case study on mark zuckerberg

This is the true story of how Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook, and it wasn't to find girls

There's the Hollywood version of Facebook's founding , and then the real version. 

In the Hollywood-stylized version, a Harvard student needed a tool to date girls. 

The real version couldn't be further from the truth, Mark Zuckerberg told Mathias Döpfner in an interview with "Die Welt am Sonntag."

At the time, he already had a girlfriend — Priscilla Chan, now his wife — and he was obsessed with the internet. Google was great for searching for news and Wikipedia was great for searching for reference material, but there was a gap. 

" There was no tool where you could go and learn about other people. I didn’t know how to build that so instead I started building little tools," Zuckerberg told Döpfner.

He built a small tool called Coursematch where people could list what classes they were taking. He did build the Facematch tool, as seen in "The Social Network," but that was just a prank, he says.

Instead, the roots of Facebook go back to a college kid spending too much time programming and not enough time paying attention in class. Here's how Zuckerberg turned a study tool into a social network, and why no one else did it.  

Mathias Döpfner: But how did [Coursematch] become Facebook? Mark Zuckerberg: For the final the class — called the “Rome of Augustus”, it was an art history class — there were all theses pieces of art in the class and they were going to show you a handful and you would need to write an essay about the historical significance of that piece of art. I hadn’t paid much attention in the class because I was programming other things so when it came time for the final I was like oh I am screwed, I don’t know any of this stuff.   So as a study tool I built a little service that showed you at random one of the pieces of art and let you enter what you thought was significant from an art history perspective. So I sent it out to the email list for the class and said hey I have a study tool, and everyone just filled in what is significant about all the pieces of art and it ended up being this great social study tool. I think the grades on the test that year were higher than they had been in the past. So there were all these different projects, I probably did like 10 different things like this when I was at Harvard. I thought I should put some of this stuff together to create a tool where people can share whatever they want with the people around them. And that was how the first version of Facebook came.   Döpfner: How long did the development take? Zuckerberg: It only took me two weeks to build the first version of Facebook because I had so much stuff before then. Döpfner: And of course, you probably hadn't the idea that this could transform into a three hundred billion dollar company?  Zuckerberg: No, not at all. Döpfner: When did you sense that it could be really a big thing?   Zuckerberg: You know I actually remember very specifically the night that I launched Facebook at Harvard. I used to go out to get pizza with a friend who I did all my computer science homework with. And I remember talking to him and saying I am so happy we have this at Harvard because now our community can be connected but one day someone is going to build this for the world.  And I didn’t even think it might be us. It was not like, oh I hope we can turn this into something big. In my mind there was no way this is going to be us. It was going to be someone else we are just college students. When I look back on the last twelve years, what has been the most surprising it’s that no one else did it. And I ask myself, why no one else did it. Döpfner: Why? Zuckerberg: I just think it’s because there were all these little reasons not to do it. You know people at every step of the way said "Oh that’s just for young people" so they didn’t work on it as much as they could. Or, "Fine, a bunch of people are using it, but it will never make any money." Or, "Oh it works in the US but it is not going to work around the world." Or, "Oh it works but it is not going to work on mobile." All these different reasons, you know how it is.  Döpfner: And you just did it. Zuckerberg: Yes.

That was only the beginning of Facebook. Now the 12-year-old social network has grown into a company investing in the future, from artificial intelligence to virtual reality.

Read the full interview on where Facebook is going next here. 

Watch: We tried Facebook's answer to Periscope

• Main content

Mark Zuckerberg’s Leadership Style Case Study

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Determination

Intelligence, self-confidence, works cited.

Few CEOs have been subject to as much criticism and attacks as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Most famously, he was portrayed as the villain in the movie ‘The Social Network’. Shareholders have complained about his leadership and failure to increase the stock price of Facebook, and others have claimed he is socially inept and too young and immature to be a CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation.

However, in spite of this criticism, Zuckerberg is unarguably one of the most successful CEOs and entrepreneurs in corporate history. His small project that he created while he was a college student has become world dominant in the social media business and is still growing and expanding. So despite all of the criticism he clearly has been a successful leader.

The unique combination of various personal traits and features of character allowed Mark Zuckerberg to reach unprecedented heights. A review of these exceptional attributes that were necessary in order to create a flawless attitude will be provided below.

According to Hiriyappa, Mark Zuckerberg possesses the following qualities: intelligence, self-confidence, determination and integrity (211). In summarizing Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership qualities, Tim Bajarin, President of Creative Strategies, Inc., said “the number one thing we’ve learned from Zuckerberg is to take the vision you have, put all your energy into it, and get a lot of smart people around you to execute on it” (Namin-Hedayati par. 5).

From his young ages, Mark had displayed a great interest in programming and creating various transmission mechanisms and games. While studying in the middle school, he did not give up his passion; furthermore, by the time of entering Phillips Exeter Academy in high school, Mark had already programmed a tool that would help his parents to work in the office and communicate with each other. Zuckerberg has retained his fascination with computer programming for many years; and, as a result, the idea of Facebook came to him while he was still at the Phillips Exeter Academy. “At that time, he only planned to offer service only to students within the Ivy League as these students were having problems in networking with one another. Afterward, he made a decision about spreading Facebook to other schools and universities with the help of his roommates” (Wood par. 2). Being so confident and passionate about his occupation reveals determination.

Despite the obvious general erudition and outstanding skills in computer programming, Zuckerberg was intelligent enough to be open for new knowledge. It is well known that Zuckerberg always makes efforts in order to learn more and receive guidance from the most influential businessmen on the planet, for example, Warren Buffett. Moreover, Zuckerberg had never concealed his discourses with Steve Jobs, in which Mark was receiving answers for the issues of business organization and efficient leadership.

While aiming his attention towards building his company, Zuckerberg is considered to be willing to gain control over every possible situation. This desire is a consequence of the self-confidence bordering on the arrogance and inability to trust anyone to do the job appropriately. Moreover, Zuckerberg appears to be of afraid of showing it not only to his workers but to the public as well, which indicates his integrity and directness.

Mark Zuckerberg is a prime example of an autocratic leader. The Facebook evolved into the biggest social network on the planet. However, even when the company changes its status to public, Zuckerberg would still reserve the right to make and dispute every critical decision, while the financiers and the board of directors is obliged to have this right. Moreover, the leadership of Zuckerberg is interpreted as reassuring and contentious at the same time. He has proven himself as an individual who consistently appeals for perpetual modernization and expansion; as a result, Zuckerberg had determined his passion for disputes and challenges. He is known for occasionally neglecting his position of the CEO of the company and making the critical decisions by himself, thus disregarding the opinion of his team.

