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I've seen a lot of coverage of Zuck as a "genius computer hacker", reinforced by the Hackers-style montage in the film which makes it look like what he did was

by seldo 16y ago

I've seen a lot of coverage of Zuck as a "genius computer hacker", reinforced by the Hackers-style montage in the film which makes it look like what he did was really hard (oh no, he busted out emacs! He must be a genius!). Actually, Facebook's core functionality, at least at small scale, is trivial. It's a database of people, with CRUD on top. All the really hard technical problems Facebook has solved -- and there were many, don't get me wrong -- have to do with scaling that system, and those problems were solved long after Zuck was no longer hands-on with the code every day. That's not to say I don't think Zuck is really smart. What I think he's really smart at, though, is interface design and user experience. The film touches on this, noting that Facebook's exclusivity was key to its early popularity. However, the reason Facebook really trounced Friendster and MySpace was that it was a much, much better experience. Everything worked perfectly and each screen was carefully thought-out in terms of information density and placement. Of course, Sorkin's narrative for the film is that Zuck is an aspie geek who built a website because he doesn't understand people, so the counter-evidence -- that Facebook's design is clearly built by somebody who understands people very well indeed -- has to be downplayed.

cynicalkane 16y ago
Managing a large, rapidly scaling web business such as Facebook is not exactly trivial, either.
- kloncks 16y ago
  That's exactly the point seldo makes.
  - Dementati 16y ago
    Nah, seldo focuses more on user interface, and less on community management.
  - cynicalkane 16y ago
    What? Where does he discuss this? He's talking about designing a user experience as if there's no managerial aspect involved in that at all. I can find no reference to the difficulty of running a company that actually can deliver that solid Facebook user experience. Not that he doesn't think this is hard; it's that he doesn't mention it. It's not as though being the Harvard kid writing the first version of thefacebook.com is the same as running a large company; as if Zuckerberg can just hire people to do hard coding for him and that's the end of it. I thought I'd point out that building Facebook as a company is something that would have been, and is, hard. The inability to grow has killed promising web businesses. I don't understand why I'm being downvoted and you're being upvoted. Addendum: the downvotes continue. Someone explain what I'm missing, please.
    - potatolicious 16y ago
      > "have to do with scaling that system, and those problems were solved long after Zuck was no longer hands-on with the code every day." seldo covers this in his original post. The assertion (correct or otherwise) is that the difficult parts of scaling Facebook occurred after Zuck stopped working on the code himself.
    - zaidf 16y ago
      I concur with you. I don't understand why folks must criticize or demean Zuck. What exactly are these people criticizing him for? That he did not solve the biggest scaling problems and instead let his employees do that(ever wonder how they attracted those employees in first place)? That he did not write every line of code(where would Facebook even be if Zuck insisted on writing code himself)? That all he's got is a site with 500M users and a shit load of revenue(raise your hand if you got a site with .0001% of that)? Good god it is outrightly ridiculous. Yes, I am a Zuck fanboy. At least I can admit it and cite a few reasons why. All I keep hearing from the other side is "omg all he's got is a freakin php site". Yeah, that's why he is a billionaire and you are not. People keep saying "all Zuck did was scale". DOH! Scaling is what separates McDonalds from your local burger joint and facebook from millions of other php sites. If scaling is all Zuckerberg has done, good for him! That is all he should be doing.
      - kyro 16y ago
        It's more jealousy than anything. People hate the fact that someone their age or younger is living the dream -- Ivy League education, explosive traction, rapid growth, investors at your feet, multimillionaire, all during your 20's.
        julian37 16y ago
        Not multimillionaire - multibillionaire, with a B. http://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg http://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg That said, I can't see anybody in this thread being jealous or criticizing Zuckerberg. People are merely stating that his accomplishments do not automatically make him a "genius hacker" just because his very successful business happens to have to do with "computers".
  - olalonde 16y ago
    have to do with scaling that system, and those problems were solved long after Zuck was no longer hands-on with the code every day seldo was referring to scaling the software system, not the business. cynicalkane is making a valid point here: that Zuckerberg was not only faced with the technical problems of scaling a popular website, but also with those of managing a fast growing company.
  - seldo 16y ago
    That's really not the point I was making at all, although it's nice of you to say so :-) Scaling the business side is definitely another strength of Mark's, but I don't think it was a contributor to their early success -- certainly not the first six months covered in the movie, where it appears Parker was the one who knew how to get deals done. Of course, the movie is fiction, so who knows really?
Tichy 16y ago
Isn't the main reason that Facebook is winning that they are really, really aggressive about making people invite their friends? MySpace also grew by getting access to people's Inbox and spamming their contacts, but FB might have taken it to the next level. I hardly ever log into, but FB seems extremely pushy to me. They constantly push people at me who might be my friends. Either I could invite them, or I could make them use FB more by befriending them. Facebook is just a more subtle version of Farmville in that respect...
Goladus 16y ago
Facebook didn't 'trounce' MySpace until relatively late in the game.

