The power of Facebook

CNBC aired a TV special right before Obama's State of the Union Address--entitled The Facebook Effect--which was based on the book by David Kirkpatrick.  It detailed the full true story of the way Facebook began and developed, where it is now, and where it could potentially go in the future.  At first I watched the show because of its close parallel to the Social Network movie.  Basically everything in the movie, aside from the Mark Zuckerberg's love drama, is more or less what actually happened.  And when the show started to go into details about where Facebook could be in the future, changing the way the world works forever, I began to get slightly skeptical.  As if a website could really fundamentally change human interaction?

But here I am, posting a blog, which is linked to my Facebook account, which is linked to my 680 Facebook friends.  If you're reading this, there's about a 50% chance you found it through Facebook (I know because Blogger shows me these statistics; and don't worry, it doesn't actually show me who exactly viewed the blog).

More importantly, modern day Facebook helps start revolutions.  On January 25th, the Egyptian people successfully formed the first protest through Facebook in which about 30,000 people ultimately participated (60,000 people signed up on Facebook).  The government retaliated, and shut down Twitter use and many cell phone towers.  And still, this was the largest protest in the past 30 years and likely will not be the last of its kind.

Meanwhile, Obama's Facebook page is one of the most "liked." The White House has its own page too, and for the first time ever there's a person who's job it is to monitor that page, post updates, and respond to regular people's comments. So it's most appropriate that Obama's speech, and his call for more investment in technology and higher education in it, would follow the amazing Facebook story.

When Mark Zuckerberg made Facebook, as he said many times, he didn't know what it was, or what it could be.  It's pretty clear now that nobody really could have predicted all of this.  So maybe Facebook really does have the power to change lives, if we decide that's what we want to do with it.  And that is the real power of Facebook.