
Did Mark Zuckerberg's Inspiration for Facebook Come Before Harvard? - jasonlbaptiste
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mark_zuckerberg_inspiration_for_facebook_before_harvard.php
======
herval
Seriously, I still can't understand what 'inspiration' has to do with
Facebook's success at all. There were dozens of already popular social
networks when it arrived - apart from timing/market positioning (read: luck),
what's the big deal?

Please enlighten me...

~~~
ashleyw
Nope you've got it spot on.

Facebook is like Google: it rocks and is extremely popular, but at its roots
it doesn't really have much of a story to tell — it's not that revolutionary,
if Facebook didn't become popular, another social network would.

~~~
seertaak
Exactly; the point is not that Zuckerberg came up with something no one else
had. The point is that he did it better. Just as Google didn't invent search;
they just really focused on it and did it better.

------
wavesplash
Social anthropologist my arse. Mark's inspiration was Ryze, Friendster and
Myspace (the initial feature lists are near identical). The brilliant insight
was making each network 'private' by email domain and maintaining that ability
to remain mostly walled off when they opened up the network to outsiders. The
author seems to be confusing the origin of the name with the origin of the
feature set.

------
saikat
Regardless of the fact that the general idea of a social network was nothing
new, the article hinges heavily on the fact that there was something called
"the facebook" at Exeter. But I'm pretty sure the reason he called it the
facebook was because the same thing at Harvard (a directory of students with
photos that eventually went online) is called the undergraduate facebook, and
he wanted students to immediately realize that his facebook was this, but
more.

------
paul9290
It's a clean Friendster and MySpace that is now copying Twitter. I would not
call that innovative!

It's strength is everyone, including your mom is on Facebook. From grade
school, to high school, to family & friends, etc .... MySpace never provided
that!

~~~
koepked
I sometimes think and feel like the fact that everyone is on there is a
weakness of the site. Turning down friend requests from work acquaintances and
family members is a bad move socially, but accepting those requests has forced
me to censor a lot of my posting to the site in the last year.

~~~
Jakob
I think that’s assuring the quality (not that it is very high). People start
to realize that you shouldn’t do/say something on the web that shouldn’t be
public.

If every public forum was with real names we wouldn’t read so much rubbish.

------
ianbishop
Oh come on, enough already. Who wasn't thinking about Facebook before Facebook
came out?

~~~
quizbiz
In middle school I built a system based on hacked message boards and content
management systems for students to share notes and study online (mostly the
night before tests).

Before it got 'big', I was working on it during lunch when a media specialist
saw the web page and logo and asked what it was. I thought I was screwed.

But I was at a small private school and next thing I knew, the head of the
middle school was telling my entire grade about it. Then it grew. I learned a
ton in middle school, I had my best study skills ever because I was preparing
content for the web, interacting about the content, and managing the site. At
one point I had a science teacher logging on before tests and helping
students. Eventually I won first place at a state technology fair.

But the site was always confined to my middle school.

The following summer I wrote pages upon pages of planning, figuring out how we
could convince schools to buy licensing, how we (2 friends and I) would
monetize it, grow it. But we all went to different high schools and my public
high school instantly gave me signals it would not be tolerated.

I could get into a big long debate about my views on the "honor code" but my
point about this story is that I am sure there were lots of localized
"Facebook"s around. What Mark did well in my view is that he took it beyond
his local, beyond Harvard, and he did so exceptionally well. At least better
than I, a high school freshman did.

~~~
liuliu
every geek in school built some kind of forum and cms mix for students.
However, few of them really get big and go out of their own school. That is
nothing revolutionary, all about execution...

------
utx00
the tone is unfair - he was the one who got his act together and got it done.
one could make a similar argument/"investigation" about any creation.

