First, Elon started zip2.com, which "enabled companies to post content on the Internet, such as maps and directory listings"- it was sold in 1999. The X.com (which later became PayPal) is a payment processing engine behind all kinds of things, including companies doing very productive stuff, not just selling junk on ebay. Note that unlike Facebook.com, PayPal.com is never blocked at workplaces, since it's not a productivity killer.
I think Mark will re-implement Hollywood in SF Bay Area, but will not do anything as productive as SpaceX or Tesla Motors.
If anything, it shows that monetary value is not 100% rationally assigned by the current sociopolitical system.
What a needlessly narrow-minded and judgmental post.
For better or for worse, Facebook has completely changed the way we socialize, both online and off. We now have means to share and consume information about our acquaintances and friends that we never had before - and based on simple observation we know that people are eating this up. The demand for Zuckerberg's product is massive.
Impact? Being the man who invented Facebook isn't impactful?
We can spend all day spinning this - I can claim that the Dragon is a billionaire's toy, an elitist device which burns boatloads of cash each launch while others suffer through poverty, illness, and death.
But I won't, because that'd be stupid, because the value of any such venture is inherently many-faceted and difficult to ascertain. By your logic anybody who isn't actively curing cancer and malaria is just wasting his/her time.
>For better or for worse, Facebook has completely changed the way we socialize
First off don't say "we" when you mean "you". I was socializing on the internet way before Facebook/www. Thinking that they "changed" the way we socialize is naive at best, they just changed the UI. In comparison to something as incredible as the dream to achieve space travel and invent new technology, you are really missing out.
> We now have means to share and consume information about our acquaintances and friends that we never had before
Being someone that was alive long before Facebook got big I can assure you this statement is wrong. Tons of ways to do that before Facebook came along, including other social websites (MySpace, LiveJournal, FriendFeed, etc.), web forums, Usenet forums, BBSes, etc. Yes Facebook was a little prettier and did something a little nicer with their UI and their demographic marketing than many alternatives. But they did not give us anything new we didn't have before. I still think it's pretty lame and not impressed with it. The biggest thing I'm impressed with is their ability to keep it relatively fast and responsive under huge traffic load. The rest is straight-forward CRUD profiles, web chat and image uploads. So everything they provided was and is a free, easily cloneable commodity in terms of functionality. I think they just happened to win the "network effect" lottery among the non-digerati, and got lucky with timing.
Again: I have major respect for Facebook architects/engineers for keeping that thing fast and up under such high and growing traffic. But the features? Meh.
> Impact? Being the man who invented Facebook isn't impactful?
I think calling that "invention" really strains the meaning of that word. Writing it, maybe. Inventing the light bulb, inventing a helicopter, now that's invention. Making a CRUD profile & chat website did not then and does not now require invention. Lots of coding, sure. Figuring out how to keep it simple and non ugly, useful, sure. Keeping it cool early by only allowing Harvard kids, then other Ivy League kids, then other colleges, etc. But is that invention? No. Creation? Yes.
> "Being someone that was alive long before Facebook got big I can assure you this statement is wrong."
Funny, you seem to know a lot about the experiences of myself and my friends - all of whom predate Facebook by a pretty wide margin.
This reminds me of the age-old and tired argument that Apple wasn't first to the smartphone game, as if that somehow robs their accomplishment of any weight. LJ never transcended being a niche online community, FriendFeed is a footnote, Friendster was well-known but not widely used... The only social network that had any real claim to popularity in your list is MySpace, and it was steamrolled by Facebook so quickly I'm sure their heads are still spinning.
Likewise, Nokia was first - but does it matter? "Smartphone" didn't enter the common vernacular until the iPhone. The fact that similar functionality (available with much poorer relative usability) existed prior to the game-changing product is supposed to prove... what? Remember "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."? The execution of an idea is as important (no, more important) than the idea itself, and is worthy of recognition. Similarly, Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile, but he certainly was the one who brought it to the masses - and that is well worth recognition and respect.
So yeah, you're right, niche proto-social-networks existed prior to Facebook. So what? Facebook was the first mass-market social network that had any significant traction, and it remains the king of the hill. It has changed the way people interact, even if it wasn't the first to come up with the idea of it.
What's with the blithe dismissals of Facebook and Zuck-hate? This isn't a zero-sum game - there is plenty of space for Musk and Zuckerberg to both do their thing, and impact the things they will.
You can list off a bunch of failed startups that predate Facebook, but you totally ignored AOL.
AOL in many ways was the Facebook of its time. In a lot of ways people had MORE interaction using AOL instant messenger (or ICQ) than people do using the Facebook wall posts and messages combined. The major difference between Facebook and AOL is that Facebook allows you to share photos. But given the bandwidth constraints in the 90s I don't think photo sharing was viable.
If AOL had survived the broadband explosion we might not even have Facebook today. People talk about how powerful Facebook and Twitter are becuase companies are willing to put their brand after them (i.e. facebook.com/brand or @brand on twitter). But there were plenty of advertisements where people said 'AOL Keword FooBarBrand' rather than their .com address.
This is in no way a 'I Loved AOL' post, but a lot of people really dismiss its significance because of its subsequent failure.
I think this all happens in Comparison. For example try comparing something like 'sharing photos' with 'going to space'.
Sharing photos might be difficult, and it is difficult to do that at scale. But space travel is a totally different beast.
Its almost like we are in the era of Christopher Columbus or Amerigo Vespucci now. I mean its just totally a different thing. Its a whole new world to explore. And that itself if far more exciting than 'sharing photos'.
Objectively everybody does a great job. But subjectively somebody is working for a greater purpose than the other.
Is it though? I'd argue that (in my value system) Bill Gates is doing something far more boring, but far more beneficial to the world - he's curing diseases. Not sci-fi diseases, old boring ones that have existed since the dawn of humanity.
The difficulty of a task doesn't seem to correlate well with its "worth" to society - however one wants to define it.
This is why I'm not going to automatically place Musk over Zuck, because fundamentally I don't see space exploration as "better for mankind" than, say, curing diseases, revolutionizing education, or changing how people socialize. Hell, where I am in my life right now, something that helps normal, every-day people on the ground is worth more than a techno-wizardry that, while difficult and monumentally expensive, provides few benefits to the everyman.
But space exploration and colonization is as important as finding cure for diseases considering our tendency for self destruction.
Currently all humans staying on earth currently is the equivalent of putting all eggs in one basket. Just as it is important to find cure for diseases, solve the problems of hunger and improve people's lives, space colonization is important too!
What do you think could happen to the earth that would make it less habitable than Mars within the next billion years? An asteroid impact 5 times the size of the one that killed off the dinosaurs and it would still be a nicer place (assuming your not in the blast radius.) Add burning all fossil fuels, a nuclear war, a massive outbreak of Ebola, and it would still be easier to have a self sustaining habitat on earth than Mars.
