How Facebook is taking over our lives

A chiropractor and acupuncturist, Lichtenstein was already a member of some skilled web-based consumer teams. The very last thing he wanted was one other message field to test. Then a buddy posted a hyperlink to photographs from a visit to Thailand and India on his Fb web page and flatly refused to distribute them some other means. The pal’s assumption: Duh – everybody’s on Fb.

And so Lichtenstein, 57, just lately grew to become an official member of the Fb military, 175 million robust and, Fb says, rising on the astounding price of about 5 million new customers every week, making it a uncommon shiny spot in a dismal financial system. If Fb had been a rustic, it will have a inhabitants practically as giant as Brazil’s. It even edges out the U.S. tv viewers for Tremendous Bowl XLIII, which drew a record-setting 152 million eyeballs.

However today the oldsters fervently updating their Fb pages aren’t simply tech-savvy children: The school and post-college crowd the location initially aimed to serve (18- to 24-year-olds) now makes up lower than 1 / 4 of customers. The latest members – those behind Fb’s accelerating development price – are extra, ahem, mature sorts like Lichtenstein, who by no means thought they’d have the time or inclination to overshare on the net. It’s simply that Fb has lastly began to make their busy lives a little bit extra productive – and much more enjoyable.

Strive logging in to rapidly test a message, and it’s possible you’ll end up scrolling by way of new child photographs from that man who used to take a seat subsequent to you in Mr. Peterson’s English class. How did such a goofball find yourself with such a cute child? And the way’d he discover you right here anyhow? Quickly you’re checking the chums you could have in widespread. This addictive high quality retains Fb’s typical consumer on the location for a median of 169 minutes a month, in response to ComScore. Examine that with Google Information, the place the typical reader spends 13 minutes a month checking up on the world, or the New York Instances web site, which holds on to readers for a mere ten minutes a month.

The “stickiness” of the location is a key a part of 24-year-old CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s authentic plan to construct an internet model of the relationships we have now in actual life. Offline we stumble upon buddies and find yourself speaking for hours. We flip by way of previous photographs with our household. We be part of golf equipment. Fb lets us do all that in digital type. But we additionally current totally different faces to the totally different folks in our lives: An “something goes” web page we share with friends won’t be acceptable for workplace mates – or for the mothers and grandmas who more and more are becoming a member of the location. Primary privateness controls right this moment enable customers to share various levels of data with buddies, however once I just lately met with Zuckerberg in Palo Alto, he waxed philosophical about ultimately giving a consumer the flexibility to have a special Fb persona for every Fb friendship, a form of on-line model of the road from Walt Whitman’s “Music of Myself”: “I comprise multitudes.”

His final objective is much less poetic – and maybe extra formidable: to show Fb into the planet’s standardized communication (and advertising and marketing) platform, as ubiquitous and intuitive as the phone however much more interactive, multidimensional – and indispensable. Your Fb ID fairly merely might be your gateway to the digital world, Zuckerberg predicts. “We predict that should you can construct one worldwide platform the place you may simply kind in anybody’s identify, discover the individual you’re on the lookout for, and talk with them,” he advised a German viewers in January, “that’s a very useful system to be constructing.”

Simply how useful is topic to nice debate. Microsoft in 2007 invested $240 million for a 1.6% stake within the firm, giving Fb a valuation of about $15 billion. However in response to a June 23, 2008, court docket continuing, the corporate values itself at $3.7 billion. (With a 20% to 30% stake, Zuckerberg fairly probably is the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, on paper a minimum of.) A giant a part of the problem in assigning a valuation to Fb is that its monetary outcomes don’t come anyplace close to to matching its runaway success signing up members: The location pulled in estimated revenues of simply $280 million final 12 months, and sources near the corporate say it didn’t break even.

Certainly, typically it appears as if everybody however Fb is capitalizing on the platform. The Democratic Celebration in Maine is utilizing it to prepare common conferences. Accounting agency Ernst & Younger depends on the location to recruit new hires, and Dell will quickly do the identical. Microsoft’s new working system has a slew of options lifted straight from Fb’s playbook.

Zuckerberg is aware of it is a make-or-break second for the corporate he based 5 years in the past in his linoleum-floored Harvard dorm room. He should determine tips on how to proceed so as to add new members and make Fb very important to its mass viewers with out alienating the youngsters and early adopters who helped popularize the location. (Progress has leveled off at MySpace, the unique mega—social networking website with 130 million members, and it might wind up as a playground for music lovers.)

He’ll must fend off search large Google, which has its personal grand plan to revenue from social networks. And he has to dwell as much as his change-the-world bravado: The Web is riddled with examples of corporations and providers that promised to be the following nice communications platform—AOL (owned by Fortune’s father or mother) and Yahoo, to call two—however failed to take action.

