read and answer the questions Paula Hog

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook: Intelligence or Social Skills?

Facebook has become a social networking phenomenon. It has hundreds of

millions of members. Not bad for an organization founded as recently as 2004. And it

made its key founder, Mark Zuckerberg, rich. With the successful initial public offering

of stock (IPO) in May 2012, he’s now worth over $19 billion. So what skills and traits

enabled Mark to make Facebook such a success? Because Facebook is a social

networking site, you might think that its founder had outstanding social skills. Perhaps a

keen social awareness helped Mark recognize the need for a social networking site and

understand what features would promote social interactions. But according to The

Accidental Billionaires (Mezrich, 2009), Mark was a shy Harvard computer geek who

would stand alone in a corner during parties and social networking events. And Mark’s

social awareness may not have been particularly keen: He gained infamy (and a

disciplinary hearing resulting in probation) by creating a website that allowed people to

compare and rate Harvard coeds on attractiveness. As Mezrich (2009) observed, this

didn’t help Mark’s chances of ever getting a date with a Harvard coed.

On the other hand, Mark was a computer genius of the highest order. While still

in high school, he invented a program called Synapse that enabled MP3 players to know a

person’s musical tastes and to create tailored playlists. At Harvard, he created a program

called Course Match that let Harvard students check what classes other students were

enrolled in. And it was Mark’s technical knowledge and genius that allowed him to

triumph over the dozens of other competitors that were also trying to create social

networking sites. Some of these competitors were at Harvard at the same time as Mark.

For example, identical twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss were at the top of the social

hierarchy at Harvard as popular athletes from a rich family (they later competed as

rowers in the Olympics and finished sixth), and at six feet five inches, they were literally

big men on campus. They wanted to start a social networking site at Harvard, and

although they had some computer skills, they didn’t have the programming brilliance

necessary to finish their site. Consequently, they had tried to get Mark Zuckerberg to join

them as their programmer (they later sued Mark by claiming that he had stolen their ideas

and delayed the start of their website by pretending to be working with them when he was

really creating his own competing website – they won around $65 million). Mark’s

genius also gave him the upper hand in dealing with his former friend and cofounder of

Facebook, Eduardo Saverin. Eduardo had the social skills necessary to gain admittance

into one of the most prestigious social clubs at Harvard, the Phoenix, which hosted the

best parties, whereas Mark, alas, was not invited to join. Eduardo joined in the creation of

Facebook as its business manager in charge of raising advertising dollars and handling

business issues; he also contributed the initial several thousand dollars necessary to start

the company. However, because Mark’s programming genius was the key to success, he

had the majority of the company’s initial stock, with Eduardo holding 30% (some other

cofounders also owned some stock). When mark and Eduardo argued over business

decisions and investment strategies, Mark and the other cofounders removed Eduardo

from the management team and diluted his share of ownership of the company to about

5% through some legal maneuvers and by issuing more stock. Result: another lawsuit

with at least a partial victory for Eduardo (dollar amounts not revealed). But mark still

retained firm control of the company. Eduardo made about $2 billion in the Facebook

IPO, so he’s still a winner.

It is possible that The Accidental Billionaires (Mezrich, 2009) underestimated

Mark’s social skills and interpersonal leadership ability. Mark had a large network of

friends and fellow computer hackers that he communicated with over the internet before

he founded Facebook. Mark also knew how to generate excitement among his fellow

programmers. When interviewing potential interns at Harvard for Facebook, Mark threw

a big party with drinking contests and shouting spectators. The contests? Solving

computer problems in between taking shots. If you’ve seen the TV series Chuck, you’ve

witnessed members of the NerdHerd staging similar contests to celebrate their technical

prowess. Why should the jocks have all the fun? And Mark was able to convince a core

group of Harvard students to journey with him across the country to Palo Alto, where

they lived together in a rented house while they worked around the clock doing

programming tasks. For fun, they had run a zip line from the chimney on the roof down

to a wading pool in the yard, and they would zip down for a splash during programming

breaks (result: another lawsuit over damages to the chimney). And apparently once

Facebook became popular, Mark’s romantic life improved as well. Moreover, in

September 2010, Mark donated $100 million to a school system in New Jersey, and he’s

shown other signs of increasing maturity and social responsibility as well. Mark was

married in 2012.

Questions (support your answers using outside resources, such as articles or books)

1. How important is intelligence compared to social skills in most organizations?

2. Was Mark’s success accidental? Why or why not?

3. Do you have to be as smart as Mark Zuckerberg to start a successful company? Why or

why not?

Sources: Antunes, A. (2012, May 27). Eduardo Saverin Finally Opens Up: ‘No Hard Feelings Between Me

And Mark Zuckerberg’. Forbes. Retrieved from

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andersonantunes/2012/05/27/eduardo-saverin-finally-opens-up-no-hard-

feelings-between-me-and-mark-zuckerberg/

Mezrich, B. (2009). The accidental billionaires: The founding of Facebook: A tale of sex, money, genius,

and betrayal. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Ortutay, B. (2012, May 18). Facebook stock closes nearly flat in debut. The Associated Press. Retrieved

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