As for the leadership style among his followers, Zuckerberg often prompts his team to make and present the production and decision more that it was set at the beginning. This method is known to be confounding and stressful; however, Zuckerberg has proven it to be quite effective, as the workers create more output that it was expected from them with limiting the participation of the workers in the most aspects of the work. The CEO of the Facebook makes an attempt at forcing his employees to work more in shorter terms and under enormous pressure, which is also an indication of autocratic leadership (Northouse 67). Moreover, Zuckerberg does not need any consent from the board directors and he does not allow them to intimidate himself, as he is well aware of the value and importance of his company and his position in it.

According to Hiriyappa, “an autocratic leader thinks that his subordinate is intelligent enough, he would not be in that subordinate position. He assumes that unintelligent subordinates are immature, unreliable and immature persons. Therefore, they should be constantly watched in the course of their work” (205). That was exactly the position of Zuckerberg towards his employees. On the contrary, Mark Zuckerberg is well aware of his deficiencies in his leadership style, which is why he started to be more receptive towards the advice from his workers. Moreover, he grants his subordinates an opportunity to present their advancements and renovations for the Facebook. It could be said that Zuckerberg is replacing his autocratic leadership with partially transformational style (Minja and Kirimi 112).

The leadership style of Zuckerberg has both negative and positive aspects. The autocratic approach is believed to be rather efficient and beneficial for the company, its development, and income. Despite the fact that autocratic leaders lack the communication with their employees, they often come up with more productive ideas. However, the autocratic leader creates stressful circumstances for the workers; as a result, they will not be able to work at the company with autocratic approach for the extended period of time (Zaccaro, Gilbert, Thor and Michael Mumford 320).

By his style of leadership, Mark Zuckerberg has made Facebook one of the most well-known and prominent websites of the Web history. Even today, the company faces the auspicious future in incomes. On the contrary, there are negative issues that the company is looking at because of the autocratic approach of Zuckerberg. By cutting back the privileges of stockholders and the liability of the board directors, the company will most likely create two diverse stockholder foundations, which will be guided by diverse concerns. “This, in turn, may and probably will fuel proxy contests and boardroom or family struggles that ultimately will screw common shareholders according to Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS)” (Wood par. 5).

Hiriyappa, Bahadur. Organizational Behavior, New Delhi, India: New Age International, 2009. Print.

Minja, David, and Ardon Barine Kirimi. Transformational Corporate Leadership, Franklin, Tennessee: Integrity Publishers Inc, 2012. Print.

Namin-Hedayati, Farnaz. n.d. Mark Zuckerberg’s Leadership Qualities . Web.

Northouse, Peter. Leadership Theory and Practice (Sixth Edition ), Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, 2012. Print.

Wood, Robert. “ Mark Zuckerberg’s $2 Billion Tax Bill Double Last Year, Higher Than Most Billionaries .” Forbes. Web.

Zaccaro, Stephen, Gilbert, Janelle, Thor, Kirk, and Michael Mumford. “Leadership and Social Intelligence: Linking Social Perceptiveness and Behavioral Flexibility to Leader Effectiveness.” Leadership Quarterly 2.1 (1991): 317-331. Print.

• Warren Buffett's Leadership and Communication
• The Value of Failure in Leadership
• Zuckerberg in Facebook-Cambridge Analytica Scandal
• Behaviorism and Psychoanalysis as Personality Theories
• Musk's vs. Zuckerberg's Communication Contrasts
• Warren Buffett's Leadership Style in Business
• Mary Kay Ash and Her Leadership Style
• Graduates' Leadership Skills and Theories
• Mandela's Leadership: Long Walk to Freedom
• Leadership Model and Its Application in an Organization
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2020, June 16). Mark Zuckerberg's Leadership Style. https://ivypanda.com/essays/mark-zuckerbergs-leadership-style/

"Mark Zuckerberg's Leadership Style." IvyPanda , 16 June 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/mark-zuckerbergs-leadership-style/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Mark Zuckerberg's Leadership Style'. 16 June.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Mark Zuckerberg's Leadership Style." June 16, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/mark-zuckerbergs-leadership-style/.

1. IvyPanda . "Mark Zuckerberg's Leadership Style." June 16, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/mark-zuckerbergs-leadership-style/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Mark Zuckerberg's Leadership Style." June 16, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/mark-zuckerbergs-leadership-style/.

More From Forbes

Do you trust facebook zuckerberg's leadership dilemma.

• Facebook is not alone in its battle against wavering consumer trust.
• Trust has a measurable impact on the bottom line of businesses — and leaders can no longer relegate it to the realm of “soft” qualities.
• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before a House Energy and Commerce hearing on Capitol Hill in ... [+] Washington, Wednesday, April 11, 2018, about data privacy and the use of Facebook data to target American voters in the 2016 election. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, recently announced an overhaul of his company’s product strategy : a shift away from public sharing toward private messaging and conversation.

This strategic approach follows a challenging year for Zuckerberg and his organization. Although Facebook’s highly-publicized trust issues did not cause a drop in revenue , they did dent the company’s public image. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, for example, trust in Facebook dropped by a drastic 66% .

Facebook is not alone in its battle against wavering consumer trust. With the spread of information and the internet, these issues have become very common — and very expensive. When consulting firm Accenture attempted to quantify how much “trust incidences” cost companies, it discovered that, across the 54% of companies in their sample that experienced an event compromising trust, revenues at stake equaled at least US$180 billion.

“In today’s world, it is no longer a question of if a company will experience a trust incident, but when,” Accenture states. “Companies need to intentionally create a culture that builds, maintains and preserves trust… how a company does things has become as equally important as what it does.”

Why Trust Is Integral to Leadership

Over the years, Zuckerberg’s difficulties with transparency have negatively affected his leadership influence. As David Horsager, author of The Trust Edge , explained in Forbes : “You can have a compelling vision, rock-solid strategy, excellent communication skills, innovative insight, and a skilled team, but if people don’t trust you, you will never get the results you want.” 

Since trust is one of the most important components of leadership, other companies should learn from Zuckerberg’s struggles and instill a culture of trust today. Research provides compelling evidence on a myriad of tangible benefits that accrue to companies that garner trust from their stakeholders. Here are three research insights on how trust benefits businesses.

Trust Motivates Employees

Research suggests that ‘trusting’ employees are ‘engaged’ employees. According to a survey from the Society for Human Resources Management , trust is the third-most important quality affecting job satisfaction; only “respectful treatment of all employees at all levels” and “compensation/pay” rank higher. Additionally, the Edelman Trust Barometer found that employees who trust a company are much more likely to engage in advocacy (78% vs. 39%), loyalty (74% vs. 36%), engagement (71% vs. 38%), and commitment (83% vs. 52%) behaviors than those who do not.