To assist Fb determine tips on how to revenue from its scale and recognition, Zuckerberg has introduced in a chief working officer, Sheryl Sandberg, who constructed Google’s money-minting AdWords program. YouTube’s former chief monetary officer, Gideon Yu, runs the finance operation. And the board is filled with old-school cred (Washington Put up writer Don Graham and enterprise capitalist Jim Breyer) and tech smarts (PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Netscape founder Marc Andreessen). Zuckerberg, who favors denims and T-shirts, has taken to sporting ties beneath his black North Face jacket as a result of, as he tells his colleagues, “2009 is a severe 12 months.”

And never only for Fb. Few ultra-young tech firm founders handle to carry on to the CEO reins so long as Zuckerberg has. They both go on to change into the stuff of legend (Invoice Gates) or flame out fabulously. There are actually those that ponder whether the wunderkind is in over his head, punting on profitability when each different firm in Silicon Valley is underneath huge strain to make cash. And what’s a stiff, reticent man who’d quite be writing code doing within the CEO’s job within the first place? Certain, Zuckerberg’s executed fairly effectively up to now, making a website that has gained a rabid following amongst mainstream internet customers. However a whole lot of these folks had been as soon as keen about their AOL accounts too. Zuckerberg has our consideration. What’s he going to do with it?

A digital world

Mark Zuckerberg has all the time favored to construct issues. I first spoke with him in the summertime of 2005 when he was nonetheless crashing on a pal’s sofa in Menlo Park, Calif.? He was on his cellphone, pacing backwards and forwards within the yard as he defined his dad and mom’ response to his mission: “The factor I made earlier than Fb nearly bought me kicked out of faculty,” he mentioned, referring to Facemash, a website that permit folks price photographs. He went earlier than the college’s administrative board to reply questions on how he gathered information. “After I began making Fb, [my parents] had been, like, don’t make one other website.” Then all his Harvard classmates – in addition to college students from the remainder of the Ivy League – joined, and he spent the rest of his school cash on servers. A lot for college.

Even in our preliminary interview, Zuckerberg was clear that he wasn’t merely creating one other on-line software for school children to test one another out. He known as Fb a “social utility” and defined that in the future everybody would be capable to use it to find folks on the net – a really world digital cellphone e book. And he additionally knew that if the location had been simple to make use of, a mix of peer strain and the so-called community impact would, like, completely kick in. Since that summer time afternoon Zuckerberg has handed authorized ingesting age, discovered an condominium, accepted greater than $400 million in enterprise capital, and attended the World Financial Discussion board in Davos, Switzerland, a number of occasions.

However Zuckerberg makes it clear to me that he’s nonetheless intensely centered on connecting your complete world on Fb – solely now his imaginative and prescient goes effectively past the location as a digital cellphone e book. It turns into the equal of the cellphone itself: It’s the most important software folks use to speak for work and pleasure. It additionally turns into the central place the place members set up events, retailer photos, discover jobs, watch movies, and play video games. Finally they’ll use their Fb ID as an internet passkey to realize entry to web sites and on-line boards that require private identification. In different phrases, Fb might be the place folks dwell their digital lives, with out the creepy avatars.

To attain that objective Zuckerberg has introduced in loads of seasoned veterans, like Google’s Sandberg, however he’s additionally surrounded himself with younger fans who share his view that Fb can change the way in which folks dwell and work. Just like the early staff at Google, most gained’t see 30 for a very long time. Cross by a receptionist, a straw-haired lady with funky glasses, and also you’ll discover she’s updating her Fb profile. Stroll by way of the stretch of College Avenue in Palo Alto that homes the corporate’s totally different places of work (it’s on the point of consolidate operations in new digs in April) and also you’ll be capable to differentiate the Fb staff from the enterprise capitalists who toil in places of work close by: The Facebookers are the super-young brainiacs in ratty T-shirts and denims.

At occasions it might appear arduous to reconcile Zuckerberg’s lofty aspirations for Fb with the totally commonplace content material that customers create on the location. Contemplate 25 Random Issues, a brand new tackle the chain letter that has grown so widespread it was written up within the New York Instances Type part. You record 25 supposedly random issues about your self and ship the observe on to 25 of your pals (who’re alleged to do the identical), however your randomness additionally finally ends up on show to any gawker who could also be browsing your profile. The gadgets vary from the banal (No. 17: I by no means, ever, ever throw up. Like 5 occasions in my grownup life) to the intimate (No. 2: I knew I used to be homosexual within the sixth grade however didn’t inform anybody till I used to be 19). The characteristic is excessive profile – some 37,500 lists sprang up in simply two weeks – however taken as an entire it simply looks as if a whole lot of user-generated babble.

