Tag Archive for 'Mark Zuckerberg'

‘The Social Network’ movie: “Like”, a lot [review].

Published on October 28, 2010 in Australia, Facebook and social media. View Comments

Not long ago I previewed The Social Network movie, so I thought I should see it as soon as it came out here in Australia and report back. Turns out the film lived up to my reasonably high expectations, given that it’s directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, and has had many good reviews.

The film really focuses on the relationship between co-founders Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin (who was forced out of the company but I understand still owns about 5%), and to a lesser extent the relationships between Zuckerberg, Saverin and Sean Parker. Sean Parker, who founded Napster, helped Zuckerberg during the early stages of the company and also owns a small but valuable percentage.

The film also deals with the case between Zuckerberg and the Winklevoss twins, the Harvard classmates who accused Zuckerberg of stealing the idea for Facebook from them and then sued him for ownership of it.

Jesse Eisenberg is brilliant as Mark Zuckerberg and Andrew Garfield is good as Eduardo Saverin. Beyond expectation, even Justin Timberlake is not bad at all in the role of Sean Parker.

Even if you’re not into Facebook and know or care little about the founding of the company, seeing the tensions between the characters involved is fascinating. Needless to say, I’m sure many of the situations never happened, or not in the way portrayed, but the elements of loyalty, envy and competitiveness certainly go together to make great drama viewing.

By the way, the first scene is brilliantly written and sets the tone for the whole film, so don’t be late if you’re going to see it at the cinema. Go and see it though, I definitely recommend it. “Like”.

The Social Network Movie

Greenpeace campaign takes aim at Facebook’s coal–fired servers [animated video].

Published on September 19, 2010 in Facebook, Google, clean tech, environment, social media and video. View Comments

Following the recent social media driven success of Greenpeace’s campaign to get Nestlé to stop using palm oil linked to the destruction of rainforests, it seems the activist organisation is now taking aim at Facebook’s massive new data center. Apparently, the new facility is not powered by clean energy.

Greenpeace wants Facebook to “drop coal and commit to 100 percent renewable energy, cutting its carbon footprint and helping in the struggle to prevent catastrophic climate change”

Greenpeace has released the embedded animated video, which is a bit of a spoof on the new feature film The Social Network – another movie Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will not be particularly happy about.

Earlier this month, Facebook responded (in the comments section) to a Greenpeace open letter to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, maintaining that their massive, new Oregon data center is quite energy efficient, although not run on renewable energy.

Perhaps Greenpeace feels Facebook is a good target for this kind of campaign as it’s getting pretty huge, with over 500 million users now. In addition, Facebook is increasingly in competition with the likes of Google, which is doing substantially more to address its carbon footprint, and even making investments in renewable energy technology.

What are your thoughts on what Greenpeace is asking Facebook to do? Could Facebook be doing more, given its huge size and growing revenue? In any case, It’s certainly going to be interesting to see how this one turns out.

21 points tracking the rise and rise of the Facebook business empire.

Published on August 25, 2010 in Facebook, business and social media. View Comments

After coming across a recent infographic regarding the business behind Facebook, I decided to look just a little deeper into the company’s history. Following are some points you perhaps don’t already know, and a few you probably do. Look for the big questions at the end too.

  1. Facebook was launched by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg and his roommates in February 2004, more than six and half years ago. As you may know, there’s now a (fictional) feature feature film called ‘The Social Network’ based on events surrounding the founding of Facebook.
  2. Within a month of launching, over half of Harvard undergraduate students were using ‘The Facebook’, as it was initially called. Within 4 months, Facebook added 30 more college networks.
  3. As of July 2010, over 500 million people are using Facebook.
  4. Later in 2004, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel injectd $500,000 into Facebook, becoming its first investor.
  5. Also in 2004, Friendster attempted to acquire Facebook for $10 million. Zuckerberg turned down the offer.
  6. In 2005, Facebook took another $12.7 million from venture capital group Accel Partners, at about a $100 million valuation.
  7. In 2006, Facebook took another $25 million  in funding from VC firms Greylock Parters and Meritech Capital, as well as more from Thiel and Accel Partners. The pre-money valuation at this stage was around $525 million.
  8. In September 2006, Facebook opened up to anyone with an email address.
  9. In 2006, both Viacom and Yahoo attempted to buy Facebook, Yahoo reportedly first offered $1 billion dollars.
  10. In 2007, Microsoft invested over $240 million and become Facebook’s sole provider of banner ads. Facebook has now started dropping Microsoft’s ads in favour of more socially interactive ads, where advertisers are encouraged to use the “Like” button to increase the ad’s influence. Facebook ads can be targeted by location, age and interests.
  11. In total, Facebook has taken a staggering $836 million in funding. Among Facebook’s other investors are, a German internet company called European Founders Fund ($15 million), a Hong Hong billionaire called Li Ka-hing ($60 million), TriplePoint Capital ($100 million), a Russian investment firm called Digital Sky Technologies ($200 million) and a private equity firm called Elevation Partners ($120 million).
  12. In March 2010, for the first time Facebook became the most visited website in the US, surpassing Google.
  13. Facebook’s increasing revenue stems from ads, Facebook applications and Facebook Credits. Facebook Credits are an online currency unique to Facebook. Members purchase ten credits per dollar to buy online goods and play games. Facebook gets a 30% cut of the credit transactions.
  14. Facebook games are popular to say the least. Zynga is the company behind two of the most popular games, Farmville and Mafia Wars. Farmville claimed over 83 million active users in February 2010. Marfia wars has claimed over 25 million users.
  15. In July 2010, Facebook teamed up with Amazon to use Facebook profile data to make product recommendations on Amazon’s US and Canadian site.
  16. Although still a private comapny, industry sources claim Facebook reveunes were up to $700 million in 2009.
  17. It is projected that Facebook will generate revenues between $1 billion and $1.1 billion in 2010.
  18. Current valuations of Facebook are upwards of $20 billion.
  19. Speculation over an IPO has been mounting. Mark Zuckerberg has been reported as saying the initial public offering will happen “when it makes sense”.
  20. 2012: Facebook goes public?
  21. Facebook follows in Google’s footsteps and becomes the next $100 billion web company?

