Lessons For Mark Zuckerberg

1. 20 Lessons Learned from FacebookFounder Mark Zuckerberg

2. The World's Billionaires #212 Mark Zuckerberg 03.10.10, 06:00 PM EST  Source : www. Forbes.com World's youngest billionaire leading his addictive social networking site Facebook to an inevitable public pay-day. Fresh-faced entrepreneur launched Facebook from Harvard dorm room in 2004. Left school for Silicon Valley later that year; bagged initial $500,000 investment from PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel. Shares continue to change hands on private equity exchange Second Market; recent transactions put the value at upwards of $15 billion. Growing rapidly: in past 12 months user base has surged 130% to 400 million.

3. “More than 175 million people use Facebook. If it were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world.” In 2010, Zuckerberg was named Time magazine's Person of the Year. By the way, the 26-year-old Zuckerberg also announced a $100 million donation to an educational charity on Oprah Winfrey’s TV show. Here are 20 life lessons that I have gathered and learned from him.

4. Lesson 1 : Be open to change without losing sight of your goals. Facebook grew because of Zuckerberg’s flexibility and willingness to change his product based on consumer demands and financial opportunities. At no point did he charge users to take advantage of the networking service – profits came purely from advertisements. Because of this, Facebook stands as a perfect example of exercising a great deal of adaptability without ever having betrayed its initial intentions. “It’s like hardwired into us in a deeper way: you really want to know what’s going on with the people around you,”

5. Lesson 2 : Strive towards building communities, not profits. Facebook started out as a directory to help Harvard students recognize and better connect with one another. It was never launched as the surprisingly lucrative money-making venture it eventually became. People love it when the emphasis lay on them and their needs as opposed to making money, and they ate up Facebook because that is how it advertises itself.

6. Lesson 3 : Engage people. What Zuckerberg did right is use humanity’s inherent need for interaction and allowed them a venue through which they can connect with loved ones without ever having to pay a cent. Over time, the site expanded its offerings to let them share pictures, chat, play games, take quizzes, and send gifts to one another, acting as a one-stop shop for long-distance or schedule-blocked friendship.

7. Lesson 4 : People yearn for true friendships. The biggest social networking site Facebook with over half a billion members show us that all of us human beings, deep down in our hearts, need friends. We humans need to be connected to others or to somehow belong to a group or community. It’s good to have lots of online “friends” in Facebook, but we should not forget to cultivate offline friends in the real world too.

8. Lesson 5 : Do not dismiss older demographics. Demographics beyond the initial college and, eventually, high school students logically built upon the main principles of networking and were instrumental in its rapid and lucrative ascent. With wider pocketbooks at their disposal, older individuals also enjoy playing games, such as the ubiquitous Farmville and Vampire/Mafia Wars, with their family and friends throughout the world.

9. Lesson 6 : Embrace technology. Zuckerberg’s project succeeded not only because of its emphasis on community and connectivity, but because it understood the potential inherent in emerging and developing technologies and did its best to take advantage of them. As a result, it becomes one of the cornerstones of the so-called Web 2.0 movement.

10. Lesson 7 : Pay attention to trends. Facebook, for example, may have added applications, gifts, and promotions for the latest media into its fold, but it also kept itself centered by focusing on its core, universal, and timeless goal – helping people connect. Such aims are not dictated by the ebbs and flows of society, thus keeping the concept well-balanced and able to adapt to change.

11. Lesson 8 : Sometimes simple ideas are the most profitable. Facebook was not an original idea. All Zuckerberg had to do was simply build upon what was already there using new technologies, and he began by creating a small network of Harvard students and slowly but surely expanding from there. Facebook rests snugly upon one solid, simple principle. Connect people.

12. Lesson 9 : Do it yourself. When Zuckerberg first conceived of Facebook, he collaborated with other Harvard computer science students – Chris Hughes, Eduardo Saverin, and Dustin Moskovitz – to draw up the source code and collaborate on a design. The team never needed to outsource. At the time, all the skills the team needed to start were right there amongst themselves.

13. Lesson 10 : Stick with what you know. It is also a good idea to stay within known abilities. Never try and push something that does not fit. Zuckerberg and his small band of cohorts succeeded because they started a project based on their strengths and experiences. Their computer science background led to a computer science undertaking.

14. Lesson 11 : Do not be afraid to ask questions. Zuckerberg did not become a billionaire in a vacuum. He started off by collaborating with fellow computer scientists, and while the questions themselves remain unknown, it is a safe assumption that all cooperative efforts involve a series of problems, questions, answers, and solutions..

15. Lesson 12 : Dream big and think long-term. While his schoolmate and business partner Eduardo Saverin keeps impatiently nagging him to get advertisers and cash in on their fast-growing yet still fledging Facebook, Zuckerberg wisely resists because he is aiming bigger. Zuckerberg and his next business partner Sean Parker were proven right — it’s better to catch a huge marlin in the long-term instead of just 14 small trouts now!

16. Lesson 13 : Ideas change the world.  Innovation and new ideas continuously bring out new global icons like Mark Zuckerberg because of sheer creativity, with the phenomenon Facebook co-created by him just in 2004 in his Harvard dorm room. Before, we thought Microsoft and Apple were the ultimate; then came Yahoo, then Google, and now Facebook.

17. Lesson 14 : Invest wisely.  Look at rich Harvard kid Eduardo Saverin: his initial investment co-founder of Facebook with friend Zuckerberg was only $1,000 in 2004, then he later contributed an additional $18,000 from his parents. As of October 7, 2010, Saverin’s five percent shareholding in Facebook is now already worth $1.3 billion. Invest wisely and not foolishly!

18. Lesson 15 : Be “cool.”  It was struck by Mark Zuckerberg’s statement that Facebook’s biggest asset was its being “cool,” thus he didn’t seek pop-up advertising. Even now, with ads, Facebook is still cool because it primarily serves the purpose of social networking. What he meant by “cool” is being perceived by others as credible.

19. Lesson 16 : Be kind to all, never underestimate anyone.  Be kind to every person, especially those without friends in school, in the office or in your neighborhood, the loners or the problematic. Be kind not because he or she might become unexpectedly a future success like the campus nerds Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, but because it is the civilized and Christian way to live.

20. Lesson 17 : “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer?”  The film The Social Network shows how Zuckerberg, a socially unpopular Jewish nerd, was able to outsmart the WASP elite twin brothers and Harvard senior students Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, who struggled with their own Harvard Connection social network site project.

21. Lesson 18 : Have passion!  Zuckerberg had passion, believed in what he was and what he is still doing. Why would Zuckerberg stay up until the wee hours of the morning, programming code on his laptop while his colleagues were out partying? Isn’t it all ultimately because of sheer passion?

22. Lesson 19 : No matter who we are or become, don’t be an a-hole!  Zuckerberg is incredibly smart, driven, hardworking, wily and eventually successful, yet his weaknesses are his often being too self-centered and lacking a balanced life. To be a better humane and truly successful person, we need to balance career and any quest for success with love of God, family and friends — real-life friends and not just Facebook friends!

23. Lesson 20 : Simplicity and community In the end, Mark Zuckerberg never really did anything too complex to rake in his fortune. Simplicity and community dictated the route he eventually took towards billionaire status, and these relatively straightforward goals have plenty to offer college students aspiring to create their own businesses and services.

24. “ People are learning how to use the site and what's OK to share. As time goes on, people will learn what's appropriate, what's safe for them — and learn to share accordingly. ” Thank You Very Much SompongYusoontorn