2005 Zuckerberg Didn't Want To Take On The World

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/13/2005-zuckerberg-didnt-want-to-take-over-the-world/

by JJMalina • 15 years ago

140 49 15 years ago

Swizec• 15 years ago

Just goes to show, you don't need a grand vision, all you need is a vision you believe is achievable. Once you've reached it, there's always enough juice to re-asses and readjust. With enough luck you will take over the world.

This probably also helps in getting the people around you to take you seriously.

mikeleeorg• 15 years ago

David Kirkpatrick's book, "The Facebook Effect"[1] seems to gel with Mark's vision and attitude about Facebook in this video - that he's an ambitious & smart guy who started with a relatively small idea, and kind of stumbled upon its evolution into a much grander vision.

According to the book and Wikipedia[2], there was even a time when Mark was even more focused on another idea of his, Wirehog. It's possible he may have even had some doubts about Facebook, or lost interest in it for a little while.

And hey, what startup founder hasn't had those thoughts? They're totally natural. I'm sure some have a razor-sharp focus & vision from Day One, but I would never fault a founder for having a few shaky moments of doubt here & there.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company-Connect...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehog

seagaia• 15 years ago

1:00-1:15 or so. "Find information about you." Heh heh, well that part certainly works now.

I think it's perfectly fine his view changed from '05 to now about the use of Facebook.

thinkcomp9• 15 years ago

2005 Zuckerberg also lied point-blank when he claimed that nothing like The Facebook existed at Harvard (1:32 in the video). He knew about it, was a member and heavy user during the period in which he coded his version (http://www.thinkpress.com/authoritas/timeline.pdf). He repeated this false claim in his talk at Stanford's ETL lecture series and I find it absolutely infuriating.

It's also relevant that Mark appears so non-chalant about the whole endeavor in the video. That's more or less how he came off when I spoke to him a month before the site launched, except he was more coy, refusing to divulge what he was actually working on. It didn't sound like a business seeking venture capital financing whatever it was, and so I had no reason to think I should get involved. Nor did I suspect that he was actually willing to torpedo our relationship by copying my work feature for feature, seeking funding without mentioning it, and simultaneously asking for advice. Nor did I suspect anything about the fact that he was searching my Facebook for "winklevoss."

And yes, I've moved on, but each time these lies are uncovered fresh, no one else takes him to task for them.

rokhayakebe• 15 years ago

Why did you not keep going with your project?

thinkcomp9• 15 years ago

No one at The Crimson would write about my work except to accuse me of stealing passwords, which in fact was what Mark ended up doing. In contrast, Chris Hughes's French A conversation partner was on the editorial board of The Crimson, and they lived across the sidewalk from The Crimson's then-president.

Sites like these need press to grow. Without press, there's no point.

alex1• 15 years ago

"[...] it was just me programming what was a facebook, really, at that time for Harvard [...] they didn't have anything like that. [...] I realized that because I didn't have people's information like a school would in making a facebook, I had to make it interesting enough..."

I think what he meant was that Harvard itself didn't provide an online facebook to its students. Wasn't Harvard supposedly working on a university-run online facebook during that time? Or am I just thinking of houseSYSTEM?

thinkcomp9• 15 years ago

Each of Harvard's houses did provide a Facebook, which is why Mark was able to create Facemash in 2003.

houseSYSTEM's Facebook was the first "universal face book" at Harvard University.

I offered to sell or just give houseSYSTEM to Harvard, and HASCS turned me down, probably because they insisted that everything had to be done in Java using Harvard's internal iSites framework. Instead they built their own version and launched it a couple of years later.

ltamake• 15 years ago

I've read up a lot on houseSYSTEM and it sounded really cool. You should have kept it going.

But yeah, Zuckerburg is a liar about a lot of things. People give him a lot more credit than he deserves. I still believe the Winklevosses about him stealing their idea, it seems like the kind of thing he'd do.

thinkcomp9• 15 years ago

Thanks! It would have been nice, but it was hard to find support at the time (and not much has changed).

The Winklevosses aren't much better for the record. They lied on national television. Compare this (3:45):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzN6XWDEmXI

Q: Did you contribute information and material to the making of this movie?

A: No, but we actually met with the actors after the filming.

...to this:

http://www.thinkpress.com/authoritas/20090910.letter.pdf

"In addition, I can confirm that Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss were interviewed by Mr. Mezrich."

These guys were all made for each other, though I think Paul Ceglia takes the cake for most outrageous.

olivercameron3• 15 years ago

You do not sound like you've moved on, at all.

Udo• 15 years ago

Well, if some big thing like this passes you by so closely, it's not difficult to understand how it can really end up haunting you. Especially if there was a lot of money and treachery involved.

