In a 2005 interview, the man behind Facebook – Mark Zuckerberg – talked about the success of small groups social networking and did not understand those “who want more or aim to conquer the world”. Dressed only in shorts and a T-shirt and with beer in hand, the head of Facebook was celebrating with his team reaching 3 million users, reports Daily Mail.
Zuckerberg talked about the beginnings of what today is Facebook. “When I decided to lay the foundations of Facebook, I was alone, I did not get help from anyone. But I did not have access to contact information of all people on campus, not in the way the university held it. So I decided to launch Facebook in a sufficiently attractive manner for people to be interested to enroll and fill-in their own data”, said the founder of the largest social network. Facebook gathered in a few weeks two-thirds of students at Harvard in the online community. Three other leading U.S. schools followed, including Yale, with similar success.
By the end of school year 2004, Facebook was the online community of 29 universities across America.
The man behind Facebook tells how he rejoiced to see the rise of his network: “At different parties on campus, I saw people sitting at the computer, logging on Facebook. And a friend of mine that went over the summer to Europe, told me how in an Internet café, on the computer that he sat at, the screen was showing the log off page of Facebook”.
Under the slogan “two young guys, a camera, millions of voices”, Ray Hafner and Derek Franzese chose to interview the founder of the Facebook network to fit him in their documentary released in 2008, “Now Entering: The Millennial Generation” . Facebook was continuing to be, 15 months after its launch, only a social network dedicated to community colleges or campuses which extended within the virtual world of about 800 such schools.
At that time, Zuckerberg did not seem too confident and did not expect the success Facebook enjoys today, with a total of over 750 million users.
“Whether we have created a product that will last a long time or just a nice toy for now, I do not know, we’ll see. I think that it is quite useful and not just a passing fad. I haven’t realized yet that if what we have here is a potential business”, said Zuckerberg in a 5-minute piece of interview with the two filmmakers.
Asked about the extent he wants for his network, Zuckerberg argued that it is not necessarily a goal of conquering the world, but that “if you want to have a product to make a difference, sometimes you have to focus on smaller targets”.
Today, six years away from that interview, Mark Zuckerberg has the largest social network in the world with offices in 15 countries, valued at 50 billion dollars. Just months after having given an interview in 2005, Facebook has exploded in popularity, bringing gains of $1 million each month.
“We have not targeted to an online community, but to a reflection of real community in the online world” said Zuckerberg, the man courted by major international companies such as Yahoo or Microsoft.