The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick

8.7/10 dropps

Facebook has been making its mark on the world in a big way over the past
few years. Its membership has recently surpassed 500 million users, making it the
third most populous organization in the world behind China and India. A movie
based on its founding, The Social Network, grossed more than $100 million at the
box office, and is currently a frontrunner in the Oscar race, and founder Mark
Zuckerberg was named Time’s 2010 “Man of the Year.” Facebook is a company that
will play a significant role in the lives of many on this planet for years to come. If
only for this reason, David Kirkpatrick’s The Facebook Effect is worth reading. It is
the most in-depth examination of what is perhaps the most phenomenally
successful fledgling enterprise the world has ever seen.

Those who have seen The Social Network (or who have read the novel on
which it is based) will be familiar with the first two chapters of The Facebook Effect.
But where the two stories differ in a big way is that the film ends events with
Eduardo Saverin’s exit from the company and Sean Parker’s subsequent cocaine
arrest. The Social Network, as well as The Accidental Billionaires (its source novel)
don’t include what’s occurred on the facebook timeline since late 2004.

From Zuckerberg’s Harvard years to the first half of 2010, David Kirkpatrick
manages to cover the entire breadth of facebook’s existence beyond just a historical
perspective. Fortune writer Kirkpatrick constructs the nonfiction piece as a business
book as well. Although less melodramatic than Aaron Sorkin is with his material,
Kirkpatrick is masterful at maintaining his reader’s attention. Rather than focus
merely on those involved with facebook, Kirkpatrick will take a break from the
narrative for entire chapters to discuss the changes taking place within facebook.
The most fascinating of these breaks is when Kirkpatrick conveys how the creators
of facebook view their product as more than just a website; to them, it’s also an
invaluable utility. Aside from these philosophical breaks, the author describes the
business machinations of the elite within facebook with such vigor that makes it
difficult to put the book down.

Despite the overall strong quality of the final product, The Facebook Effect
suffers from a few minor issues. The book engages in what is perhaps too much
praise of Zuckerberg and ignores other key development figures. Kirkpatrick does
not utilize Eduardo Saverin as a resource, nor does he interview the Winklevoss
twins. They are characterized as minor hurdles in the early days of facebook’s
march to greatness, which in truth they were, but if Kirkpatrick was striving for
objectivity, then the book could’ve used the input of Saverin or the “Winklevii.” If
Kirkpatrick disagrees with one of facebook’s ideas or services, he generally does so
in a brief sentence before moving on.

Still, the book’s pros far outweigh the cons. There is so much really
interesting knowledge to gauge from the book on the whole. Boasting Mark
Zuckerberg, Sean Parker, Dustin Moskovitz, Peter Thiel and many others as direct
resources doesn’t hurt either. The Facebook Effect is definitely one of the most
fascinating business/non-fiction narrative books on the market right now.

-John Jamieson