'I just think people have a lot of fiction. But, you know, I mean, the real story of Facebook is just that we've worked so hard for all this time. I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers for six years and coded.' -Mark Zuckerberg
In a recent interview with NBC's "Today" show, mogul, boy-genius and CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicated that his brainchild -Facebook, Inc.- is still in its infancy with room to grow. "I'm so grateful to have the opportunity... to serve so many people... and the best is yet to come," he said.
"I've spent a lot of late nights pacing around my living room with teammates just trying to plot what our next move can be in order to keep pushing forward on this mission. But one of the things that I've taken away from the last 10 years is, there's always a next move and you just need to keep on pushing forward and keep on doing the best thing that you can," Zuckerberg told "Today's" Savannah Guthrie on Tuesday.
The young tycoon, who turns 30 on May 14, has had his detractors ever since creating 'Facemash,' the precursor to Facebook while just a sophomore at Harvard. 'Facemash,' which evolved into 'thefacebook' and then later the omnipresent Facebook, would become an indispensable tool for people to connect with each other. The premier social media has now gained 1.23 billion monthly active users with a $150 billion market capitalization, according to Time magazine.
"While some doubted that connecting the world was actually important, we were building. While others doubted that this would be sustainable, you were forming lasting connections. We just cared more about connecting the world than anyone else. And we still do today," Zuckerberg wrote on his anniversary Facebook post.
Zuckerberg's initial creation of 'Facemash' enabled Harvard students to vote on their classmates' attractiveness. Zuckerberg was accused of "hacking into school servers to access students photos and it quickly shut the site down due to pressure from Harvard administrators. Three months later, he launched 'thefacebook.com,' a social network that allowed Harvard students to create personal profiles that outlined their interests," as reported in Time magazine.
Ultimately, Zuckerberg launched Facebook to Harvard students with co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin. The site soon expanded to other universities as well. It has since evolved so that anyone over the age of 13 is able to set up an account.
Facebook has dealt with certain legal battles in the past 10 years, as was documented in David Fincher's 2010 film, 'The Social Network.' Some of Zuckerberg's classmates, and rivals, claimed in a lawsuit that he stole their ideas. A lawsuit filed by Saverin, for instance, was settled out of court. Though terms of the settlement were sealed, the company affirmed Saverin's title as co-founder of Facebook, and Saverin signed a non-disclosure contract after the settlement.
David Fincher's 'The Social Network' (2010) starring Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg was a not so flattering portrayal of the young tycoon.
Hype was "at a fever pitch when Facebook arrived on Wall Street in the biggest tech IPO ever in May 2012. But a series of poor decisions soured investors on Facebook for more than a year," Time magazine also reported.
"The Nasdaq was unable to keep up with huge demand for shares, so some investors couldn't complete transactions or were forced to buy at incorrect prices (Nasdaq was eventually fined $10 million for these blunders). Facebook also overpriced its own stock at an initial price of $38. The shares got virtually no first-day pop and tumbled to half that price in the months following the IPO on fears that Facebook would not be able to effectively monetize its mobile services."
Facebook finally saw its stock rebound last summer. A strong surge in mobile revenue propelled it, as more strong quarterly earnings reports in October and January put the company's stock on a steady rise for months, according to news reports. It is expected that Facebook's revenues will continue to rise, due to its worldwide popularity and its constant acquisitions of features, like InstaGram..
Perhaps the greatness of Zuckerberg's vision lies in his willingness to take risks.
"The biggest risk is not taking any risk," Zuckerberg once said.
"In a world that's changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks."
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