Trust may reduce turnover, too. When Fortune compiles its “ 100 Best Companies to Work For ,” it bases 85% of the scores on “what employees report about their experiences of trust and reaching their full human potential.” The top-ranked companies on Fortune’s list, therefore, are often the most trusted — and, according to the World Economic Forum , they experience “up to 50% less staff turnover than their competitors.”

For a case study demonstrating the relationship between trust and employee satisfaction, consider Campbell Soup. In the late 1990s, the company was suffering from a toxic, unengaged culture and plummeting share prices. Then Douglas Conant joined as CEO in 2001 — and made trust his priority. “Before you have the moral authority to lead your team, you have to inspire trust," he told Harvard Business School . "Trust is the one thing that changes everything. In a high-trust culture, it's so much easier to get things done."

  His approach worked: Nine years later, there were 17 engaged employees for every disengaged employee, according to the Gallup Employee Engagement Index. (Gallup considers a company “world-class” when it reaches a ratio of 12 to one.) Among the 350 top leaders at Campbell, the engagement ratio was a stunning 77 to one.

Trust Attracts Customers

Only 56% of the American public said they trust businesses, according to the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer , and 67% said that “a good reputation may get me to try a product, but unless I come to trust the company behind the product, I will soon stop buying it.”

Putting that into further perspective, when Accenture surveyed consumers who had switched companies in the past year, 46% attributed their decision to a loss of trust. “Today’s customers have more choices than ever,” explained the consulting company. “Companies that cannot deliver on brand promise or transparency will lose customer trust and, consequently, business.”

While companies need not be perfect, they must prioritize trust over profits — even when it is difficult. Take the case of Tylenol: In 1982, cyanide-laced pills killed seven people . Jim Burke, the CEO of parent company Johnson & Johnson, quickly recalled 31 million bottles and began an aggressive marketing campaign. Although the recall (the first of its kind) and relaunch cost more than $100 million, it mitigated damage to the company’s most important long-term asset: the public’s trust. Tylenol’s reputation recovered, and since 1985, J&J has had an 11% compound growth rate .

Trusts Boosts Profits

In addition to engaging employees and enticing customers — or, more likely, because of those factors — building trust can also increase a company’s profits. Amy Lyman, author of The Trustworthy Leader , researched the organizations on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. (As mentioned earlier, trust counts heavily in the selection process.) Between 1998 and 2011, Lyman discovered these companies posted annual returns of 11.06% — beating the S&P 500 by nearly 300%.

Further research underscores Lyman’s findings. A Cornell University study of 6,500 Holiday Inn employees discovered that, when measuring the level of trust employees had in their managers, a one-eighth point improvement on a five-point scale correlated with a 2.5% rise in revenues — equating to more than $250,000 per year, per hotel. “No other single aspect of manager behavior that we measured had as large an impact on profits,” wrote one of the researchers in the Harvard Business Review .

Campbell Soup provides yet another example. Between 1998 and 2001, before Conant was hired, the company’s shares lost 50% of their value. With Conant’s commitment to trust, however, Campbell reversed that trend: Between 2004 and 2010, its cumulative total shareholder return was an impressive 64%.

Trust has a measurable impact on the bottom line of businesses — and leaders can no longer relegate it to the realm of “soft” qualities. To achieve success, leaders must foster trust themselves, as well as create a culture of trust that permeates their entire organization. As JetBlue chairman Joel Peterson told Insights by Stanford Business : “I believe that trust is more powerful than power itself… You have to be intentional about building a high-trust environment. It doesn’t just happen.”

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

• Search Search Please fill out this field.

Early Life and Education

Notable accomplishments.

• Mark Zuckerberg FAQs

The Bottom Line

• Business Leaders

Mark Zuckerberg: Founder and CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook)

Mark Zuckerberg is a self-taught computer programmer and co-founder, chair, and chief executive officer of Meta ( META ), formerly known as Facebook. Originally named Facemash, Zuckerberg founded the social networking site in his Harvard University dorm room in 2004 along with Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin.

According to Bloomberg , Zuckerberg's net worth as of June 10, 2022, was about $68.2 billion.

Key Takeaways

• Mark Zuckerberg is a self-taught computer programmer and the co-founder, chair, and CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook).
• According to Bloomberg , Zuckerberg's net worth as of June 10, 2022, was about $68.2 billion.
• Facebook has 2.93 billion monthly active users as of the first quarter of 2022, making it the biggest social network in the world.
• In 2015, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, founded the Chan Zuckerberg foundation with the goal of delivering "...personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people, and building strong communities."
• In April 2018, Zuckerberg testified on Capitol Hill about Facebook's use of users' information, including the sharing of 87 million users' information to Cambridge Analytica.

Investopedia / Alison Czinkota

On May 14, 1984, Mark Zuckerberg was born in White Plains, New York. As a child, he showed an affinity for computers. He learned the BASIC programming language at a nearby college, and at the age of 12, he developed an instant-messaging application that his father used in his office.

Zuckerberg attended Harvard University but dropped out after his sophomore year to focus on developing Facebook. The site grew out of two earlier ventures: FaceMash, a website for ranking the attractiveness of other Harvard students, and HarvardConnection.com, an online social networking platform.

In 2004, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra, the three credited founders of HarvardConnection.com, sued Zuckerberg for allegedly stealing intellectual property from the website. They reached a multi-million dollar settlement of cash and stock options in 2008. The Winklevoss twins tried to reopen the lawsuit in 2011, but the court denied their request.

Facebook IPO and Acquisitions

In mid-2005, Facebook raised $12.7 million in venture capital and expanded access to hundreds of universities and high schools. One year later, the social network opened to the general public, and Yahoo! offered $1 billion to buy the company—a bid that was swiftly rejected by Zuckerberg.

In 2012, Facebook went public and became the most successful Internet initial public offering (IPO) in history when it raised $16 billion. That same year, Facebook bought the photo-sharing application Instagram, and Zuckerberg married Priscilla Chan in a surprise wedding the day after the IPO.

Meta has acquired dozens of companies over the years, including Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, WhatsApp for $22 billion in cash and shares in 2014, Oculus VR for $2 billion in 2014, and several other companies ranging from artificial intelligence (AI) to identification platforms.

Wealth and Philanthropy

Zuckerberg has made headlines for his philanthropy , including his 2010 donation of $100 million to help schools in Newark, N.J. In 2014, the publication Philanthropy ranked Zuckerberg and Chan the most generous American donors of the previous year, after they donated 18 million shares of Facebook stock to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, in Mountain View, Calif.

On Dec. 1, 2015, Zuckerberg and Chan published a letter to their daughter Max, in which they announced the creation of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative "to join people across the world to advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation."

In the post, Zuckerberg and Chan said the "initial areas of focus will be personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people, and building strong communities" and that "we will give 99% of our Facebook shares—currently about $45 billion—during our lives to advance this mission."