by seldo 16y ago

cynicalkane 16y ago

Managing a large, rapidly scaling web business such as Facebook is not exactly trivial, either.

kloncks 16y ago
That's exactly the point seldo makes.
- Dementati 16y ago
  Nah, seldo focuses more on user interface, and less on community management.
- cynicalkane 16y ago
  What? Where does he discuss this? He's talking about designing a user experience as if there's no managerial aspect involved in that at all. I can find no reference to the difficulty of running a company that actually can deliver that solid Facebook user experience. Not that he doesn't think this is hard; it's that he doesn't mention it. It's not as though being the Harvard kid writing the first version of thefacebook.com is the same as running a large company; as if Zuckerberg can just hire people to do hard coding for him and that's the end of it. I thought I'd point out that building Facebook as a company is something that would have been, and is, hard. The inability to grow has killed promising web businesses. I don't understand why I'm being downvoted and you're being upvoted. Addendum: the downvotes continue. Someone explain what I'm missing, please.
  - potatolicious 16y ago
    > "have to do with scaling that system, and those problems were solved long after Zuck was no longer hands-on with the code every day." seldo covers this in his original post. The assertion (correct or otherwise) is that the difficult parts of scaling Facebook occurred after Zuck stopped working on the code himself.
  - zaidf 16y ago
    I concur with you. I don't understand why folks must criticize or demean Zuck. What exactly are these people criticizing him for? That he did not solve the biggest scaling problems and instead let his employees do that(ever wonder how they attracted those employees in first place)? That he did not write every line of code(where would Facebook even be if Zuck insisted on writing code himself)? That all he's got is a site with 500M users and a shit load of revenue(raise your hand if you got a site with .0001% of that)? Good god it is outrightly ridiculous. Yes, I am a Zuck fanboy. At least I can admit it and cite a few reasons why. All I keep hearing from the other side is "omg all he's got is a freakin php site". Yeah, that's why he is a billionaire and you are not. People keep saying "all Zuck did was scale". DOH! Scaling is what separates McDonalds from your local burger joint and facebook from millions of other php sites. If scaling is all Zuckerberg has done, good for him! That is all he should be doing.
    - kyro 16y ago
      It's more jealousy than anything. People hate the fact that someone their age or younger is living the dream -- Ivy League education, explosive traction, rapid growth, investors at your feet, multimillionaire, all during your 20's.
      - julian37 16y ago
        Not multimillionaire - multibillionaire, with a B. http://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg http://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg That said, I can't see anybody in this thread being jealous or criticizing Zuckerberg. People are merely stating that his accomplishments do not automatically make him a "genius hacker" just because his very successful business happens to have to do with "computers".
- olalonde 16y ago
  have to do with scaling that system, and those problems were solved long after Zuck was no longer hands-on with the code every day seldo was referring to scaling the software system, not the business. cynicalkane is making a valid point here: that Zuckerberg was not only faced with the technical problems of scaling a popular website, but also with those of managing a fast growing company.
- seldo 16y ago
  That's really not the point I was making at all, although it's nice of you to say so :-) Scaling the business side is definitely another strength of Mark's, but I don't think it was a contributor to their early success -- certainly not the first six months covered in the movie, where it appears Parker was the one who knew how to get deals done. Of course, the movie is fiction, so who knows really?

Tichy 16y ago

Isn't the main reason that Facebook is winning that they are really, really aggressive about making people invite their friends? MySpace also grew by getting access to people's Inbox and spamming their contacts, but FB might have taken it to the next level. I hardly ever log into, but FB seems extremely pushy to me. They constantly push people at me who might be my friends. Either I could invite them, or I could make them use FB more by befriending them. Facebook is just a more subtle version of Farmville in that respect...

Goladus 16y ago

Facebook didn't 'trounce' MySpace until relatively late in the game.