The Facebook Effect

Today - six years after it was created in a Harvard dorm room - over 500 million people use Facebook regularly, in just about every country on earth. That a company this powerful and influential was started as a lark by a couple of 19-year-olds makes it a fascinating and surprising tale. That one of them, the visionary Mark Zuckerberg, had the maturity, strategic smarts and luck to keep his company ahead of its rivals anchors the tale.

With exclusive inside access to all the company's leaders David Kirkpatrick tells of the vision, the tenacity, the refusal to compromise, and the vision Zuckerberg has to remake the internet. A brilliant and fascinating cast of characters created Facebook and Kirkpatrick has interviewed all of them. Never before have Zuckerberg and his closest colleagues told what really happened as they built their dynamo while eating fast food, staying up all night, and thumbing their noses at how things are usually done.

Short-listed for Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2010

David Kirkpatrick was handed the keys to the Facebook kingdom - the result is the definitive account of its phenomenal rise Observer
Leaves you with a deep understanding of Facebook, its philosophies and, most startlingly, its power. You come away with a creepy new awareness of how a directory of college students is fast becoming a directory of all humanity Scotsman
A well-reported account of the first six years of one of the most important companies on earth Financial Times
Mr. Kirkpatrick provides some intriguing insights into the psyche of Mr. Zuckerberg The Economist
A compelling account of the origins and prospects of the social networking giant The Week
Along the way, Zuckerberg has turned down acquisition offers of as much as $15 billion; worked with and against technology giants Google, Microsoft and Viacom; and knocked heads with privacy advocates. Those are some of the gems in the illuminating new book USA Today
Understanding Facebook's success is crucial to understanding the modern internet, and this is the definitive account of its rise and rise. Kirkpatrick's story is an important contribution to the biography of the digital age, and one of the most startling stories of human ingenuity and appetite you'll find on any shelf Tom Chatfield, Arts and Books Editor of Prospect Magazine
Fascinating ... exciting ... The book is packed with interviews from all the key players, including Zuckerberg and Moskovitz. Kirkpatrick's subjects open up about everything Associated Press
This fast paced narrative captures the excitement of the startup world and reminds me of the early days of Wikipedia when I realized we were onto something big. A big revelation is how Mark Zuckerberg's idealism led him to focus on product improvements rather than short-term revenue gains, and how critical this was to the company's success Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia
Facebook is becoming the dominant social networking tool, facilitating our online and offline worlds. The Facebook Effect effectively shows its rapid evolution, where it is going, and how it will increasingly affect our lives Craig Newmark, Founder, Craigslist

David Kirkpatrick was for many years the senior editor for internet and technology at Fortune magazine. While at Fortune he wrote cover stories about Apple, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Sun, and numerous other technology subjects. More recently he organized the Techonomy conference on the centrality of technology innovation for all human activity. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and appears frequently on television, radio, and the Internet as an expert on technology. He lives in New York.

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