![]() ![]() We never talked about the fact that anyone on Earth, at my or anyone's will, can now learn in just a few minutes what I think or do, and what I want or what I would like to do. ![]() This topic has come up before, but we had never framed it quite this way. It shrunk-relatively speaking of course-due to the quickening pulse of both physical and verbal communication. Planet Earth has never been as tiny as it is now. In a short story called "Chain-Links," the writer assessed this huge shift. Weinreich thought it was something Guglielmo Marconi had first stated, but actually it was a Hungarian writer named Frigyes Karinthy. He called his company sixdegrees, based on a concept that everyone on the planet was only six connections away from anyone else. He asked himself: What if I could get everyone to index their relationships in a single place? Weinreich came up with an idea based around the concept of people volunteering information about their interests, their jobs, and their connections. They would try to identify business ideas that were possible for the first time ever because of the net. Weinreich had come up with the concept as his contribution to a weekly meeting of would-be start-up founders who got together soon after the first wave of Internet companies like Yahoo!, Amazon, and eBay appeared. On a chilly night in January 1997, a twenty-eight-year-old lawyer recently turned entrepreneur named Andrew Weinreich addressed a small crowd of investors, journalists, and friends at the Puck Building in New York City's SoHo district and tried to explain what online social networking was, why the product he was announcing was the first example, and how the concept would change the world. Based on hundreds of interviews from inside and outside Facebook, Levy's sweeping narrative of incredible entrepreneurial success and failure digs deep into the whole story of the company that has changed the world and reaped the consequences. There is no denying the power and omnipresence of Facebook in American daily life, or the imperative of this book to document the unchecked power and shocking techniques of the company, from growing at all costs to outmaneuvering its biggest rivals to acquire WhatsApp and Instagram, to developing a platform so addictive even some of its own are now beginning to realize its dangers. Millions of words have been written about Facebook, but no one has told the complete story, documenting its ascendancy and missteps. In light of recent controversies surrounding election-influencing 'fake news' accounts, the handling of its users' personal data, and growing discontent with the actions of its founder and CEO'who has enormous power over what the world sees and says'never has a company been more central to the national conversation. Today, Facebook is nearly unrecognizable from its first, modest iteration. The result is evenhanded and devastating.'' San Francisco Chronicle ' evenhanded conclusions are still damning.'' Reason ' doesn't shy from asking the tough questions.'' The Washington Post 'reminds you the HBO show Silicon Valley did not have to reach far for its satire.'' NPR.org The definitive history, packed with untold stories, of one of America's most controversial and powerful companies: Facebook As a college sophomore, Mark Zuckerberg created a simple website to serve as a campus social network. 'Levy's all-access Facebook reflects the reputational swan dive of its subject. ![]()
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