Zuckerberg - Innovation Without Boundaries

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
Categories: Media, Technology | Tags: Bill Gates, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, award, Innovation, social networking, Ross Perot, Social media, Mark Zuckerberg, Superfreakonomics, Steven Levitt, Economist Innovation Award, billionaire

Mark Zuckerberg has a huge problem – what’s he going to do next? This year’s Economist Innovation Award winner, the 24-year old billionaire creator and Facebook CEO, may have peaked too early. Until Facebook develops an application to tell the future, the profile of another Ivy League drop-out, entrepreneur and programmer provides some insight. Zuckerberg may be the next William Gates III – energetic, opportunistic, commercially savvy.

Zuckerberg’s Facebook has attracted the participation of 300 million global users, and 800,000 developers are currently working on new applications. As Superfreakonomics author Steven Levitt would suggest: “Strip away the morality and see what the figures tell you.” Facebook morality may be construed as staying faithful to the original concept, but 300 million clients and a need to monetise services means Zuckerberg is capable of delivering a formidable sales platform for online service providers.

In 2007, Zuckerberg sold 1.6% of Facebook stock to Microsoft. Other highly competitive firms seeking to grow and protect market share will surely find synergy with Facebook which sharpens their current service provision. The real deal for these companies will be in the future-proofing of their customer base. Social networking remains an immature marketplace, it’s cluttered, untidy, largely un-integrated. Convergence and consolidation of social networking and online services depends almost entirely on data – the number of registered users. Value is also absent from social networking sites, and it is probably Facebook which will begin to alter the concept of online value.

Simplification of our daily lives will emerge through online interfaces such as Facebook. We need a one-stop shop for all our online needs, in a format which can be accessed conveniently on a mobile phone. Banks need the data-driven communications sector to capture and maximise mobile consumers; communications providers need social networking sites to deliver new services, adding value.

Our lives revolve around a self-limiting sphere of preferences and user-defined nuances. Algorithims which gave life to Google can also aggregate our lifestyle purchasing preferences. The psychology of a persistently turbulent environment lends itself to our dependence on big brands, trusted names and affordability; and this was at the core of Facebook’s conception. Zuckerberg created the site as a Harvard-only facility, designed to replicate the annual school photo album, the ‘facebook’. School facebooks and their equivalents, have been prized because they reinforce a sense of security through belonging, and in a sense, they enhance a concept of purpose.

The social force which Facebook has become empowers Zuckerberg with a political clout almost unrivalled in its pace of accumulation. Much like Bill Gates, Zuckerberg’s concept of success will change with age. Expect more one per cents to be sold as he marries, or has children, suffers a personal challenge or tragedy, as he begins to dabble in the growth of environmental energy markets or health provision, he may even run for higher political office, like tech entrepreneur Ross Perot, and other Harvard alumni.

In September 2009, Facebook became cash flow positive for the first time. The weird little frat boy programme has outgrown the insults, as Mark Twain predicted: “A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.” Zuckerberg is far from his peak, he has laid a foundation for a pending revolution.

Facebook – Executive Bios
http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?execbios

Mark Zuckerberg:
http://www.facebook.com/markzuckerberg