Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook Free Essay Example

A couple of months ago, I was scrolling through YouTube Shorts and I came across a video explaining the background of Facebook. The man who faced serious multiple charges of breaching security in late October of 2003, through his website called Facemash, with expulsions throughout Harvard for his actions, known as Mark Zuckerberg. Stealing the idea from three other seniors in his class, faced a lawsuit with the consequences later in court. Facebook, which started with the same idea in 2003, is now huge across the world, filled with others' privacy continuing to this day. “While Zuckerberg's antics and the site's profits eventually led to him becoming the world's youngest multi-billionaire, he's done his part to spread the wealth around.” (“Studysection Blog for Brief History of the Facebook.”) Though he has faced the consequences of plagiarizing, he has transformed the idea into much more than what it was planned for. Mark Zuckerberg has helped all over the world through the social and cultural impact of the app and its evolution into our modern society.

Mark Zuckerberg became a Harvard student at the start of the fall of 2002, where he studied psychology and computer science. He started a website called Facemash, “He put his computer science skills to questionable use by hacking into Harvard's security network, where he copied the student ID images used by the dormitories and used them to populate his new website. Closed a few days later, after it was shut down by Harvard execs” (Bellis). A very questionable way to get pictures of students for his website that led to, “serious charges of breach of security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy” (Bellis). Once he dealt with the fees and fines of the school, “on February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched a new website called TheFacebook. He named the site after the directories that were handed out to university students to help them to get to know one another better.” But, this was not also a good idea by Mark because, “six days later, he got into trouble again when Harvard seniors Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra accused him of stealing their ideas for an intended social networking website called HarvardConnection. The claimants later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, however, the matter was eventually settled out of court” (Bellis).  Mark Zuckerberg liked to exploit others for their ideas and take the credit until they stood up for themselves and called him out. Although he was sued in court by these seniors, he offered them a spot in his company to work for him as they would give him more ideas to improve their original ideas and specialize in certain areas of the website. 

Exploring through different websites and articles on the social and cultural impacts of Facebook and how its media has changed throughout the nations, I came across an article explaining the social impact of research, also used as the social impact coverage ratio or SICOR. The journalists of the research article “selected 10 projects in different fields of knowledge to calculate the SICOR, and the results indicate that 0.43% of the tweets and Facebook posts collected provide linkages with information about the social impact” (Pulido, C. M., ⨯ Gisela Redondo-Sama, Sordé-Martí, T., & Flecha, R.). Using these sources of information, I was able to access the impacts and motivations of Facebook. “Vasalou, Joinson, and Courvoisier (2010) examined the impact of experience with the site and culture on the motivations for using Facebook. Their sample consisted of respondents from the US, UK, Italy, Greece, and France. They found that experience with the site and the culture determine the motivations for using Facebook… They also found that irrespective of cultural differences, social searching remains the primary motivation for Facebook use” (Mathiyalakan, S., Heilman, G., Ho, K. K. W., & Law, W). While Facebook has spawned plenty of unappealing habits, its genius was in creating a platform that allowed people to connect over long distances and reconnect over lost years. The impact of Facebook is seen in different languages to similar views of others' perspectives and memories.  “According to quantitative data from April 2017 published by Statista, Twitter and Facebook are included in the top ten leading social networks worldwide, as ranked by the number of active users. Facebook is at the top of the list, with 1,968 million active users…” (Pulido, C. M., ⨯ Gisela Redondo-Sama, Sordé-Martí, T., & Flecha, R). The important takeaway from Facebook's rise is that people have a desire to connect broadly and interact with others.

From stealing the idea from three seniors at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg has built on the idea of connecting over social media to millions of users all over the world. On February 4, 2004, “Zuckerberg and co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin launch Facebook for Harvard students. A month later it opens to students of Yale, Columbia, and Stanford. Facebook would soon become a phenomenon across college campuses in America” (Source #5). After taking the idea of connecting through social media, Mark Zuckerberg was not accessible to Harvard with his website Facebook, but soon was changed and became accessible to other schools. In June, of the same year, he teams up with Napster’s Sean Parker, who later becomes president and moves in. Peter Thiel, Paypal’s co-founder, makes a $500,000 investment and helps steer others toward the company. Taking a step forward in the company, Zuckerberg creates his users' profiles to allow and post public messages and by December 1, his site reaches 1 million active users. Soon in 2007, “Microsoft purchases a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million. The investment values the company at $15 billion.” “Facebook buys WhatsApp for a jaw-dropping $19 billion in a bold bid to dominate the latest frontier of social media: messaging apps… Facebook buys Oculus, a virtual reality startup that first gained prominence with a successful Kickstarter campaign” (“Facebook at 15: How A College Experiment Changed the World.”). Valuing their company to billions of dollars, Facebook continues its process of expanding and creates a social sharing site that has pioneered a “Like” function and real-time news updates, just similar to Twitter. The site continues to show the news around the world showing just how powerful a tool Facebook can be for political organizing. In 2017, “Facebook crosses 2 billion monthly active users, a nearly unprecedented scale for an internet company. ``We feel like our responsibility is expanding, especially around passing this milestone of 2 billion people in the community,’ Zuckerberg said” (“Facebook at 15: How A College Experiment Changed the World.”). Starting in 2004, Zuckerberg and his team put their efforts into making this goal happen while keeping up to the standards of expanding non-stop. By the end of 2018, “Facebook ends the year with ‘more than 30,000’ people working on safety on the platform, according to Zuckerberg, and a commitment to invest ‘billions of dollars in security annually” (“Facebook at 15: How A College Experiment Changed the World.”). After learning from his past mistakes of low security from other websites, he knows to update and create a stronger barrier for his site and the privacy of others.

From stealing the idea from three other seniors in his class, Zuckerberg faced a lawsuit with the consequences later in court. Facebook, which started with the same idea in 2003, is now huge and across the world, filled with others' privacy continuing to this day. At the age of 23, Mark Zuckerberg became the youngest billionaire among the top 50 richest persons in the world. Learning from the background of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg’s journey, I realized the amount of work and the amount of support he got from others and the support he gave to others through the impacts on people's social lives and also through culture. The evolution of the site was outstanding from a couple of school student users to billions of users and billions of dollars in investments. A message or a theme I can take away from this is that if you can improve an idea that others won't take to the next level, you can be more successful than you think. Not to give up on what you started, to improve it, and make it useful in life and for those around you.