Controversy and Cambridge Analytica

Meta has been accused, nearly since its inception, of collecting and selling the personal data, posts, and instant messages of its users. These accusations mounted shortly after the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections, with some alleging that U.S. voters had been under the influence of targeted ads financed by Russia. 

In March 2018, media outlets including The New York Times and The Observer reported that U.K.-based political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica  had paid an outside researcher to collect data on 50 million Facebook users without their permission . The New York Times reported that Cambridge Analytica's goal was to use the data for its trademark "psychographic modeling," with the aim of "reading voters' minds" and potentially influencing the outcome of elections. 

$25 Billion

The estimated ad revenue of Instagram in 2021.

In April 2018, Facebook disclosed that the information of 87 million users had been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, and not the 50 million as earlier reported.

Later that month, Zuckerberg appeared on Capitol Hill to testify before House and Senate committees about Facebook's use of consumer data. In prepared remarks before the Senate, Zuckerberg noted that Facebook had been beneficial in connecting people during the #MeToo movement and various disasters.

The statement went on to say that Zuckerberg and Facebook heard about Cambridge Analytica's involvement from the media, just like everyone else. Zuckerberg also outlined actions that Facebook intended to undertake to prevent future incidents of this nature, including "safeguarding our platform," "investigating other apps," and "building better controls."

How Does Facebook Make Money?

Facebook makes the bulk of its money through ads. The company sells ad space on its many platforms. These platforms include Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Facebook (Meta) also makes money by allowing users to pay to promote their pages/posts on the various platforms, which is also a form of advertising.

What Is Mark Zuckerberg's Net Worth?

As of June 10, 2022, Mark Zuckerberg's net worth is $68.2 billion. He earned his wealth as the founder and largest shareholder of Meta (formerly Facebook).

Does Mark Zuckerberg Make $1 a Year?

Technically, Mark Zuckerberg makes a salary of $1 a year at Facebook. His wealth, however, is tied up in the shares of Meta (formerly Facebook), of which he is the largest shareholder, making him one of the richest men in the world.

Zuckerberg started Facebook from his dorm room, turning it into one of the largest companies in the world. Through Facebook and its many acquisitions, such as Instagram and WhatsApp, Zuckerberg controls the majority of the way consumers consume content and interact with one another.

Bloomberg. " Mark Zuckerberg ."

Statista. " Number of Monthly Active Facebook Users Worldwide as of 1st Quarter 2022 ."

George Beahm. "Mark Zuckerberg: In His Own Words." Agate Publishing, 2018.

United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. " Facebook v. ConnectU, Inc. ," Pages 4902-4912.

Crunchbase. " Series A - Meta ."

Inc. " Peter Thiel Talks About the Day Mark Zuckerberg Turned Down Yahoo's $1 Billion ."

History. " Facebook Raises $16 Billion in Largest Tech IPO in U.S. History ."

Meta. " Facebook to Acquire Oculus ."

Meta. " Facebook to Acquire Instagram ."

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. " Form 8-K - October 4, 2014 ."

Cision PR Newswire. " New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker Join With Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to Advance a National Model for Improving Public Schools ."

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. " Letter to Max ."

Statista. " Instagram - Statistics & Facts ."

Meta. " An Update on Our Plans to Restrict Data Access on Facebook ."

U.S. Senate. " Hearing Before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary and the United Sates Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation - April 10, 2018 - Testimony of Mark Zuckerberg, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Facebook ," Pages 1-3.

Business Insider. " Mark Zuckerberg Reveals Why He Only Makes $1 a Year ."

• Terms of Service
• Editorial Policy
• Privacy Policy

• Share full article

Advertisement

Mark Zuckerberg will be added to a Facebook privacy lawsuit.

The District of Columbia case, which grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, could expose the chief executive to financial and other penalties.

By Cecilia Kang

• Published Oct. 20, 2021 Updated Oct. 29, 2021

WASHINGTON — The attorney general for the District of Columbia on Wednesday added Facebook ’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, to a consumer protection lawsuit, in one of the first efforts by a regulator to expose him personally to potential financial and other penalties. The attorney general, Karl Racine, said that continuing interviews and reviews of internal documents for the case had revealed that Mr. Zuckerberg played a much more active role in key decisions than prosecutors had known.

Facebook is at the center of multiple legal battles with regulators. It is the target of antitrust and consumer protection lawsuits by the Federal Trade Commission and several state attorneys general.

Regulatory pressure is also mounting. U.S. lawmakers are introducing bills to regulate social media companies and technologies that spread harmful content. On Wednesday, Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut wrote Mr. Zuckerberg asking him to testify in a hearing on Instagram’s harms to teenagers. Also on Wednesday, Britain’s antitrust authority fined Facebook $70 million for breaching reporting rules related to an investigation of the company’s acquisition of Giphy.

None of those actions have directly addressed the role played by Mr. Zuckerberg, who has more than 50 percent control of voting shares. But Mr. Racine’s move could result in large financial penalties for Mr. Zuckerberg. The District of Columbia could can seek up to $5,000 for any of the district’s 300,000 residents who may have been affected by the Cambridge Analytica data privacy violation.

“This is a power move and gets to the problem,” said David Vladeck, a professor of law at Georgetown and the former head of consumer protection at the F.T.C. “Facebook is very unusual because of its corporate structure that makes Mark Zuckerberg the ultimate decider on all important decisions.”

Mr. Racine’s complaint against Facebook was filed in December 2018 in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. The suit charges that Facebook misled consumers about privacy on the platform by allowing Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, to obtain sensitive data from more than 87 million users, including more than half the district’s residents.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

Mark Zuckerberg on why Facebook is rebranding to Meta

The company wants to move past the ‘confusion and awkwardness’ of sharing a name with its main app.

By Alex Heath , a deputy editor and author of the Command Line newsletter. He’s covered the tech industry for over a decade at The Information and other outlets.

Share this story

For the first time in 17 years, Mark Zuckerberg has a new job title.

On Thursday, he officially became the CEO and chairman of Meta, the new parent company name for Facebook. The rebrand is about solidifying the social media giant as being about the metaverse , which Zuckerberg sees as the future of the internet. Zuckerberg is staying in control of everything. He told me in an interview that, unlike the founders of Google who stepped aside in 2015 when it became part of a holding company called Alphabet, he has no plans to give up the top job.

“I think we’re basically moving from being Facebook first as a company to being metaverse first.”

Instead, the change is about recognizing a shift inside the company that’s already taken place. Zuckerberg has been pouring billions of dollars — at least $10 billion this year alone — into building the metaverse, an expansive, immersive vision of the internet taken from the pages of sci-fi novels like Snow Crash and Ready Player One . “I think we’re basically moving from being Facebook first as a company to being metaverse first,” he told me this week over the phone. While details are slim, a unified account system is going to be introduced to span all of the company’s social apps, the Oculus Quest headset, Portal, and future devices. That means you won’t need a Facebook account to use the Quest.

