Mark Zuckerberg is a world famous character loved by millions of people of all ages and nationalities around the world. Zuckerberg is one person who inspired me to think in a new way! I really admire him. His creation of the extremely famous social media site - Facebook could fill the gap of many odds and empty spaces in the Internet, and that's for sure. In this myTake, I'm not going to discuss his life story from the beginning, sorry for that.
When Mark created this thing called "Facebook", he had no idea that this could be the route for a billion dollars income. How did Facebook come? What did Mark really want from it? Did he build it to find girls?
Some stories say that his aim was to find girls. But, no! his aim was not to find girls because he already had Priscilla Chan at the time, his present wife.
Is there anything we missed or anything we can get from the story of "Facebook"? Let's see.
This myTake is based on an interview with Mathias Döpfner where Mark revealed the story of Facebook.
There was no tool where you could go and learn about other people. I didn’t know how to build that so instead I started building little tools - Mark Zuckerberg
As you know, Mark was a programming enthusiast from his childhood. When he was in Havard, Mark built a small tool called Coursematch where people could list what classes they were taking.
Mark Zuckerberg: For the final the class — called the “Rome of Augustus”, it was an art history class. There were all theses pieces of art in the class and they were going to show you a handful and you would need to write an essay about the historical significance of that piece of art.
I hadn’t paid much attention in the class because I was programming other things so when it came time for the final I was like oh I am screwed, I don’t know any of this stuff.
So as a study tool I built a little service that showed you at random one of the pieces of art and let you enter what you thought was significant from an art history perspective. So I sent it out to the email list for the class and said hey I have a study tool, and everyone just filled in what is significant about all the pieces of art and it ended up being this great social study tool.
I think the grades on the test that year were higher than they had been in the past. So there were all these different projects, I probably did like 10 different things like this when I was at Harvard. I thought I should put some of this stuff together to create a tool where people can share whatever they want with the people around them. And that was how the first version of Facebook came.
It only took me two weeks to build the first version of Facebook because I had so much stuff before then. - Mark Zuckerberg
Döpfner: When did you sense that it could be really a big thing?
Zuckerberg: You know I actually remember very specifically the night that I launched Facebook at Harvard. I used to go out to get pizza with a friend who I did all my computer science homework with. And I remember talking to him and saying I am so happy we have this at Harvard because now our community can be connected but one day someone is going to build this for the world.
And I didn’t even think it might be us. It was not like, oh I hope we can turn this into something big. In my mind there was no way this is going to be us. It was going to be someone else, we are just college students. When I look back on the last twelve years, what has been the most surprising it’s that no one else did it. And I ask myself, why no one else did it.
Döpfner: Why?
Zuckerberg: I just think it’s because there were all these little reasons not to do it. You know people at every step of the way said "Oh that’s just for young people" so they didn’t work on it as much as they could. Or, "Fine, a bunch of people are using it, but it will never make any money." Or, "Oh it works in the US but it is not going to work around the world." Or, "Oh it works but it is not going to work on mobile." All these different reasons, you know how it is.
Döpfner: And you just did it.
Zuckerberg: Yes.
[**The interview was extracted from businessinsider.com**]
Here, the most important words spoken by Mark Zuckerberg are, "I thought I should put some of this stuff together to create a tool where people can share whatever they want with the people around them." and,
"I am so happy we have this at Harvard because now our community can be connected but one day someone is going to build this for the world."
What this tells us is that he really wished to see people making use of his creation. His intention was much higher than what we really use it for, because his prior intention was not making money, but to do something useful for the world. That's why he said ".....one day someone is going to build this for the world." because what he wanted was to see a change!
The website "businessinsider.com" says that "Google was great for searching for news and Wikipedia was great for searching for reference material, but there was a gap." Mark helped to fill the gap with his new creation, but how did we use it?
To be honest, most people in the modern society are selfish, they have started using Facebook as a source where they can hack another person's account, destroy someone's identity, create memes which can hurt someone strongly, create fake profiles for unwanted things etc. That's not what the creator actually wanted.
"In my mind there was no way this is going to be us. It was going to be someone else we are just college students."
Here comes the best part, he says that he never thought it would be them who would do the change. What we can learn from this is that, who you're, what your profession is, whether you've got a degree or not is not important. What matters is whether you really want to do it.
Anyone can build something great to help people. So, it doesn't matter who you are.
As he had said, people won't satisfy with what you do, they tend to judge you with your age, size, career etc. saying "It won't help" "You're just a young man". So, we better keep our confidence within ourselves.
This man made Facebook for everyone, to connect the edges of the world to make it one. So, as a tribute we must make sure that we use it properly and usefully.
Hope you enjoyed and got something out of this myTake. :)
What Girls & Guys Said
Opinion
1Opinion
"Loved"? I hardly think so.
And FB was before he knew Priscilla.
Thank you for sharing.