On the 2010 “Time” cover which named him “Man of the Year”, the expression on the face of Mark Zuckerberg was very different from that seen before the United States Congress, just eight years later. Silicon Valley’s child prodigy has the same freckles and incredulous gaze for his global success, but also the recent awareness of bearing the rights and expectations of more than two billion people on his shoulders. A weight much more burdensome than that borne by any head of state. Indeed, if Facebook were a country, its population would even exceed China’s.
From likes to record numbers
From its founding in 2004 to its Wall Street debut in 2012, from the legal debates surrounding how the company was founded to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Mark Zuckerberg has never turned over the reins, even in the face of the multi-billion dollar offer made by Microsoft, and he has remained steadfastly at the helm of Facebook. A business born to overcome the failure of a romantic relationship – according to some -, exploiting the intuitions of friends and fellow students – in the view of others. But while there are different speculations as to its origins, everyone agrees on the numbers: with 2.2 billion registered users active at least once a month, in the first quarter of 2018 the company recorded 11.97 billion dollars in revenue, exceeding analyst expectations of 11.41 billion dollars. Revenues rose by 49 percent compared to the same period of 2017. Quarterly net profit reached 4.99 billion dollars, up by 63 percent on an annual basis.
From the college dorm to Wall Street
His parents understood that Mark liked computers long before he founded the largest social networking platform in the world: at just 12 years old, he invented a messaging software for his dentist father. “One of the neat things was that [my dad’s] dental office was actually connected to our home. The dentists and hygienists needed to share data on the patients. So I built a system where he could communicate with folks across rooms, and also communicate with me and my sisters upstairs— and I called it ZuckNet”, Zuckerberg recalls in Reid Hoffman’s “Master of Scale” podcast.
However, young Mark was unable to complete his studies: his creation was born and took off before he was able to finish his degree. Thus, when he returned to his university as a digital guru in 2017, Mark stated: “If I get through this speech, it’ll be the first time I actually finish something at Harvard” (see his full speech here, ed.).
On campus, Mark immediately gained the reputation of a computer whiz: in 2003, he invented Facemash, the precursor to Facebook, and at the end of the same year, he was approached by the Winkelvoss twins to participate in the coding of HarvardConnection, a platform reserved to Harvard students. Zuckerberg accepted and a few weeks later he began to secretly work on a similar service: it was 2004, and thefacebook.com was born with the support of Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin. The brothers took just a few months to accuse their former partner of stealing the original idea, collect 65 million dollars and also request the cancellation of the agreement reached to obtain compensation in proportion with Facebook’s actual value.
In eight years, something created for fun in a Harvard dorm moved on to Silicon Valley, first reaching 800 universities and colleges, to then open up to non-students as well, and conquering the trust of various venture capital funds (12.7 million dollars from Accel Partners, then 27.5 million dollars from Greylock Partners, Meritech Capital Partners and other firms).
The profits began to roll in with the virtual gift shop and the mobile platform (2007), but especially with the introduction of the popular “Like” button (2009). After reaching 800 million users, in 2011 Facebook revved its engines for an IPO on Wall Street: Goldman Sachs invested 450 million dollars in the social network, while Digital Sky Technologies invested 50 million. The company’s value shot up to more than 75 billion. After consolidation, expansion: between 2012 and 2014 it acquired Instagram and Whatsapp.
From the t-shirt to the grey suit
Doubts as to the Facebook business model began just after its shopping. In 2015, the company was suspected of violating its users’ privacy: eight European countries opened an investigation into the social media giant regarding its management of the data of more than 300 million European users. The assumption is that the social platform sends targeted advertising by cross referencing with information from services like Instagram and WhatsApp. The case also targeted the use of the highly popular “Likes” to track the habits of internet users.
A trial run of Data Gate 2018, which led the timid Zuckerberg to need to explain himself to Congress: no grey t-shirt of the rebellious nerd. With his monotone grey suit, he admitted his guilt, apologised and finally lost his managerial virginity. And in the meantime, users continue to click on “Like” and the profits continue to flow in.