A hacker in their early/mid 20's with supposedly poor social skills who's quickly become a multi-billionaire for making what is essentially just an profiles/feed website, went to Harvard, and who seems to have never had a real job in his life is, I dare say it, going to have a rather skewed and limited perspective on what's realistic in life for the vast majority of people. For the majority of folks who must or desire to maintain separate work/personal or friends/family or public/private identities, or who belong to oppressed groups, are clearly not going to be able to relate to it. People without FUx1000 money in the bank (like Mark clearly does) are going to have a hard time relating to it, because without FU money one does have to be much more careful and arguably afraid of what happens when the wrong people see the wrong thing and do something that hurts you down the line.
That said, despite his perspective, he clearly has a financial motive to turn Facebook further into the dominant identity system in the web. Actually, I'll take that back, it's not clear to me that he has any motive personally to make it any more dominant, because he's now into the discretionary billions range of wealth. Perhaps his motive is to increase ROI for all the sub-one-percent shareholders. I dunno. I've just never gotten this whole sort of unbounded ambition that thinks it's not good enough to be the 3rd best thing in the entire world -- we're talking the entire world here, it's not like coming in 1000th place, and it's not even truly a race. If anything, it's a race to stand still, and then you die, no matter what.
It's interesting to think that there are now more people with a Facebook identity than most meatspace nations have citizens. More Facebookians than Brits, for example. Than French. Japanese. I don't know the exact count of total Facebook users offhand but I wouldn't be surprised to find it's already surpassed the number of US citizens as well.
> I've just never gotten this whole sort of unbounded ambition that thinks it's not good enough to be the 3rd best thing in the entire world -- we're talking the entire world here...
Reminds me of something...
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,
And falls on th'other.
I recall that there are half a billion facebook accounts (wikipedia says 600 million active users). The USA has around 307 million people. North america has a mere 352 million, while Latin America and the Caribbean have 589 million. Europe has 733 million[1]. So yeah, way more people on facebook than in the US, as long as the average number of accounts per person is less than two - active accounts aren't the same thing as real people, after all.
That said, despite his perspective, he clearly has a financial motive to turn Facebook further into the dominant identity system in the web. Actually, I'll take that back, it's not clear to me that he has any motive personally to make it any more dominant, because he's now into the discretionary billions range of wealth. Perhaps his motive is to increase ROI for all the sub-one-percent shareholders. I dunno. I've just never gotten this whole sort of unbounded ambition that thinks it's not good enough to be the 3rd best thing in the entire world -- we're talking the entire world here, it's not like coming in 1000th place, and it's not even truly a race. If anything, it's a race to stand still, and then you die, no matter what.
It's interesting to think that there are now more people with a Facebook identity than most meatspace nations have citizens. More Facebookians than Brits, for example. Than French. Japanese. I don't know the exact count of total Facebook users offhand but I wouldn't be surprised to find it's already surpassed the number of US citizens as well.