The rebrand to Meta, announced by Zuckerberg today at the company’s annual Connect conference, has been a clandestine affair since he formally kicked off the project just over six months ago. The small handful of employees involved had to sign separate nondisclosure agreements, and Zuckerberg refused to tell me the name itself when we spoke the day before Connect. He said he had been thinking about rebranding the company ever since he bought Instagram and WhatsApp, in 2012 and 2014, but earlier this year he realized that it was time to make the change.

“I think that there was just a lot of confusion and awkwardness about having the company brand be also the brand of one of the social media apps,” he said. “I think it’s helpful for people to have a relationship with a company that is different from the relationship with any specific one of the products, that can kind of supersede all of that.”

Recent leaks had “nothing to bear” on the name change

Zuckerberg knows that the timing of this rebrand is suspect. Over the past few weeks, the company has been hit with a nonstop barrage of criticism, thanks to leaked internal documents provided to the media by a former employee named Frances Haugen. Facebook is perhaps the most scrutinized company in the world right now, and its brand has soured in the eyes of young people. To the many critics, distancing the company brand and Zuckerberg from the name Facebook will be seen as an evasion tactic.

According to Zuckerberg, the current cycle of bad news “had nothing to bear on this. Even though I think some people might want to make that connection, I think that’s sort of a ridiculous thing. If anything, I think that this is not the environment that you would want to introduce a new brand in.”

The metaverse as an idea isn’t new, but it wasn’t thrust into the mainstream conversation until Zuckerberg started talking about it publicly earlier this year. The concept originates from Snow Crash , a dystopian novel from the 1990s in which people flee the crumbling real world to be fully immersed in a virtual one. While he acknowledges that the origins of the word are a “con,” Zuckerberg is trying to reclaim the metaverse as a utopian idea that will unlock an entirely new economy of virtual goods and services.

In the next decade, he thinks most people will be spending time in a fully immersive, 3D version of the internet that spans not just Meta’s hardware such as the Quest, but devices made by others. He’s pushing his teams to build technology that could one day let you show up in a virtual space as a full-bodied avatar, or appear as a hologram of yourself in the real-world living room of your friend who lives across the planet.

What is the metaverse?

It depends who you ask, but it usually refers to an array of interconnected digital spaces, sometimes in VR, sometimes experienced through a social network, and sometimes including real-time reference points to the physical world. You can read more about it here .

He’s careful not to get into details, but he believes there will be a “pretty important role” for crypto technology like NFTs and smart contracts in the metaverse. “One of the big questions that people are going to have about virtual goods in the metaverse is, ‘Do I really get to own this thing?’” he told me. “‘Or is it just content that someone can basically just take away from me in the future?’ And I’m pretty sensitive to that given all the pressures that we’ve had to try to navigate around censorship, and what’s the definition of something that’s harmful versus when you have to get in the way of people being able to express something.”

The software underpinning Zuckerberg’s take on the metaverse is called Horizon. It’s part Minecraft meets Roblox with an application for work collaboration as well. Next year, the company plans to introduce Project Cambria, a high-end, mixed reality headset previewed at Connect that mixes virtual graphics with the real world in full color. It will have face and eye tracking to allow for more realistic avatars.

Also in the works is a pair of AR glasses called Nazaré. While they are still several years out, to Zuckerberg they have the potential to be as widely used as mobile phones are today. The idea is that, unlike a VR headset that takes you out of the real world, Nazaré will look like a normal pair of glasses with displays capable of overlaying computing onto the world around you. “These products are becoming decreasingly like what you would think of as a social media product today,” he said. “And I think just having a different identify for that is important.”

It’s unclear if this rebrand to Meta will achieve what Zuckerberg is aiming for, but there’s no question that it’s a bold move. The company is facing down new social media competitors, frustrated government regulators, and a new generation of potential users who view its core app as far from hip. The metaverse offers Zuckerberg a substantially new, maximalist direction to move toward. Now it needs to get to work.

Below is a transcript of my full interview with Zuckerberg. It has been edited for length and clarity:

Alex Heath: Can you explain why you’re doing this rebrand?

Mark Zuckerberg: At a high level, we did this segment reporting change on Monday as part of earnings. So we’re now looking at our business as two different segments. One for the social apps and one for future platforms basically. And the idea is that the metaverse work that we’re doing is not about any one of those segments. It’s not like Reality Labs is doing the work building the metaverse. It goes across all of this. The metaverse is going to be both future platforms and social experiences. 

So we wanted to have a new brand identity that, as you reported , is directionally aligned with the future vision that we’re working towards. There’s sort of a higher-level brand identity goal and then there’s a more technical and functional goal. The higher-level piece is that Facebook is the iconic social media brand. And increasingly we’re doing more than that. People think of us as a social media company, but the way we think about ourselves is that we’re a technology company that builds technology to help people connect with each other. We think that makes us different from the other companies because everyone else is trying to work on how people interact with technology, where as we we build technologies so that people can interact with each other. 

For us, it was never just about social media, and increasingly we’re moving beyond that. It felt like having the brand of the company be tied to the idea of social media and one of the specific products that we’re building there — because we now have Instagram and WhatsApp growing to be really important as well — felt increasingly like it didn’t encompass everything that we were doing. So we wanted to shift that to have something that is more evocative of the vision that we’re moving towards. 

“It’s helpful for people to have a relationship with a company that is different from the relationship with any specific one of the products.”

On a more functional and technical basis, I think that there was just a lot of confusion and awkwardness about having the company brand be also the brand of one of the social media apps. When people wanted to go sign into their Quest, we wanted them to sign in with their Facebook account because we wanted to have a single identity or account system for the company. Google has that, Apple has that. Microsoft has it. But for us, the issue is that if you’re signing into Quest or WhatsApp or Instagram with a Facebook account, I think that there was a confusion about, “Am I signing into this with my Facebook corporate account or is this going to be tied to my social media account?” People had concerns on Quest. “If I don’t want to use Facebook or if something happens and my account gets deactivated, is my device now going to get bricked?” That’s a concern that I think people shouldn’t have to have. People had concerns that, “If I sign into Instagram with this or if I sign into WhatsApp with it, does that mean that my data is somehow gonna get shared over here in a way that I didn’t want?” 

I think it’s helpful for people to have a relationship with a company that is different from the relationship with any specific one of the products, that can kind of supersede all of that. So from a functional perspective, I thought it was very important to have that. And as I looked out several years towards launching something like Nazaré, these products are becoming decreasingly like what you would think of as a social media product today. I think just having a different identify for that is important. 

