social utility?

I thought it was very interesting that Mark Zuckerberg does not consider Facebook a social networking site. To him, it is a utility. In an interview he said, “People communicate most naturally and effectively with their friends and the people around them. What we figured is that if we could model what those connections were, [we could] provide that information to a set of applications through which people want to share information, photos or videos or events. But that only works if those relationships are real.” When you think of social networking, you think of meeting and expanding your social life on the internet, however this isn’t at all what we do on Facebook. It really gives us this almost obsessive nature about checking up on what friends we already have are doing. There seems to be both good and bad to this. The bad is that we waste so much time just checking up on what friends are doing. I remember before Facebook I had to actually ask friends in person if they were dating someone. Now, if a relationship isn’t on Facebook, it simply isn’t a real relationship. This decline in the need for face-to-face communication is an unfortunate side effect of this utility. The positive of Facebook, though, is that we can communicate with friends who otherwise would be very hard to talk to. I talk to many people from when I worked in Wyoming that if it weren’t for Facebook, I would never talk to.

As far as the business side of Facebook goes, it is important to see how passionate Mark Zuckerberg is about this product. He said that if you want to be a CEO of a start up like Facebook, it will only work if you absolutely love what you are doing. This seems to be a common theme amongst young Entrepreneurs.