Most developers (me included) know from personal experience how awful it is to watch someone you consider to be an asshole or a rip-off become very successful. Most of us also know how it the feels to discover that some company recently took off like a rocket with one of your ideas; usually they got the same idea independently, but if they actually copied it from you - that's a very special kind of pain.

That being said, I think it's important to remember the huge success of Facebook is not just based on the initial idea. There were many social networks before Facebook. As painful as it may be to some, the most important thing Facebook did was taking the company from the initial idea to where it is now and from where I stand neither the Winklevosses nor Aaron can really claim they did that.

As a developer and an ideas man myself, this is kind of a hard reality to face as well, because it means that in the end business practices and marketing are exponentially more important than concepts and programming.

gojomo• 15 years ago

It's not a 'lie' unless there's no reasonable truthful interpretation. If other similar efforts weren't official, weren't complete in their coverage, weren't feature-equivalent in any dimension, or weren't 'like' Zuckerberg's Facebook in any other salient way, those would all make that statement ("they didn't have anything like that") true enough for an informal summary conversation. It doesn't deserve to be labelled as "lied point-blank".

(The analysis would of course be different if the question were exactly, "was there anything at all that was anything like The Facebook when you created the first version?" But that's not the case here; he's giving a autobiographical coarse narrative view as he saw it. Normal cordial conversation requires generous and magnanimous listeners who fill in the implied qualifiers for a speaker. You are not a cordial and generous listener when it comes to Facebook topics; you have an axe to grind. You detect 'lies' when no other listener would.)

blhack3• 15 years ago

You really should let this go. People have already made up their minds about facebook, and who created it, and where the ideas came from.

Even if those people are wrong, it doesn't matter. They've already decided.

When people read or hear things like what you're posting in this thread, it reflects poorly on you. Yeah, it absolutely sucks if things played out the way that you say they did, but being upset about it isn't going to improve anything.

To paraphrase a hacker friend of mine:

"Write shit, build shit, write about building shit...let them know you by the trail of [original content] that you leave behind"

The first time I've ever heard of you was in this thread. Right now, instead of knowing you as

"Aaron, a brilliant hacker working on facecash and doing cool things.",

I know you as

"Aaron, somebody who is really caught up on a dispute he had with a college associate almost 7 years ago."

If the latter is the perception you want people to have of you, continue making noise about your dispute with facebook, otherwise, don't.

bbq3• 15 years ago

"You really should let this go. People have already made up their minds about facebook, and who created it, and where the ideas came from.

Even if those people are wrong, it doesn't matter. They've already decided."

Is it just me or is this the completely wrong attitude to take towards history?

guildchatter• 15 years ago

I think that people enjoy listening to short, straightforward stories, without a long preface going into every single gory detail before actually reaching the main part of the story.

Zuckerberg isn't in a court of law, so I'm guessing he's skipping details and bending the truth (or lying) to make his story simpler and easier to understand. He's also probably glossing over things to make his story sound more dramatic and impressive.

Sorry to hear about your history with him though. That sucks. =T

Jarred• 15 years ago

Even though you built a social network for Harvard first, Facebook beat you. They out-manuevered you. I can completely see it being a huge regret, both not getting as far as Facebook and not joining them early on, but the best thing you can do for yourself is to just get over it and keep building cool stuff.

When you get old and tell your grand-children that story, don't make it one of jealousy and bitterness. Make it something that shows them the potential of small things.

ez772• 15 years ago

In the timeline you present, how did you get access to the Google sarches Zuckerberg did while he was a student?

unfasten• 15 years ago

If you're talking about the following:

    6:20:09 A.M. EST
    At about six in the morning, Mark Zuckerberg searches for "universal facebook” on Google,
    finding the Universal Face Book on the Quincy House houseSYSTEM web site.
    roam175-29.student.harvard.edu - - [06/Jan/2004:06:20:09 -0500] "GET /facebook/ HTTP/1.1" 200 5436
    "http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=universal+facebook&btnG=Google+Search"
    "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 Firebird/0.7"

Then he knows about the search term because of the referrer being logged in his HTTP server logs. This is the standard Combined Log Format. http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/logs.html#combined describes each field if you're curious about the others.

gammarator• 15 years ago

I was at Harvard when Facebook launched. Within days, it had a huge, highly engaged userbase which it never lost. HouseSYSTEM, in contrast, never took off. Why do you think that was? I'd argue it had a lot more to do with the differing design and motivation of the sites than press coverage. Students signed up to The Facebook because it was cool, viral, and not officially sanctioned, not because they read about it in the Crimson. HouseSYSTEM was none of those things.

You seem to think that Mark should have (then) asked you to help with Facebook or (today) acknowledge that he learned from HouseSYSTEM. I'd suggest that Mark's heavy use of HouseSYSTEM showed him mistakes to avoid and thereby encouraged Facebook's adoption. Maybe he thought you were too invested in the choices you'd made with HouseSYSTEM to start fresh.

thinkcomp9• 15 years ago

Actually, most of my college friends rarely use Facebook anymore. They haven't for years. Many have terminated their accounts.