When I thought about when was the best time to try to make that shift, it’s kind of like as soon as possible once you realize that you want to do that. So that’s what led us down this path. We’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I formally kicked off the project earlier this year. It was a little over more than six months ago. But this is a debate that we’ve been having for a long time inside the company, about whether we should do this. It’s something that I’ve been working with Alex Schultz on very closely since he became the CMO.

Is there a restructuring component of this functionally with how the organizations report to people as well? Or is it more just the brand?

There’s the financial reporting and segment reporting. There is the brand. There will be the account system. We’re not making org changes today as part of that. That might be something that I’ll consider in the future, but I don’t think that’s something that’s near term on the horizon.

You said you started this formally about six months ago. Is it at all a reaction to the brand baggage and the brand tax you guys sometimes refer to internally that Facebook has, and just wanting to distance from that? Or is it really more just looking ahead? I have to imagine it’s a mix of both.

We started well before the current cycle [of bad news]. I think the current cycle clearly had nothing to bear on this. Even though I think some people might want to make that connection, I think that’s sort of a ridiculous thing. If anything, I think that this is not the environment that you would want to introduce a new brand in. 

“To me personally, it was really important that we are running towards something.”

I think sometimes you just have to keep pushing forward. There’s a lot of different aspects and attributes of these brands. There’s obviously all these good and bad attributes that people ascribe to social media overall, and Facebook in particular. And these are conversations that we sort of had inside the company I think going back to, like 2014, ever since Instagram and WhatsApp joined and we became a family of apps. There was a little bit of an inherent awkwardness to having the company named after one of them. I never really considered it when I thought the primary thing that we were doing was social media, because Facebook was and still is the iconic social media brand. So it always felt a little odd to me to have a brand that was supposed to stand for social media and take Facebook out of that slot and put something else in. That felt a little odd. I wasn’t sure what job that would be doing. 

But now I think the next chapter of what we’re doing is coming more into focus. And I know that a lot of people are gonna have questions like the one that you asked. To what extent are we running towards something versus running away from it? And I guess all I can say is that, to me personally, it was really important that we are running towards something. And that this is a vision for the future that we’re really excited about and that we’re committed to and we’re really going for. I wouldn’t have wanted to do this if that wasn’t in my heart how I felt about what we were doing. 

I know that people will kind of ascribe a lot of different reasons, and obviously there’s different pros and cons of doing different things. But that was a basic litmus test for me. I wasn’t gonna let us do this if I didn’t feel really strongly about the thing that we were anchoring our brand on and how we were going to move forward.

Do you think it helps with internal morale and recruiting as well, if you’re looking ahead and you’re trying to reposition how the company is thought of in the valley and where you’re hiring from?

I think that’s an interesting question. My guess is it will help with some people, but it might also be different for some people. So I’m not sure. We’ve had this conversation for several months now since I’ve signaled that I wanted us to become a metaverse company and be seen in this way. And I’d say, overall, the sentiment is definitely positive internally about it. I think more people are very excited about it.

“We continue to focus on being the best at building social media apps.”

But I think it’s also really important to our team, and frankly it’s important to me, too, that we continue to focus on being the best at building social media apps. A lot of people come to Facebook today because that’s what they want to go do. And I think it’s really important to people that we are paying attention to that going forward. Billions of people use our products and we need to make sure we keep doing that well. But I do think it should be exciting to people. I think, in general, the best people want to work as part of big missions. I certainly think that the metaverse as the next chapter of the internet is going to be really exciting to a lot of the right people. I think we’re clearly positioned as a company that has the most ambitious vision and the deepest commitment and investment in this area.

Is part of this at all about setting up a way for you to change your role at the company in the coming years? Do you still see yourself as CEO and chairman in, say, five years?

I think probably. I don’t have a specific date how long I want to be doing this for. I guess what I could say is I’m very excited about the next chapter of what we’re doing. So I really want to go do that. So yeah, I don’t have anything more to add on that. I wouldn’t look at this as part of a plan to move in that direction.

Because you know you’re gonna get the Alphabet comparisons.

Yeah, I think it’s a fair question. I guess what I can say is that really isn’t what we’re doing here. I think this is more about just signaling our commitment to this vision and focusing on it, setting up a new brand architecture for the company so that way all people who use our products can have a relationship with the company that is separate from their relationship with the apps. I’m very excited about what we’re building. And I’m pretty young. I have a lot of energy. But certainly at some point I’m not [going to be] running the company. That’s not really what this is about, though.

It sounds like you’re implying that there’s going to be a new unified account system across everything?

You’ll have a Facebook account and you’ll have an Instagram account. You’ll also have an account with the company that’s the top level. So that way if you don’t want to use Facebook, you don’t have to. One interesting analogy here is I think we’re basically moving from being Facebook first as a company to being metaverse first. I feel like this is in a way like when Microsoft went from being Windows first to cloud first.

There were all these subtle ways in which, because the company brand was Facebook, a lot of stuff flowed through Facebook and the Facebook app in ways that may have not been optimal. Facebook is still clearly the app that people use the most out of all the ones that we do. But there are people who want to just use WhatsApp or want to just use Instagram, or just want to have Quest and be in VR or AR and not have to use these things.

So I think it’s about being able to pick and choose which of the services you want to use and know that, no matter what happens to your Facebook account or your Instagram account, you’re still going to have all the content that you bought in VR or all your virtual goods. You can set up an avatar and it can be tied to one of those accounts or could just be tied to your overall identity across the different family of apps. And you can use it in all these places if you want. I bet that’s going to be pretty powerful.

Is the whole metaverse push also tied at all to the work on young adults and teens ? Kids love Roblox. They love Fortnite . Is that a part of it, too?

It’s not the primary part of it. I do think it’s important to clarify that when I’m talking about what our north star demographic here is, we’re talking about young adults 18 to 29, not primarily teens and certainly not primarily kids. But like college and post college, that’s sort of historically been the strong base for us. And generally it continues to be a strong base. But I think it’s really important that as so many more people use all our products, that we don’t lose sight of that.

“I don’t think [metaverse is] really going to be huge until the second half of this decade at earliest.”

The median age of the people who use our products gets older. As we try to make our services better for everyone, I just want to make sure that the quality doesn’t drift for young adults. What I’ve basically told every team is whenever you’re building anything now, whether you’re working on feed ranking or you’re building groups or you’re designing Reels or video or Marketplace, keep in mind especially what’s going to be important to young adults. Let’s say you’re building Marketplace. What young adults need to buy and sell is probably different from what people who are later in their life need to buy and sell. So there are just all these different ways that I think the products will shift to going in that direction. 

And that certainly goes for everything that we’re going to be doing around the metaverse, too. That’ll be the north star demographic, the hero demographic, that we keep in mind. But a lot of what we’re talking about is probably nearer term than metaverse will be. I think the work we’re doing on the metaverse will be very exciting over the next few years, but I think so much fundamental stuff has to get done that I don’t think it’s really going to be huge until the second half of this decade at earliest.

