social
Hacker. Dropout. CEO.
Filed in archive Soc Network Sites by Mark Brooks on April 11, 2007
Hacker. Dropout. CEO.
FAST COMPANY -- Apr 11 -- Facebook has 19 million users, half of which log on each day, is the 6th most-trafficked site in the U.S., 1% of all Internet time is spent on Facebook (ComScore), and is the #1 photo-sharing site on the Web, with 6 million pictures uploaded daily, and should bring in $100 million in revenue this year. Zuckerburg still lives in a rented apartment, with a mattress on the floor and only two chairs and a table for furniture. He walks or bikes to the office every day. Is Zuckerberg being greedy holding out for a bigger money buyout (than Yahoo, Viacom)? Zuckerberg's answer, "I'm here to build something for the long term." Cofounder/VP Eng. Dustin Moskovitz, 22, his roommate at Harvard, and CTO Adam D'Angelo, 23, whom he met in prep school--are true believers. Their faith: that the openness, collaboration, and sharing of information epitomized by social networking can make the world work better. Facebook now has two buildings (soon to be three) and employs 200.

In June 2006, Facebook was opened to work networks. There are more than 20,000 networks of employees, from the CIA and the IRS to Macy's and McDonald's. In September, Facebook announced "open registration": Anyone with a valid email address could join a regional network. Last spring, Facebook received $25 million (Greylock Partners, Meritech Capital, also Accel and Peter Thiel) but Facebook isn't living on VC cash anymore (Cohler, VP Strategy). So how does Facebook make its money? Advertising and sponsorships, mostly, i.e. Apple sponsors a site for iTunes enthusiasts. The big money comes from a banner ad-placement alliance with Microsoft (through 2011). It mirrors a deal MySpace Inked with Google last year. (MySpace reportedly got $900 million over three years).

"Can we get to 35 million users this year?" Dominating another sector beyond the college crowd would be key. "If we were to see that in the high school space, that would be very significant." Facebook is on track to double its engineering team of 50 this year (check out the first step in the application process at facebook.com/jobs_puzzles) as well as its 50-person customer-service group. His reps are mostly from top-shelf universities. (By my estimate, there's $5 million worth of tuition handling customer service at Facebook). 100,000 new users signed on in a single day this past February. The college markets in Canada and the UK have been growing ~30% a month. ~28% of all users are outside the U.S. and the site is adding older users; 3 million 25-34, 380,000 are 35-44, 100,000 are eligible for Medicare. FULL ARTICLE @ FAST COMPANY


Permalink: Hacker. Dropout. CEO.
Tags: facebook  social  2007  networking  hacker  social+networking  hacker+dropout  social+software 
Trackback: http://publish.creative-weblogging.com/publish/mt-tb.pl/63091
img Addthis img Ask img Blinklist img del.icio.us img Digg img Fark img Facebook img Google img Lycos img Ma.gnolia Add this page to Mister Wong Mr Wong img Netscape img Netvousz img Newsvine img Reddit img StumbleUpon img Slashdot img Tailrank img Technorati img Wink img Yahoo

Vote for Hacker. Dropout. CEO.:

  • Currently 7.00/10
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
Rating: 7.00 out of 1 vote(s) cast.
 
Subscribe
Share It
RSSrss
See all blog subscribe options
Google google
What is RSS?
Yahoo! yahoo
Addthis Subscribe using any feed reader!
Bloglines Bloglines
Newsletter

TwitterFollow us on Twitter!