Facebook inspiration

Today, almost everyone is familiar with the success story of Mark Zuckerberg. International explosive growth of Facebook to the current 200 million users brought the CEO and founder of the social network to the front pages and paragraphs of the most popular publications. Time magazine named Zuckerberg one of the most influential people of 2008, and Fast Company put Facebook on the 15th place in the list of 50 most innovative companies of 2009. At 25, Zuckerberg is on the Forbes' 400 list , which, in fact, makes him the youngest billionaire (although Mark flew out of the list following the crisis).

But, oddly enough, very little is known about where Mark got his inspiration for Facebook, because as you know, no good idea can come from scratch. And following this logic, the story should have started long before February 4, 2004, when Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his room in the Harvard dorm. To the roots of this event, we try to get to the bottom.

Most of the stories that have to read about Mark, are built on a sensational pattern: "the young genius invents the phenomenon in his room, floods the net and changes the world." The public loves such loud statements, besides, they very well tally with the story of Bill Gates, who was brought to success by intelligence and ambition, and by Steve Jobs, who advised "to be hungry." But the most intriguing in the history of Zuckerberg, however, is not at all what he graduated from Harvard and became a billionaire at 23.

The main reason why so little is known about how Facebook really arose (in this place I remember the not very famous words of Newton: “If someone thinks that the result of decades of work may come to mind with a fall of an apple, then it’s good time to advise him settle in the apple orchard ”) in that the origins of this story are rather contradictory. In 2007, several fellow students of Zuckerberg claimed their rights to the idea of ​​Facebook. It happened after Yahoo! offered $ 900 million for the entire social network in just two and a half years after its foundation. Despite the fact that the lawsuit ended only last year (the trial between ConnectU (Zukenberg’s classmates, who claimed that he stole the idea from them and didn’t fulfill the “oral contract” for the development of the social network) and Facebook ended up not in court Facebook paid $ 65 million ($ 45 in shares, $ 20 in cash) to ConnectU. Plus, $ 13 million to a law firm representing ConnectU , after this event, the general public is unlikely to ever hear from the founder’s mouth the beautiful story about that m, how did the idea of ​​creating Facebook. It, however, is not particularly needed - all the necessary information is already available.
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Mark's study history gives very interesting hints about where inspiration came from and why, in fact, the first years became so successful for his offspring. For this reason, Facebook does not start with Harvard, as is commonly believed, but much earlier.

Pre-Zuckerberg

It is probably surprising to hear that despite the fact that Harvard's “land” was very fruitful not only for Mark, the grain of the idea settled in his head in high school. Virtually no one has heard of Zuckerberg’s alma mater: Phillips Exeter Academy, since everything happened at Harvard (and the university’s name itself confirms remarkable intellectual abilities). But despite this, the time spent in this school (2000-2002) most likely gave both the name and the concept of Facebook.

Phillips-Exeter Academy or Exeter, as the students themselves briefly called this place, is a private high school that has only grades 9-12 and is located in Exeter, New Hampshire. A very prestigious place in which prepared for no less prestigious universities, this school is included in the so-called. The Ten Schools Admission Organization is an organization that forms very close ties between students and, you can begin to smile, a friendly social group. Which, it is worth noting, lived on campus without leaving it. The students themselves called themselves "Exonians" - this was associated with the traditions cultivated in school.

As an exonian for three years, Zuckenberg had plenty of time to watch and participate in the social culture of Exeter. Every year, the school “waves a pen” to several hundred students and welcomes new ones. Each entrant receives a copy of a kind of “student reference book”, where there are photos, phone numbers and addresses of all classmates - “The Photo Address Book”, which all students, without exception, called ... “The Facebook”.


Several of Zuckerberg’s classmates confirm this conjecture: “The cover reads:“ The Photo Address Book ”, but everyone constantly called it“ The Facebook ”because the full name is too long.”

The book itself is one of many traditions and an important part of the social adaptation of schoolchildren in places like Exeter. Each of the Big Ten schools publishes them annually, since new schoolchildren come every autumn and without it it would be much more difficult for them to learn, for example, the names of neighbors, who, I remind, live close by all year round. Another important point is that every year this data is updated, because as they learn, students move from one campus to another — naturally, telephone numbers in hostels also change (cell phones are banned on campus), and therefore without such a book it would be somewhat more difficult to communicate with your friends.


In this place it is worth a little break away from reality and fantasize. Remember yourself in school years - all over the world all schoolchildren are about the same, because our interests are shaped by society. Of course, it would have been possible to do without such “reference books”, but they became part of the culture connecting teachers, classmates and just friends. Opening “The Facebook” it was possible to find out where friends live this year, which girls are cute and which are not, who, after all, is a newcomer of this year ... it all strongly resembles what Facebook is like today. Only in the case of books were used by American and European schoolchildren long before Zuckerberg.

But the story does not end here. Another interesting thing is that in the year of release of Zuckerberg, the student council, headed by a guy named Chris Tiller (Kris Tillery), decided to create an IT department that would bring all the Photo Address Book information to the network. At the time of graduation Mark, the address of this website sounded like student.exeter.edu/facebook , for which reason, I think, everyone already understands.


Of course, this site has not been working for a long time and none of the sources could not confirm the involvement of Zukenberg in this venture. All that is known is that most of the students were delighted with the opportunity to watch “The Facebook” on the net.

Now, when Facebook successfully “passed the diploma” of Harvard and went out into the big world, and still continues to rapidly gain an audience, more and more experts are talking about it as the main social platform of the near future. The current 200 million participants do not give rise to doubts that the influence of Facebook culture (the word Facebook can be easily replaced on Vkontakte, if desired) is already quite large. And let Mark Zuckerberg himself be silent, we have every reason to believe that the work on the social network of today began not even at Harvard, but at the high school room.

In the wake of RWW