The Facebook Effect

I was an English major in college. I had no awareness as a student of the importance of technology in human progress. But I had the good fortune to find a job as a writer at Fortune Magazine beginning in 1983. In two and a half decades there I had a front-row seat on the transformations that are happening globally. While the theme of the magazine is business, what became most striking to me was the impact that technology had on all aspects of human activity. I have come to see it as the defining force in modern life.

We are seeing that impact accelerating as technology's capabilities themselves accelerate. The essential driver of the semiconductor, driveny by Moore's Law, underlies a vast and growing proportion of human progress. I'm convinced that while there are clear negatives associated with the headlong pace of technology's development, the overall impact of technology in modern society is overwhelmingly positive.

I chose to write a book about Facebook (The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World) in large part because I saw the development and evolution of this particular company as profoundly indicative of that positive role that technology is playing. Facebook is a fundamental new tool of communication, which would never have been possible without Moore's Law, the personal computer, the Internet, the development of open source tools, and, eventually, the creative imagination of a young student at Harvard University.

I always say that the most elemental way to look at Facebook is as a platform for the empowerment of the individual. I am a firm believer in the importance of such empowerment. It is intrinsic to the conception of democracy upon which Western society is based. With that empowerment being further bolstered every day by the evolution of Web-based platforms like Facebook, to me that is further irrefutable proof that technology is having a positive impact.

This empowerment has highly visible impacts, or "effects" as the title of my book would have it, in the realms of politics, government, business, marketing, and media, among other realms. The most recent dramatic illustration of that was in the recent revolt in Tunisia against a long-entrenched dictator. Countries like Tunisia that are moderately open have found it impossible to ban Facebook and Twitter and other Internet tools for personal communication and empowerment. But once you open that door a crack to the outside, you allow in a hurricane of feeling and action that it may turn out no government is powerful enough to stop.

Facebook gives each of its members a broadcast platform. This is in itself revolutionary. But ironically, most members of Facebook use it happily without ever realizing this or thinking anything about it. However, they notice that it is a very efficient tool for communicating quotidian messages to their friends. For instance, "I am going to the mall this afternoon." They don't send that message to anyone, but the software decides who sees it. And quite possible when they get to the mall later, some of their friends will be there to join them.

But once a user has gotten used to this quality of ordinary communication with their friends, they begin to intuitively realize that this is a hugely powerful medium for efficiently conveying information they care about to others. That becomes significant in a political sense only when they have something political to express. This same person who goes to the mall may never before have publicly expressed political views. But if, for example, he or she learns of a university-educated vegetable vendor who has set himself on fire in protest of an irrational and despotic government, as happened in Tunisia, this same person may decide that they want to convey something more important than whether or not they are going to the mall.

 The fact is, once ordinary people around the world get used to using Facebook and other routine tools of the Internet for ordinary life, if they become concerned about something more important their first instinct will be to use these same tools. So in country after country, ordinary citizens find themselves expressing political views to their friends via Facebook, which turns out to have an unprecedented impact. Facebook turns any message which is received with enthusiasm into a viral phenomenon. Yes, most often it's friends passing around information about the party last night or going to the mall today. But just as easily that viral impact can be turned towards political speech. And then President Ben Ali of Tunisia will resign.

That same set of forces comes into play in the interaction between companies and their customers. No longer can companies expect that they will merely broadcast messages to their audiences and hope to sell products or services. Instead, those customers themselves are now broadcasting. That means that if they have a strong reaction to that product or service they have the tools at their disposal to tell their friends. If they disapprove of something a company has done, they can with amazing speed enlist large numbers of friends who are also customers to react similarly.

We are moving very rapidly into the age of the empowered individual, and it is all because of the power of digital technology. As more and more people all over the world acquire smartphones, this phenomenon gains even further speed, because instead of just having access to a computer, now ordinary people are carrying connected computers with them wherever they go.

The long-term social, political, and cultural impacts of this transformation are impossible to predict. But the world we are entering will be very different from the one we emerged from. And I am confident that, on balance, it will be a better world.