I better give this it’s full title: Accidental Billionaires, Sex Money, Betrayal and the founding of Facebook.
Written by Ben Mezrich, this does exactly as it says on the cover but unfortunately it only shows one side of the story. Mark Zuckerburg is a name that is rarely out of the headlines now thanks to the success of Facebook and its constant privacy issue wrangles. Along with business brain Eduardo Saverin and the guy who put up the money they launched TheFacebook as a college social site, which became so popular it crashed the university’s web server.
The history of how Facebook came to be today is interesting as are the personnel involved, its just a pity Zuckerburg couldn’t man up and answer a few questions to be involved, so the story is told through the eyes of the other players, news reports and emails.
Its an easy to read account of how Facebook took off but because Zuckerburg didn’t take part, there are a few questions here and there that we can only speculate the answers to. when the Winklevoss twins Tyler and Cameron came to him asking for his coding help for their website, did he rip off the idea? When working with Eduardo Saverin was it all Zuckerburg’s idea to get him out of Facebook or did Sean Parker, who had been involved in Napster have anything to do with it?
There are questions to be answered but we are left feeling that Zuckerburg is a focused character who really doesn’t care about anyone else as long as his objectives are achieved. Maybe that’s why there are so many cock ups with Facebook’s privacy.. Zuckerburg just doesn’t care.
Good read.