We face a lot of competition from TikTok and iMessage especially now, as well as a bunch of others that have been around forever — YouTube, Snapchat. But TikTok and iMessage are growing incredibly quickly. So I think in terms of our focus on the apps, and Facebook and Instagram in particular, that I think is going to be a bigger thing over the next one to three years. Whereas the metaverse work I think will be a little further out in terms of actually reaching a ton of people.

The term metaverse. I’m thinking about it originating from Snow Crash and that dystopia that it originates from and the context of that term, does that concern you at all? It’s kind of funny that it originates from people trying to flee the real world into a virtual one because the real one is crumbling. Is that something you thought about at all when you were thinking about leaning into the word?

Yeah, I think that’s certainly a con of it. But I think it means more than that. Obviously, the book has this whole environment around it that’s sort of negative. But I don’t think it has to be that way. I also think that as these technologies develop, they take on different connotations and metaphors. I would be very surprised if five years from now the main association that almost anyone had with the metaverse was about the initial mention of it in Snow Crash . What it’s going to mean to people is going to be all the use cases that they have in there and what they’re able to do with it.

I’d actually be interested to look at what the earliest mentions of the internet were. People called it the information superhighway and stuff. None of that was was super negative, but it was pretty odd when compared to how we think about it today. I think that these things are always more dynamic. I didn’t want to be deterred from using what seemed like the clearest and most logical term that matched what we were building because of some negative connotations that some people have. It’ll take on more meaning than that.

A part of Connect that interested me was you talking about crypto and new forms of governance in the metaverse. Are you working on supporting NFTs ? It seemed to me like you were thinking about DAOs. I’d be curious to know what you think of that and smart contracts in general?

I don’t have anything to announce on that right now. But here’s what I’d say. The projects that we’ve done around Novi, I do think we’ve been the most forward leaning of the big tech companies around this space. So clearly we’re interested in it and generally supportive of the space and think that there’s an important role for it to play in the future.

One of the big questions that people are going to have about virtual goods in the metaverse is, “Do I really get to own this thing? Or is it just content that someone can basically just take away from me in the future?” And I’m pretty sensitive to that, given all the pressures that we’ve had to try to navigate around censorship and what’s the definition of something that’s harmful versus when you have to get in the way of people being able to express something. All that becomes a lot more sensitive when there’s money and ownership, people pay for something. They just really want to know that their thing isn’t going to be taken away.

“I do think that there’s an important place for more decentralization”

I do think that there’s a pretty important role, whether it’s the current way that people are thinking about NFTs or just ways to do decentralized entitlements across the metaverse. I don’t think that there’s going to be only one system. But I do think that there’s an important place for more decentralization across that. As more of our projects become more mature, then we’ll have more to talk about in that space.

I’m wondering if you think that Facebook has faced so much scrutiny because of how it controls the flow of speech and because there’s just natural tension there, and people don’t like that sometimes. Or because of how top-down it is, where people have little say in how it runs or an ability to make money on the platform? I think a lot of the media scrutiny operates with the assumption that you’re not stopping enough of the bad. Or that, on the more extreme end, any bad means the platform is net negative.

I do think, in general, the last five years have been a big learning period for me and the company. There were a lot of issues that we’ve just had to build much more sophisticated programs around, whether that’s around building AI systems to identify proactively all these different kinds of harmful content and act on them, building a much stronger privacy program, a lot more with encryption, all of these different things. 

A lot of these are things that we cared about much earlier in the company and had some programs around, but we really kicked a lot of them into high gear after 2016. I think some of that was spurred by some of the scrutiny and then just us being introspective and saying, “Hey, I do think we should build stronger programs here.” Now, in general, I’m very proud of what we built there. I think it’s difficult problems and you’re balancing complex social equities between things like free expression and trying to address harmful content. It’s impossible to ever do both perfectly. And I think that the ideal answer probably isn’t to just lean in one direction fully or the other. It’s to try to balance it. So then you end up not making anyone particularly happy. But I am genuinely proud of the work that we’re doing there. It’s an industry-leading effort. I think anyone who’s serious acknowledges that. The investments and results far exceed the sophistication of anyone else. 

But still, when you’re talking about building a new ecosystem, I just think it would undoubtedly be better to build these things in from the beginning this time. We’re pretty serious about that. So the question of what are the principles. Privacy is a really important one. And so is it safety, especially if you’re in such an immersive environment. You want to be able to say, “Hey, this person is bothering me. I need to get out of here quickly, or I want them to disappear to me.” So there are all these different dynamics that we basically want to embed in the foundation of it. Interoperability is another. It’s been disappointing, the level of interoperability today on the mobile internet. So hopefully we can do better in the next one.

I don’t know. One thing that I’ve talked about over the years is building these platforms around people instead of apps. I do think there’s something to this where, if the atomic unit of this system is it’s like an embodied internet and you’re in it and the atomic unit is you have your avatar and your digital goods. And the different apps aren’t completely different things. They’re just different spaces that you can teleport to.

I think that’s an architecture that should be fundamentally more amenable to interoperability, as long as you build the right standards in from the beginning, than one where the atomic unit like our mobile platforms today is apps. And the assumption is that every app is a completely different environment and you start from nothing in each one. So I do think that there’s something about how you design these things and make it more people-centric that either leans more or less towards that. So we’ll see. But I think it’s going to be good to try to build some of these things in from the front.

No one’s ready for this

Nothing is requiring employees to be in the office five days a week, microsoft is rebranding copilot in the most microsoft way possible, google’s ai ‘reimagine’ tool helped us add wrecks, disasters, and corpses to our photos, chick-fil-a is reportedly launching a streaming service for some reason.

More from this stream Facebook Connect: all the news about ‘Meta’ and Mark Zuckerberg’s VR dream

Amid the fluff, meta showed an impressive demo of its codec avatars, with facebook’s change to meta, what’s the new big tech acronym, facebook’s oculus quest will soon be called the meta quest, facebook’s famous thumbs-up hq sign has been replaced with meta.

Browse Econ Literature

• Working papers
• Software components
• Book chapters
• JEL classification

More features

• Subscribe to new research

RePEc Biblio

Author registration.

• Economics Virtual Seminar Calendar NEW!

Successful Entrepreneurs: Mark Elliot Zuckerberg

• Author & abstract
• 8 Citations
• Related works & more

Corrections

(University of Bucharest, Faculty of Business and Administration, Romania)

Suggested Citation

Download full text from publisher.

