David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…It is amazing how much of the next billion-plus people’s source of value comes from this founding moment. The Facebook grows tremendously in functionality over time, but everything is like a natural outcropping out of authentic identity, user submitted content, trust that the people who are seeing this content are people in your private network. The whole thing is here in this first few weeks of coding that got done and then threw up the landing page. I would even go one step further than that. The actual nature of the seeding of the network here is maybe the most important thing. Here’s what I mean by that. Once Mark launches this, it takes off like wildfire within Harvard. Of course, he’s already a celebrity, already known for launching these projects. People are tuned in waiting for the next Mark Zuckerberg production. Within the first 24 hours, 650 people join. There are only 2000 people in a class at Harvard. I think there are about 7000 or 8000 undergraduates total. Within two weeks, over half of the entire undergraduate population is active on Facebook. Now, here’s what I mean and why the seeding is so important. This initial network is super dense, super engaged, and super active. That not only sets the norms for how you’re going to behave on Facebook going forward. It also means that as the network grows virally, it radiates out from this nuclear reactor of a base. Contrast that with an approach of something like Friendster that’s default open to everybody, backed by Silicon Valley Venture dollars, trying to grow, they’re doing marketing. Okay, let’s say somebody in Ohio hears about Friendster, somehow maybe they see an ad for it, they sign up. When they join the service, there are no friends there. There’s nothing to do. There’s no functionality. It’s not alive. When you join the Facebook, even though it’s limited to just Harvard students, you sign up and you’re blown away by how alive this site is. Almost nobody can use the Facebook, but for the people who can, it’s an unbelievably great experience. As they expanded, that stayed true. It was either you’re not allowed to use it or if you are, it’s blown away great, instantly.…

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