E-Myth Revisited lately; it's interesting to see how Zuck is (unknowingly?) applying the principles Gerber lays out for a successful, scalable enterprise. The book's main point is that too many founders consider themselves Technicians, and focus too much on the product at hand and not enough on the culture of the business they're supposed to shape. In facebook's case, Mark is doing the right thing by focusing on big-picture items and bringing in top-notch talent to facilitate the day-to-day. I admittedly envy his intelligence and charisma. What excites me the most about social networks is that there are more opportunities today than ever before; don't give up because facebook blew past 300 million users. Shared context and accelerated serendipity (I believe I borrowed that phrase from a blog somewhere) remain virtually untapped. Monetizing from the value created between connections instead of meta-context around the connections dwarfs anything facebook's accomplished thus far. Will facebook tap this greater value? Time will tell.

EtotheZ · 2 months ago

I can't speak for anything else in this article, but I call shenanigans on Zuckerberg's claim to have "easily" done 5000 pushups in 1 week

That'd be 714 pushups a day for 7 days a week
...or 29.7 pushups an hour...if he never slept
Assuming he slept 5-6 hours a night, and stuck to a break schedule of doing 10-15 pushups, he'd be dropping every 10-15 minutes, every waking hour, for 7 days. That's ridiculous.

If any of you at home feel like trying for 714 pushups in a single day, let us know how it goes - and how you'd manage 6 more days of that

Ravi Janardhan · 2 months ago

Thanks Matt for excellent piece on facebook's founder.

David Kirkpatrick · 2 months ago

An excellent article. Nice reporting. Zuckerberg has consistently displayed prescience as a leader, flexibility when he makes mistakes, and an unblinking understanding of his own strengths and weaknesses as a manager. Remarkable really is the correct word when you consider his age. Btw, as you'll learn when my book The Facebook Effect is published in June (www.facebook.com/thefacebookeffect) Zuckerberg was talking about making Facebook into a platform as early as 2004. (meanwhile it appears Facebook Connect is not working. Lots of performance problems over there today)

Luffemann · 2 months ago

in maximum three years all advertisers only want to communicate with good bargains (NOT branding just selling) to the people that have said yes thank you to this specific offer. Thats why Facebook and likewise will drop down to nothing on the revenue issues - it will never ever be a financial succes...

Mark G · 2 months ago

Zuckerberg is a scumbag who stole the whole idea for Facebook (see NY Times commentary on the $65 million settlement at http://bit.ly/facebook_lawsuit ).

Victor · 2 months ago

Ideas are cheap Mark, there were many other social networks that preceded Facebook. It's how well he's executed that matters ultimately.

Mark G · 2 months ago

Dear Victor,

Your point in general terms is correct, however the little dirt-bag Zuckerberg was hired by the brothers who received the settlement to write the code for their idea. He stole entire idea and business plan and code while he was being paid by them.

This is not a person worthy of admiration or respect.

Thanks for reading Victor. Have a nice day.

-Mark

Self Storage Glasgow · 2 months ago

Good article with many lessons for any entrepreneur who wants to build a successful company. Built to Last and Good to Great are two excellent books by Jim Collins that will help any entrepreneur map their road to success.

CSB · 2 months ago

Very nice article indeed. I agreed with the above comment, that it is too early to say whether he is a great CEO. Guess I won't be reading that Accidental Billionaires now.

zenac · 2 months ago

isn't facebook just a mimic of friendster??? it's just another new kid on the block.