Okay, sure, those last two points haven’t happened, yet. What are your thoughts on these two possible future developments? The IPO is sure to happen. What about the last point? Will Facebook be as big and profitable as Google is now?

Sources: CrunchBase, StartupMeme

Facebook launches Facebook Places.

Published on August 18, 2010 in Facebook, Foursquare, social media, technology and video. View Comments

In Silicon Valley just a few hours ago, Facebook held a event to announce the launch of the much anticipated Facebook Places. The embedded video is a full launch video replay from the live event, if you’d like to see what was said by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook Places team and various partner companies.

For international users, it should be noted from the outset that Facebook Places will only be available in the US at first. Users outside the US will be able to see US Places posts on the web.

Amongst others, partner companies include Gowalla, Yelp and Foursquare. A representative from Gowalla detailed how Gowalla posts will be integrated into Places via the Places API. You can choose to attach an image to a post, as you can in Gowalla now. You’ll also be able to see Gowalla stamps in posts.

The Foursquare representative was less specific about how Foursquare will be integrated, to say the least. In fact you’d have to say he looked a little less than enthusiastic about the whole thing. But hey, how can you refuse to participate in having access to a location-based service that has access to a user–base of more than 500 million users, right?

It was explained at the launch that it is hoped that Facebook users will begin to discover serendipitous moments by checking in to places and finding that other friends are at the same location or nearby.

Facebook Places on iPhone

Facebook Places Tagging Friends

At first, Facebook Places will only be available on the Facebook application for iPhone and can also be accessed by “advanced mobile browers” (meaning those supporting HTML 5 and geolocation) at touch.facebook.com. Mark Zuckerberg said at the launch that there are not Android or Blackberry apps available yet. There are plans for these but no timeline.

In fact, Zuckerberg stated that there are quite a lot of things they aren’t doing with Places yet, including integrating Places with Facebook Events, which seems like a very obvious thing for them to do, especially as they have recently acquired Hot Potato. Zuckerberg said that they want to get things right before launching additional apps and features.

Facebook Places seems to be quite focused on including images and being able to tag friends who are with you when you check–in. You can also post a text update along with your check-in, as you can with most other location–based services.

There’s not a lot that’s new here, but it’s not really about that, is it? What’s significant is that it’s Facebook launching this location-based service. It’s going to be interesting to see just how many of the hundreds of millions of users start using this regularly. Not everyone has an iPhone or a mobile device capable of using the service, so there will be limited numbers to begin with, but still, Five. Hundred. Million. Users, and still growing.

For a full run–down of the features, check out Facebook’s blog post on the subject.

Mark Zuckerberg set to announce Facebook now has 500 million users, and launch Facebook Stories.

Published on July 20, 2010 in Facebook, business and social media. View Comments

After a fair amount of speculation over the past week, it looks like Mark Zuckerberg is finally going to announce that Facebook has crossed the 500 million users mark. He’s doing a rare interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC News tonight (Wednesday, July 21, 2010), which you’d think would be a fitting occasion to announce the milestone.

Facebook sign up

Zuckerberg doesn’t give many interviews, and perhaps with good reason, if this recent one at the D8 conference is anything to go by. He really looked uncomfortable when being questioned about Facebook’s much publicised privacy issues.

The upcoming announcement is also good timing for the reportedly pretty dark, soon to be released film ‘The Social Network’, which is about the founding of Facebook. In its marketing, the production uses the tagline (which you can see in the trailer) “You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies”. I doubt Mark will be looking forward to its release.

It looks like Facebook will be marking the occasion with an initiative called Facebook Stories, which looks to be a visual feast centering around the different ways Facebook has changed people’s lives. Facebook has already created a User Stories form for the launch.

This begs the quesiton, has Facebook changed your life? If it has, how? I’d say that, for me personally, Facebook has made it easier to communicate with some people I probably wouldn’t communicate with otherwise, and made it a little easier to communicate with some people I communicate with regularly. However, Twitter has changed my life more. I use it more, I find it to be more fun, and because of this I’ve built a bigger and stronger network of people I communicate with there.

« Older Entries