Facebook Effect

In little more than half a decade, Facebook has gone from a dorm-room novelty to a company with 500 million users. It is one of the fastest growing companies in history, an essential part of the social life not only of teenagers but hundreds of millions of adults worldwide. As Facebook spreads around the globe, it creates surprising effects - even becoming instrumental in political protests from Colombia to Iran. Veteran technology reporter David Kirkpatrick had the full cooperation of Facebook's key executives in researching this fascinating history of the company and its impact on our lives. Kirkpatrick tells us how Facebook was created, why it has flourished, and where it is going next. He chronicles its successes and missteps, and gives readers the most complete assessment anywhere of founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the central figure in the company's remarkable ascent.

""The Facebook Effect" is actually two books in one. One part is the exhaustively reported story of Facebook's founding and meteoric rise to near ubiquity; the other is a thoughtful analysis of its impact." --Ethan Gilsdorf, "The Boston Globe", "A fascinating book." --Dan Fletcher, "Time", "A thoughtful, even-handed analysis of the Web site's impact. . . . "The Facebook Effect" leaves you with a deep understanding of Facebook, its philosophies and, most startlingly, its power." --David Pogue, "The New York Times Book Review", "Engrossing. . . . A detailed and scrupulously fair history of [Facebook]." --Rich Jaroslovsky, "Bloomberg Businessweek", "Fast-paced. . . . makes for gripping reading."--G. Pascal Zachary, "The San Francisco Chronicle"

David Kirkpatrick was for many years the senior editor for Internet and technology at Fortune magazine. While at Fortune, he wrote cover stories about Apple, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Sun, and numerous other technology subjects. Beginning in 2001, he created Fortune's Brainstorm conference series. More recently, he organized the Techonomy conference on the centrality of technology innovation for all human activity. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and appears frequently on television, radio, and the Internet as an expert on technology.