[typomatic]

I agree that the things you said happened, but I believe that the success of the company is incidental to who ran it. There are millions and millions of factors involved in Facebook's success and to drop all the accolades at the feet of the CEO seems insane.

[rm999]

> I believe that the success of the company is incidental to who ran it

This is usually not true for successful companies, but it's especially not true in facebook's case. Mark Zuckerberg has kept incredibly strong control of facebook, holding more than 50% of voting control even as it's grown to a half trillion dollar company - so he definitely deserves credit for what his company has become.

Also, he has made some strong, unintuitive decisions along the way (no advertising in the first several years, real name policy, dropping out of college, moving to silicon valley, hiring experienced tech executives, buying a dead-simple photo filter app for 1 billion dollars) that can directly be attributed to facebook's success today. It's hard to remember today, but in the first ~5 years of Facebook it was very far from obvious that facebook would dominate the social space.

[enitihas]

I think his biggest decision might have been to go mobile first. I used to have a Nokia S40 series phone and Facebook worked really well on that both from the default web browser and from Opera Mini. Add that to the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions and he seems to be making really good business decisions. I do disagree with the overall fb direction today but I don't doubt he is a very capable business man.

[gowld]

Which of those decisions is unintuitive? They are the same choices most big companies of the past 30years have made.

> no advertising in the first several years,

Standard VC funded startup

> real name policy

This may be the one non-obvious choice.

> dropping out of college

Like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs

> moving to silicon valley

ahem, document.location == "ycombinator.com"

> hiring experienced tech executives

How is hiring experienced tech executives unintuitive for a tech company? Google hired Eric Schmidt. Microsoft hired Steve Ballmer.

> buying a dead-simple photo filter app for 1 billion dollars

Paying a fortune for apps with eyeballs was the m.o. of the first dotcom era, and hasn't subsided.

[reaperducer]

> to drop all the accolades at the feet of the CEO seems insane.

Seems fair. The public drops all of Facebook's failures at Zuckerburg's feet, too. Nobody ever said, "Damn that third-tier middle manager in the reporting department who ordered the database change that made me unable to find my cousin's best friend's uncle's dog's page!"

[gowld]

Why did Facebook beat MySpace and Friendster?

Why does Facebook even exist? Zuckerberg fought off several cofounders. Do you think Facebook would be what is it if the Winklevoss brothers ran it?