Monday, October 11, 2010

Facemash vs Winkleface?

The Social Network gives us an intriguing look into the creation of Facebook -- a tool perhaps best described as "permission-based stalking". And while the film has elements of jealousy, loyalty, friendship, power, money, envy, social status, recrimination and lost innocence, it skips lightly over the immense amount of coding, arguing and just plain "testing" and "fixing" that are required to keep up with an ever-expanding user base and the inherent feature wars that helped it grow.

I cannot help but wonder what Facebook might have become:
  • if it had stayed within the walled vision of Winkleface?
  • if Eduardo's fiscal conservative Ad-supported view had taken over?
  • if Perky Parker had stayed clean?
  • if the west coast VCs hadn't stepped in?
  • if the addictive allure of the "who's Hottest" Facemash hadn't kick-started it?
What are your thoughts? What were the key influences?