Palo Alto was the hub where technology innovation happened
People forgot to send Mark Zuckerberg the memo that the consumer internet was over
The idea of a web about people linked together online was relatively new then. The accepted norm of the day was about pages linked together
on the web the values of a few people can have a huge impact on everyone – the web will ultimately go where the collective conscience wants to go
Product Management
Getting users to use their real name is very important as it will limit the need to monitor for porn since it is tied directly back to their personal reputation
Be very focused and clear what your product is supposed to do – small details are extremely important
Facebook is a utility to efficiently communicate with friends
MySpace is an online community to share similar interest
it was a dead simple product. Just users profiles
Uptake of a well crafted feature is pretty organic and retention is high
Photo tagging was the largest growth driver
your home Page is constantly changing is a new concept – your personalized newspaper
user research help elevating understanding from the conversation from “our users are so stupid” to what makes sense for our users –
people became scared when they did understand what was going on
match user complains to corresponding usage data of the same person
give people the control or even an illusion of one on how they are presented publicly on their feed to alleviate fear
Engineering
Failure to scale infrastructure properly when required will kill the user experience
User needs and behavior drives engineering activities
Culture and HR
The team was really focused as a group
Ok to pay with stock for services rendered to company
The social graph is based on Graph Theory, a mathematical concept that will appeal to someone with math background
move fast break things as a concept stopped working at 10 engineers. Some level of discipline became necessary
Younger people had simpler lives and didn’t own much. 75% of adults who joined the company in the early days became divorced
The culture became very clear and apparent early in
Facebook is undergraduate culture,
Google is graduate culture
Acquisition offers should be considered on the merit of whether the decision to go ahead will further the mission
Mark and his whole team just kept repeatedly using the same word “Domination!!!” as a mantra until Mark was told to stop by the general counsel