But it’s that very babble that makes Fb so useful to entrepreneurs. Think about if an advertiser had the flexibility to snoop on each cellphone dialog you’ve ever had. In a means, that’s what all of the wall posts, standing updates, 25 Random Issues, and film tagging on Fb quantity to: a semipublic airing of stuff individuals are excited by doing, shopping for, and making an attempt. Certain, you may ship non-public messages utilizing Fb, and Zuckerberg ultimately hopes to present you much more instruments to tailor your profile in order that the face you current to, say, your employer could be very totally different from the way in which you look on-line to your school roommate. Identical to in actual life. However the operating lists of on-line interactions on Fb, referred to as “feeds,” are what make Fb totally different from different social networking websites – and they’re exactly what make firms salivate.

The stream

Each consumer on Fb has two feeds. There’s a private feed, which you’ll discover in your profile web page alongside along with your photograph and record of pursuits. Each time you log a standing replace, remark, or video submit, that interplay is captured and saved in your evaluation; these adjustments additionally change into fodder for a second information feed that runs on your house web page, the primary web page you see when you go surfing to the location.

That feed retains tabs on all of the interactions your pals are having (and alerts buddies to updates you’ve made in your private feed). In case your brother RSVP’d to a cocktail party, for instance, you is perhaps notified about it, even should you weren’t invited to attend. And should you change your profile photograph, it might let your brother know. Like Fb itself, the feeds are topic to the community impact: The extra information you share and work together with, the extra sturdy your information feed turns into.

Zuckerberg calls the sum of these interactions the “stream,” and it’s his latest obsession. In contrast to Google, which makes use of complicated algorithms to serve up ads based mostly on what you seek for, Fb enables you to assist “curate” your feeds. The data that pops up is partly a results of controls you determine in your privateness settings and suggestions you present to Fb. However Fb can also observe your habits, and if the location notices you’re spending a whole lot of time on the fan web page of a sure film star, for instance, it’s going to ship you extra details about that movie star.

For sure, entrepreneurs would like to faucet into that info. “If there are 150 million folks in a room, it’s best to most likely go to that room,” says Narinder Singh, chief product officer for Appirio, which helps large corporations like Dell and Starbucks discover methods to attach with customers over the location. “It’s too enticing a set of individuals and too giant a group for companies to disregard.”

But as a result of companies haven’t but successfully infiltrated Fb, its customers could also be underneath the mistaken impression that they aren’t underneath surveillance. “What I like is that it doesn’t bombard you with ads, so it feels actually private,” says Heather Rowley, a 35-year-old photographer in Berkeley. It appears inevitable that some members will really feel betrayed or uneasy when advertisements based mostly on informal chats with buddies begin to seem on their feeds.

Fb already has had one brush with member backlash in 2007 when it launched a characteristic known as Beacon, which allowed members to see what web sites their buddies visited, and even confirmed purchases on e-commerce websites. Customers protested vehemently – one even filed a lawsuit on privateness grounds – and Fb apologized.

Now the corporate is making an attempt a barely totally different method. A characteristic known as Fb Join lets customers go browsing to firm web sites utilizing their Fb logins. The system, which dovetails with Zuckerberg’s imaginative and prescient of a Fb account as a type of private ID on the net (privateness settings and all), appeals to advertisers for a few causes. When a consumer logs on to a third-party website utilizing Fb Join, that exercise could also be reported on her buddies’ information feeds, which serves as a de facto endorsement. The software additionally makes it simple for members to ask their buddies to take a look at the advertiser’s website. Starbucks, for instance, makes use of Fb Join on its Pledge5 website, which asks folks to donate 5 hours of time to volunteer work. If you happen to register utilizing a Fb account, a brand new display screen, a hybrid of Fb and the Pledge5 dwelling web page, pops up with info on tips on how to discover native volunteer alternatives. A tab on the web page asks you to “assist unfold the phrase.” Click on on it and your total handle e book of Fb buddies pops up, enabling you to evangelize Pledge5 with only a few keystrokes.

Up to now many of the organizations utilizing Fb Join are social enterprises, like Pledge5, or information shops, like CNN, soliciting members for dialogue teams. Who is aware of how Fb customers will react when a brokerage asks a member to unfold the phrase about its providers. In fact, members can ignore the exhortations to ask buddies, the identical means they may decline to ahead their 25 Random Issues.

