American businessman | Born: 14 May 1984, White Plains, New York, United States.
Facebook is inherently viral. There are lots of sites that include a contact importer, and for lots of them it doesn't really make sense. For Facebook it fits so well. It wasn't until a few years in that we started building some tools that made it easier to import friends to the site. That was a huge thing that spiked growth.
I think what we've found is that when you can use products with your friends and your family and the people you care about, they tend to be more engaging. I think that we're really going to see this huge shift where a lot of industry is and products are just going to be remade to be social.
The connectivity declaration is about uniting the whole industry - a lot of companies that typically compete very fiercely - to push in a coherent direction.
Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They're keeping up with their friends and family, but they're also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand. They're connecting with the audience that they want to connect to. It's almost a disadvantage if you're not on it now.
What really motivates people at Facebook is building something that's worthwhile, that they're going to be proud to show to friends and family.
Working with a lot of people at the same time is a task. I really like making stuff and getting stuff done. One of the things I really liked about Facebook was that I could always move so quickly. I wrote the original application in, like, nine days at the end of January.
If you look at the history of our country over the last 100 years, there have been periods where science and research have been celebrated. They were really kind of held up as heroes in society, which encouraged a generation of people to go into these fields.
We are a mission-driven company. In order to do this, we have to build a great team. And in order to do that, you need people to know they can make a bunch of money. So we need a business model to make a lot of money.
I mean, we've built a lot of products that we think are good, and will help people share photos and share videos and write messages to each other. But it's really all about how people are spreading Facebook around the world in all these different countries. And that's what's so amazing about the scale that it's at today.
I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.
The amount of trust and bandwidth that you build up working with someone for five, seven, 10 years? It's just awesome. I care about openness and connectedness in a global sense.
I spend a lot of time just, you know, with my girlfriend and my dog. And I mean, we don't have a lot of furniture in our house, so it's really simple. And we're trying to build products for everyone in the world, right. And you don't want to get isolated to do that.
I hope that Facebook and other Internet technologies were able to help people, just like we hope that we help them communicate and organize and do whatever they want to every single day, but I don't pretend that if Facebook didn't exist, that this wouldn't even be possible. Of course, it would have.
Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission - to make the world more open and connected.
We know that for every 1 person who get access to the Internet, one new job gets created, and one person gets lifted out of poverty. So in theory, going and connecting everyone on the Internet is a large national and even global priority.
I got my first computer in the 6th grade or so. As soon as I got it, I was interested in finding out how it worked and how the programs worked and then figuring out how to write programs at just deeper and deeper levels within the system.
I just think people have a lot of fiction. But, you know, I mean, the real story of Facebook is just that we've worked so hard for all this time. I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers for six years and coded.
It's not that every single thing that happens on Facebook is gonna be good. This is humanity. People use tools for good and bad, but I think that we have a clear responsibility to make sure that the good is amplified and to do everything we can to mitigate the bad.
In terms of doing work and in terms of learning and evolving as a person, you just grow more when you get more people's perspectives... I really try and live the mission of the company and... keep everything else in my life extremely simple.
The thing that we are trying to do at facebook, is just help people connect and communicate more efficiently.
When I was in college I did a lot of stupid things and I don't want to make an excuse for that. Some of the things that people accuse me of are true, some of them aren't. There are pranks, IMs.
When people are connected, we can just do some great things. They have the opportunity to get access to jobs, education, health, communications. We have the opportunity to bring the people we care about closer to us. It really makes a big difference.
Figuring out what the next big trend is tells us what we should focus on.
I don't have an alarm clock. If someone needs to wake me up, then I have my BlackBerry next to me.
I literally coded Facebook in my dorm room and launched it from my dorm room. I rented a server for $85 a month, and I funded it by putting an ad on the side, and we've funded ever since by putting ads on the side.
Back, you know, a few generations ago, people didn't have a way to share information and express their opinions efficiently to a lot of people. But now they do. Right now, with social networks and other tools on the Internet, all of these 500 million people have a way to say what they're thinking and have their voice be heard.
Once you have a product that you are happy with, you the need to centralize things to continue growth.
There are different ways to do innovation. You can plant a lot of seeds, not be committed to any particular one of them, but just see what grows. And this really isn't how we've approached this. We go mission-first, then focus on the pieces we need and go deep on them and be committed to them.
A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.
If we're trying to build a world-class News Feed and a world-class messaging product and a world-class search product and a world-class ad system, and invent virtual reality and build drones, I can't write every line of code. I can't write any lines of code.
Our mission is to connect every person in the world. You don't do that by having a service people pay for.
Right now, with social networks and other tools on the Internet, all of these 500 million people have a way to say what they're thinking and have their voice be heard.
Founding a company is hard. Most of it isn't smooth. You'll have to make very hard decisions. You have to fire a few people. Therefore, if you don't believe in your mission, giving up is easy. The majority of founders give up. But the best founders don't give up.
It's, like, even in journeys like Facebook, we've had some very serious ups and downs.
The question isn't, 'What do we want to know about people?', It's, 'What do people want to tell about themselves?'
I feel that the best companies are started not because the founder wanted a company but because the founder wanted to change the world... If you decide you want to found a company, you maybe start to develop your first idea. And hire lots of workers.
In general, we're a social network. I prefer that because I think it is focused on the people part of it - as opposed to some people call it social media, which I think focuses more on the content.
When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place. So, what we view our role as, is giving people that power.
All of my friends who have younger siblings who are going to college or high school - my number one piece of advice is: You should learn how to program.
It's really easy to have a nice philosophy about openness, but moving the world in that direction is a different thing. It requires both understanding where you want to go and being pragmatic about getting there.
The companies that work are the ones that people really care about and have a vision for the world so do something you like.
This is a perverse thing, personally, but I would rather be in the cycle where people are underestimating us. It gives us latitude to go out and make big bets that excite and amaze people.
We don't sell data; we don't allow anyone to sell data.
We're running the company to serve more people.
When we were a smaller company, Facebook login was widely adopted, and the growth rate for it has been quite quick. But in order to get to the next level and become more ubiquitous, it needs to be trusted even more.
“Getting the team to a good state is not a milestone by itself that I care about.”
If you're always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.
Our goal is to make it so there's as little friction as possible to having a social experience.
I will only hire someone to work directly for me if I would work for that person. It's a pretty good test.
Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.
You can use your real identity, or you can use phone numbers for something like WhatsApp, and pseudonyms for something like Instagram. But in any of those you're not just sharing and consuming content, you are also building relationships with people and building an understanding of people.
“I made so many mistakes in running the company so far, basically any mistake you can think of I probably made. I think, if anything, the Facebook story is a great example of how if you're building a product that people love you can make a lot of mistakes”
“We don't crash EVER!”
“Don't discount yourself, no matter what you're doing. Everyone has a unique perspective that they can bring to the world.”
“If you just work on stuff that you like and you’re passionate about, you don’t have to have a master plan with how things will play out.”
“People don't care about what you say, they care about what you build.”
“The biggest risk is not taking any risk... In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”
“They just can't wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things.”
“We Don't Build Services to Make Money, We Make Money To Build Services.”
“Your ability to keep doing interesting things is your willingness to be embarrassed and go back to step 1.”
“Finding your purpose isn't enough. the challenge for our generation is creating a world where everyone has a sense of purpose.”
“Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”
“I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community”
“Ideas don’t come out fully formed , they only become clearer as you work on them . You just have to get started.”
“Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.”
“Senator, we run ads.”
“The greatest successes come from having the freedom to fail”