I think that you're right that some aspects of houseSYSTEM's design hindered it. However, it was never officially sanctioned.

biot• 15 years ago

Similar to how Larry & Sergey were shopping their search engine around for $1 million [0]. They certainly weren't looking to organize the world's information at that time.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google#Financing_and_initial_pu...

bmac272• 15 years ago

The irony of "changing the world" is that the ones who've pretentiously bastardized the phrase as a way of hobnobbing with the Web 2.0 elite never do.

The few that actually do change the world don't usually set out with that goal in mind. Either that or they don't go out proclaiming they'll do it. They just do it.

ecuzzillo• 15 years ago

Do you have an anecdote on this topic?

bmac272• 15 years ago

I think Dorsey & Twitter is a good example. He had the underlying concepts in his head from the time he was 12 years old and long before Web 2.0. When he was brought onto Odeo, the idea was to be manifested in the form of SMS alerts. I find it hard to believe that he had what we know today as Twitter in his mind at the outset. Nor do I think his intention was for the service to be used by citizens in a fight against oppressive democracies or in other scenarios which one could reasonably assume had a truly global impact.

Contrast that with the startups coming out of incubators boasting about how they're going to change the world with their.....t-shirt recommendation engine app. Or something of the sort.

And who knows? It might actually be a kick-ass product, have phenomenal revenues & truly help people. But it's not going to change the world.

Maybe it's just my issue with the phrase but I think "changing the world" has become one of those trite, overused Web 2.0 expressions that have become as hollow as a dead tree trunk to early adopters & end users. They've simply heard it too many times before and they know not every company is going to change the world.

The other thing that's troublesome is that it's discouraging people from building cool stuff because they think it's not "changing the world." I've already seen questions on Quora from folks who think their ideas (or even existing businesses) are invalid because they don't feel the company's going to become the next Google or Apple; even though, as someone already mentioned, Larry & Sergey were ready to sell at $1 million for the technology. That doesn't sound to me like someone who wanted to change the world from the very outset.

I don't know. Maybe it's just my issue with the phrase but I imagine there are at least a few folks that feel the same way. Apologies for the tangent.

_pcpe• 15 years ago

Of course he didn't want to take over the world. No wonders, most of the so called "Next Big Thing" goes this way...

jhdavids82• 15 years ago

"So, um, like", "So, um, like"...videos like this of Zuckerberg really irritate me. Of course he didn't want to take over the world, he simply saw a profitable idea (after it was given to him by someone else) and took advantage of that. The main reason someone takes an idea that isn't theirs is for their personal gain, not because they truly want to do something substantial. Only someone who has the initial idea, someone who sees the problem area and can see a way to fix it, those are the ones capable of changing the world for the better (ok, ok, the Winklevoss twins probably didn't want to change the world for the better, but at least they had that initial thought). Otherwise, you're left with some d-bag taking advantage of something someone else saw simply for personal, profitable reasons. This video is proof the guy is no 'trendsetter' in technology. Hell, he sounds like a dude who was briefed on what exactly Facebook is 10 minutes before the interview.

philwelch2• 15 years ago

How many startups have a long term plan to take over the world from the very beginning? If you interviewed Bill Gates back when Micro-Soft was making BASIC interpreters, would you get the slightest sense of what Microsoft is today? Or Steve Jobs when Apple was selling the Apple II? How about Larry and Sergey when Google was just a search engine? I think they would seem a little more concerned with where their business was at the time and a little oblivious of what it would grow into.

jhdavids82• 15 years ago

I would be shocked if any of those you mentioned would say "There doesn't necessarily have to be anything more after this" when asked what was next for their company. All mentioned were probably concerned with the current projects at their company during the early times, but all were also probably looking towards expanding their company as well. Oh, and I'd be shocked if any of them would be interviewed with a red 'frat' cup in their hand or with their co-founders doing keg stands as well.

nxn• 15 years ago

People really like to try to make him look bad; I mean, is it just me or does this article portray him to be some clueless dimwit that was standing on a goldmine and didn't know it until his face hit the ground so hard that he finally saw the shiny gold stars?

The reality is that it's very difficult to know what ground you're standing on until you dig deep enough to just see it with your own eyes. Predicting the future and investing in that wishful vision is a much more risky strategy than just acknowledging the current moment and trying to lead it closer to where you'd like it to go. I do not know whether he looked at the situation in this type of manner or not, but that's how I justify facebook's success.

As a side note, I wish people would stop pretending they never drank out of a big red cup before.

2005 Zuckerberg Didn't Want To Take On The World

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