He additionally insists that advertising and marketing on Fb isn’t obtrusive, and that customers can management what sort of promoting they see: Every advert comprises a small thumbs-up or thumbs-down button. If a consumer finds an advert irrelevant, repetitive, or offensive, she clicks thumbs-down, and Fb data her dissatisfaction. Finally the inappropriate advertisements will go away. And when advertisements are helpful, many on-line customers do click on on them. Rowley, the California photographer who values Fb’s intimacy, says she just lately clicked on a Virgin America advert for tickets to the East Coast when it popped up on her information feed. “I used to be going there, so it made sense,” she says.

Nonetheless, the corporate couldn’t have picked a worse time to begin wooing entrepreneurs in earnest. Internet advertising development is predicted to decelerate in 2009 from 17.5% final 12 months to simply 8.9%. And traditionally most of these advert {dollars} have flowed to portals and different on-line locations, not experimental websites and social networks like Fb. When Sheryl Sandberg arrived at Fb, a considerable chunk of the corporate’s revenues had been nonetheless coming from a 2006 cope with Microsoft by which the software program behemoth bought conventional banner advertisements on Fb pages and the events cut up the income. However makes an attempt to promote conventional on-line advertisements on Fb and different social-networking websites have failed miserably: Banner advertisements can promote for as little as 15 cents per 1,000 clicks (in contrast with, say, $8 per 1,000 clicks for an advert on a focused information portal comparable to Yahoo Auto) as a result of entrepreneurs know that members ignore them.

Sandberg acknowledges that Fb has rather more work to do to safe advertisers. “What we have now to determine is, How will we construct a monetization machine which is in step with what customers are doing on the location?” she says. “It’s about execution, doing issues sooner and higher, getting extra customers and extra advertisers.”

Fb’s march to 200 million customers started in earnest in January 2008. That’s when the location made translation instruments obtainable to worldwide customers. At this time greater than 70% of Fb customers are outdoors the U.S., and most of them learn it of their native language. However anecdotal proof means that American baby-boomers have found Fb in an enormous means: Some, like Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, use the location to keep watch over their children’ on-line actions. Others are utilizing it as a networking software in a nasty financial system.

The fastest-growing demographic on the location? Girls 55 and older, up 175% since September 2008. Cynics would possibly say that if Granny is on Fb, the location completely has jumped the shark. Fairly the opposite: Having a broad swath of customers is precisely what Zuckerberg desires. The arrival of an older, much less web-centric crowd means that he has succeeded in making the location simple to make use of. And Fb can’t change into a standardized platform if solely cool children use it. Apart from, there doesn’t at present appear to be one other sizzling social-networking website that’s drawing younger customers away from Fb in giant numbers.

However the Fb juggernaut nonetheless might very simply go awry: Keep in mind AOL’s Instantaneous Messenger? Youngsters lived on it and corporations began utilizing it in lieu of e-mail. However AOL by no means discovered a option to make cash on it.

Fb might meet an analogous destiny; certainly, it’s a little worrisome that neither Zuckerberg nor Sandberg appears to really feel any explicit urgency about placing Fb within the black. Zuckerberg prefers to go away the query of revenues to Sandberg, who punts: “I feel what’s actually necessary is that we’re in a position to fund our enlargement, and we’re very centered on that,” she advised me in mid-February. Traders appear fairly passive about it as effectively. Early board member Jim Breyer, who put in $1 million of his personal cash and $12.7 million from an Accel Companions fund, says that earnings are “a secondary consideration on this stage of the expansion.” He desires to get a return on his funding, however he’s not pushing something now.

After which there’s Microsoft, which is within the uncommon place of being a Fb proprietor, a associate, and, by way of its Home windows Stay social community, a competitor. Since taking a stake in Fb, Microsoft has been working intently with the location to create hyperlinks between Fb and the Home windows Stay social community in order that when members replace their standing message or add photographs on Fb, that info seems on the Microsoft website too.

Fb has influenced Microsoft in different methods. Its new working system, OS 7, includes a record of interactions, information, and knowledge that occurs to look rather a lot like Fb’s information feed. May Microsoft find yourself shopping for Fb outright? Either side would have a lot to realize from the association. Fb traders might get their cash out, and Microsoft, which has been looking for a option to ship extra of its software program functions over the Web, would personal a viable on-line platform for promoting a brand new era of providers. However Zuckerberg, like that different well-known technology-loving Harvard dropout, appears decided to create a enterprise empire that touches nearly each laptop consumer on this planet. Zuckerberg’s not excited by promoting to Microsoft; he desires to construct the following Microsoft. And with 175 million “buddies,” he’s off to a helluva begin.

Reporter affiliate Beth Kowitt contributed to this text.