Please don't consider the facts-loose movie based on the tabloid hit piece as history. It makes up incredibly awful things.

Let me give an example of the one that bothers me the most. The "Sean Parker snorting coke off underage interns at a frat house" thing? Never happened. The account compiled from research was that he rented a house on a beach in North Carolina for a vacation. During the week there was a big party that got out of hand. The next morning the police raided it and found some drugs somewhere in the house immediately after the party. Since Sean was the rent signer, he was the one that got booked for possession. Nobody thought it was a big deal, but Jim Breyer went on a war path and basically got him thrown out. My hypothesis has always been that the investors wanted to throw him out because he was training Mark on how to deal with the investors, and this was just the first plausible thing they could latch on to.

I highly recommend The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick. It's a great read and a far more accurate book on the history of Facebook and who Mark Zuckerberg really is. https://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company-Connec...

I'm not convinced he's running for president, but my guess is his politics are essentially democrat-flavored neo-liberal globalist. I don't say that as an insult. I would probably vote for him.

I just finished reading The Facebook Effect [0] and the author there suggests that countries are worried that Facebook poses a threat to a countries sovereignty. Facebook often has more information on citizens of a country than the political body does. If Facebook plays along and is willing to share that information, the politicians would probably be happy. But it is still an uncomfortable thought to some that a private entity holds that much influence. Facebook has been aggressive in establishing deep roots in the web such as universal login and tracking information. You can argue their entire worth depends on being deeply integrated with the lives of its users. Integrating Facebook information with things like passports and voting doesn't seem so far fetched.

I'm curious as to what a democratic country can do to punish a service like Facebook. I don't think most governments have the authority to force ISPs to block access to a website. What could happen if Facebook doesn't comply?

[0] http://www.amazon.com/The-Facebook-Effect-Company-Connecting...

David Kirkpatrick's book, "The Facebook Effect"[1] seems to gel with Mark's vision and attitude about Facebook in this video - that he's an ambitious & smart guy who started with a relatively small idea, and kind of stumbled upon its evolution into a much grander vision.

According to the book and Wikipedia[2], there was even a time when Mark was even more focused on another idea of his, Wirehog. It's possible he may have even had some doubts about Facebook, or lost interest in it for a little while.

And hey, what startup founder hasn't had those thoughts? They're totally natural. I'm sure some have a razor-sharp focus & vision from Day One, but I would never fault a founder for having a few shaky moments of doubt here & there.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company-Connect...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehog

I think this is_fb_employee variable is to check if they should be running the internal testing version of Facebook. Facebook has a subdomain which, in their offices everyone is redirected to. It's something like 'preview.facebook.com'. It houses the latest testing build of Facebook. This way all the employees are testing Facebook just by being on it, and they have other people testing their new builds for short periods of time (~2 weeks). Chances are, the server checks if the user is at an IP of a Facebook office, and that's the only condition where this is true. This would make sense because if they just redirect users to Facebook.com in their offices to preview.facebook.com, then nearly anyone could do it. This would also help prevent leaking of new features as well, because employees wouldn't be able to access them outside of Facebook.

They mention this in the Facebook Effect (http://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company-Connect...). Or, at least the part about an subdomain for testing their website in-house. Everything else was me analyzing that.

FWIW, there's already a thread on this topic:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2026716

But to answer the question: I started out with a goal of integrating Apache Shindig[1] into Quoddy[2] to enable OpenSocial[3] support. A very basic version of that is up and working, so now I'm working on refining the account / profile "stuff" in Quoddy and factoring out some common code for use in another project[4].

I'm also trying to get in a fair bit of reading. I had started Googled[5] before the break, and I finished that earlier today. I'd also started Simply Complexity[6], which I finished sometime in the last 24 hours or so (time is starting to become a fuzzy concept to me here). Then I read The Facebook Effect[7] which I just finished up a few minutes ago, and now I'm starting to re-read Bill Gates' Business @ The Speed of Thought[8]. Once I finish that, I'm hoping to find time to squeeze in The Art of Enterprise Information Architecture[9] and - if things go smashingly well - Complexity - A Guided Tour[10].

1: http://shindig.apache.org

2: https://github.com/fogbeam/Quoddy

3: http://www.opensocial.org

4: https://github.com/fogbeam/Neddick

5: http://www.amazon.com/Googled-End-World-As-Know/dp/014311804...

6: http://www.amazon.com/Simply-Complexity-Clear-Guide-Theory/d...

7: http://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company-Connect...

8: http://www.amazon.com/Business-Speed-Thought-Succeeding-Digi...

9: http://www.amazon.com/Art-Enterprise-Information-Architectur...

10: http://www.amazon.com/Complexity-Guided-Tour-Melanie-Mitchel...

"... I'm not 100% sure, but I suspect that once Facebook had about 5-10 universities they were unstoppable. Once you have 5-10 universities, you're going to get all the rest. ..."

It wasn't that easy according to "The Facebook Effect" ~ http://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company-Connect... Competitors existed but Facebook had 2 things going for them that the others did not - a) A fast school addition tool allowing Facebook to quickly add new universities & b) A strategic thinking founder who realised if you added universities around existing sites (friends, associates of the target university) you could pull in enough of the users of their competitors sites to render them ineffective. Such is the power of the "social graph" and relentless determination.

Google is missing the thing that Facebook does well here, "identifying real people". [0] When I looked at the "Friends" google identified it was really just connections I'd made with Twitter, flickr and various other services. Very few I'd met or consider a friend. Parsing data to find friends isn't as good as being sucked into the human "social graph".

Identifying real people is a core concept at Facebook. and something they have got right (identity) and google will find difficult to replicate.

[0] I wouldn't have realised this point as quickly had I not read "The Facebook Effect" ~ http://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company-Connect... which despite its flaws gives some useful insights. Excerpt: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/06/facebook-david-kirkpatrick/

Some books I've read this summer, which I can recommend:

- The Facebook Effect -- well-written insider's account of the history of Facebook and its ambitions. http://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company-Connect...

- The Quantum Enigma -- an accessible digest of quantum mechanics and its philosophical consequences. http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Enigma-Physics-Encounters-Cons...

- Flesh & Machines -- a lightweight history of robotics and some wacky speculations by MIT's Rodney Brooks. http://www.amazon.com/Flesh-Machines-Robots-Will-Change/dp/0...

- The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution of Personalized Medecine -- a well-backed account of what is or will be possible in medicine thanks to a better understanding of the genome and increase use of DNA sequencing for prevention, diagnostic, and treatment. http://www.amazon.com/Language-Life-Revolution-Personalized-...

- ... by David Sedaris -- Funny short stories. Perhaps The Santaland Diaries for something light but really amusing, and When You Are Engulfed in Flames for something darker and more well-known. Also, if you like short stories, I heartily recommend Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules, a varied collection of short stories selected by Sedaris. http://www.amazon.com/David-Sedaris/e/B000AQ3YUW/ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0349119759 http://www.amazon.com/When-You-Are-Engulfed-Flames/dp/031615... http://www.amazon.com/Children-Playing-Before-Statue-Hercule...

- Dreams of My Father -- Barack Obama writes candidly and beautifully about his childhood and early adulthood; it's not a political book, and it's worth reading for the writing alone. http://www.amazon.com/Dreams-My-Father-Story-Inheritance/dp/...

- Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty: a chatty history of mathematics, and its perception. http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Loss-Certainty-Galaxy-Book...

Part 2 of extract from an upcoming book, "The Facebook Effect" by David Kirkpatrick ~ http://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company-Connect... The first part is here ~ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1325071