I’m curious as to why Mark Zuckerberg isn’t amongst the young, liberal CEO’s pervading Silicon Valley? The leaders of the 90’s tech start-ups seemed to eschew the “bottom line is all that matters” way of doing business to the “don’t be evil” idea propagated by Google’s chiefs.
Zuckerberg didn’t seem like he went through that idealistic change-how-business-is-done phase. Even before graduating college, he was mercilessly screwing his associates. He also has no qualms about also screwing his customer base if it means a bigger bottom line for Facebook, as evidenced in the various and sundry privacy blunders Facebook has experienced.
I don’t get it. He’s young. He’s a geek. Why isn’t he trying to be a revolutionary like Steve Jobs or Larry Page?
Because people use Facebook voluntarily. So in his mind, he has a right to your data because you gave it to him. If you don’t like the way he plays, get out of his playground. I don’t see anything evil about that.
I question the premise especially compared against your other examples. Steve Jobs, God rest his soul, was a brutal businessman and a real dick sometimes. I am not sure what was especially virtuous about his business style as opposed to his major distinguishing contributions which were design and vision oriented. Jobs and Apple made things look and work cool but saints they weren’t. Jobs gift was that he never gave his customers the impression that they were being screwed both in terms of pricing and the proprietary nature of the whole scheme.
Zuckerberg is a smart guy but he also got lucky with timing so he is right to run as fast and aggressively as possible with what he has while he can. If he didn’t, thousands of others are waiting in the wings to knock off Facebook. He can’t just start playing nice when it isn’t certain how long Facebook’s reign will last.
Because Facebook wasn’t revolutionary in any real way. It was just a better design of a social network site. Unlike other sites, Facebook was developed to interact with real people on the Internet, instead of sites like MySpace, Friendster, the Globe, where you’d meet people first online.
Google had a real revolutionary way to search orginially. Now it is so studied, its algorithm is tweeked so much, that it’s become a shell of what it once was, now flooded with scraper sites and ad word sites.
Steve Jobs did exactly to Apple what Starbucks did to coffee. He took a simple thing, overpriced it, hyped it up and sold it to suckers who want to overpay to feel like they can be a Yuppie for five minutes. Jobs didn’t say, “How can I bring mp3’s to the masses?” I had mp3 players in 1999. He capitalized and marketed.
For all the “Good” these billionaires do, do they really help anyone? Microsoft and Bill Gates, made sure they hired only from the top Ivy League schools and the foundations the Gates set up, don’t deal with anything other than, other foundations. They don’t reach to the masses.
Zuckerberg probably realizes that you have to make hay when the sunshines. Sure Facebook is doing well now. What about in five years? Is it going to go the way of MySpace? Maybe? Maybe not? How many Internet companies (soley Internet companies) are around today?
Google? Yahoo? Amazon? eBay? Most have been bought up by real B&M companies or gone the way of JumpTheShark.Com
Zuckerberg got in, is making as much money as he can so if the bubble bursts, he’s fine
Yeah, basically this. I know you, OP, love your toys, and maybe you even indistinctly realize “I love my toys!” and “Gosh, I wish capitalism didn’t mean there are going to be winners and losers” are not reconciliable. But Google and Apple and their billionaire founders who structure our political and economic systems (and for whose benefit those systems are structured) are not socially revolutionary in any serious sense of that phrase, even if they do occasionally pay lip service to values of individuality and saving the world.
Or in other words, don’t be so impressed: It’s just a marketing gimmick. Of course, then you have to face the fact that being an Apple or Google fanboy is something rather different from being a revolutionary.
Wow. This is simply wrong. Well, it is correct that Jobs managed the Apple brand effectively, as did Howard Schultz for Starbucks for many years, but that is about it.
Of all the commentary I have heard following Jobs’ death, one stood out: the one thing Jobs brought to Technology was a sense of how to edit. Figuring out what to leave out is harder than you could possibly imagine. It is the difference between a 1st generation Apple Newton vs. a PalmPilot, if you can remember back that far - one an overburdened tech toy (one which Jobs failed to edit); the other a new way of managing your life and the gateway to smartphones…
Zuckerberg sounds smart and ruthless - smart enough to have a vision and ruthless enough to stick to it. In business, a good idea well executed beats a great idea only decently-executed everytime. Look at FB’s competitors lying in the wreakage as proof.
While there is no doubt Jobs was a master at preventing feature creep and getting products onto the market in a sellable state, the idea that he invented this idea is just not aligned with the facts. You can trace that genius back to George Eastman, if not earlier.
I in no way wish to imply that he “invented” the ability to edit a product to its essential features. Heck, you’re right - look at an old Kodak Instamatic, or look at Leo Fender’s Telecaster guitar or Sony’s Walkman. I am only asserting that he demonstrated a mastery of that ability in a tech space - he took ideas and functionality that already existed and combined the right ones in the right way to help consumers unlock value they couldn’t see or appreciate before.
Getting that right is so hard. I call this the ***Steve Martin Fallacy ***- he has a joke where he says “I’m going to teach you how to make a million dollars tax free!!” Then, he mumbles under his breath “Okay, first - get a million dollars - THEN…” and keeps going with the joke…
It’s funny because he skates right past what we all recognize is the truly hard part, i.e., getting the million dollars. Well, that is what most folks do with things like tech products - “Okay, design a product that delivers a clear, umabiguous value proposition to non-tech consumers that helps them look past the tech and see the potential - THEN…”
The Gates Foundation does the dirty work of charity all the time. Implying that they don’t is just a swipe at all the real good Gates has done with his billions.
Bwuh? Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay are all still owned by their original owners.