Follow serials, authors, keywords & more

Public profiles for Economics researchers

Various research rankings in Economics

RePEc Genealogy

Who was a student of whom, using RePEc

Curated articles & papers on economics topics

Upload your paper to be listed on RePEc and IDEAS

New papers by email

Subscribe to new additions to RePEc

EconAcademics

Blog aggregator for economics research

Cases of plagiarism in Economics

About RePEc

Initiative for open bibliographies in Economics

News about RePEc

Questions about IDEAS and RePEc

RePEc volunteers

Participating archives

Publishers indexing in RePEc

Privacy statement

Found an error or omission?

Opportunities to help RePEc

Get papers listed

Have your research listed on RePEc

Open a RePEc archive

Have your institution's/publisher's output listed on RePEc

Get RePEc data

Use data assembled by RePEc

Leadership Lessons from Mark Zuckerberg

When you look at eminent people including Mark Zuckerberg, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, Malala Yousafzai, Taylor Carol, Nadir Vissanjy, Britney Spears, Amy Schumer, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Carli Lloyd, Yo Gotti, Eddie Redmayne, Danica Patrick, Serena Williams, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Justin Timberlake, and Usain Bolt; they are all millennials.

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook is an inspiration to millennials globally. He is many things to many people and is the young century’s first millennial CEO.  He is a philanthropist, digital trailblazer, and Time magazine named him Person of the Year, 2010.  Most millennials draw inspiration from this entrepreneurial icon to excel as entrepreneurs.

Mark Zuckerberg surprised the world with his innovative and creative internet technology and raised the hopes of billions of youth by dreaming and achieving big.  He busted the traditional leadership myth that leadership is exclusively for experienced and elderly.

It is remarked, “If Facebook was a country, it would be the third-largest in terms of population, after India and China, and Zuckerberg would be its undisputed leader sitting at the epicenter of it all.” What counts at the end of the day is passion.  It is the first and foremost thing that determines your success. Mark Zuckerberg was passionate about programming since childhood.  He was, in fact, a programming prodigy.  He was constantly working on the internet and computer-related activities since childhood. His father arranged tuitions to enable Mark to grow in his passionate domain of programming.

Mark Zuckerberg has become a symbol of hope, a role model, and inspiration for youth internationally.  He broke the traditional barriers and dreamt big and succeeded as the world’s youngest billionaire.   He proved to the world that leadership has nothing to do with age and experience.

Mark Zuckerberg unveiled rules for his success as follows: you get what you spend your time doing; take feedback; make mistakes; only hire people who work for; make a change in the world; learn from the people around you; build a good team; give the very best experience; care the most about it; social bonds are critical. Here are some leadership lessons to learn from him.

• Everything is possible in this world.  There are innumerable opportunities in this cut-throat competitive world. The only thing you must do is to look at the door that is opened rather than the one that is closed.
• Age is not a deterrent to achieving success and leadership.  People often think that leadership is synonymous with elderly and experienced people.  It is a myth.  The truth is that leadership lies with the people who take responsibility to move things forward.
• Don’t chase money but chase your passion to enable the money to run behind you.  Research shows that those who chased money and acquired could not enjoy their lives as they reached their saturation point quickly and found nothing beyond. However, those who followed their passions struggled initially but made good money and lived their lives fully.
• Follow the road that is less traveled. If you get into a conventional route that is cluttered with the competition, you get into the rat race and end up nowhere.  In contrast, if you follow an unconventional path that is unexplored and untested, you will come out with something new and leave a mark behind for others to follow you.
• Focus on your goals firmly.  Goals keep you aligned and focused.  It helps you manage your time.  It helps you remove negative thoughts and fill your mind with positive thoughts.  It holds your dreams high. Above all, it enhances your longevity.
• Spot your talents and push forward.  Don’t run around skills and abilities by ignoring your hidden talents. Mark Zuckerberg pursued his talents in programming that helped him.  Consequently, he has built skills and abilities around his talents paving the way for his meteoric rise.
• Know the pulse of the people and move on.  Mark Zuckerberg recognized the need for connecting with people when he was at Harvard College and worked on it. He moved on with changes and modifications and ultimately co-founded Facebook.  Hence, identifying the pulse of people and their needs is imperative to stay ahead of others.
• Have a dream and work on it.  Don’t get distracted from your dreams and by criticism.  Stick to it and you will soon see yourself on the top of the world. Mark Zuckerberg had a dream and accomplished it.
• Emphasize work-life balance. Mark Zuckerberg is an ideal example of a work-life balance. After the birth of his first child, he took two months of paternity leave to spend time with his family.
• Make a difference in the lives of others as it gives you greater satisfaction apart from living beyond your lifetime. Mark Zuckerberg has made a difference in the lives of others through his technology and philanthropic activities.

Facebook is the fastest-growing phenomenon in internet history. Nobody could predict and imagine that it would hit globally in a huge way.  It will become the face of mankind in the technological world soon.  Microsoft survived and succeeded despite competition and Apple survived competition through innovation.   Similarly, Facebook will survive only through innovation.  Mark Zuckerberg would like to make his company as of the most powerful companies in the world. He is bullish and optimistic about Facebook.  He says, “If you look five years out, every industry is going to be rethought in a social way.”  To conclude, Facebook must stay away from controversies and innovate constantly to stay relevant in this rapidly growing technological world by shedding its image of being an internet hangout and widening its base with more features and applications.

Have you read? Highest Paying STEM Jobs . Highest Paying Healthcare Jobs . Highest Paying Healthcare Support Jobs . Highest Paying Primary And Secondary Education Jobs .

Prof. M.S. Rao, Ph.D.

Unwrap a More Successful Holiday Box: 4 Ways You Can Plan Now to Boost Q4 Profits

The Ten Commandments of a Sound Omni-Channel Prospecting Strategy

CEO Tim Sweeney Reflects on Epic Games Store Strategies Discussing Mistakes

Zūm’s 2024 Student Transportation Report Card Highlights Parental Concerns and Preferences

Jensen Huang from NVIDIA and Mark Zuckerberg from Meta on the Future of AI at SIGGRAPH 2024

• Get started

Uncovering Mark Zuckerberg's Secrets to Success

Discover the strategies behind Mark Zuckerberg's success and learn how to apply them to your own career.

Mark Zuckerberg is undoubtedly one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time. He is the co-founder of Facebook, a social media platform that has revolutionized the way we connect with one another. Zuckerberg's achievements have made him a household name, and his success has inspired entrepreneurs worldwide. In this article, we delve into the secrets of Mark Zuckerberg's success and what makes him such a great leader.

The Early Life of Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg was born in 1984 and grew up in a Jewish family in New York. He showed an early interest in programming and was already writing software in middle school. By the time he graduated from high school, he had already developed several sophisticated software programs.

After high school, Zuckerberg attended Harvard University where he continued to develop his programming skills. In 2004, he launched Facebook from his dorm room with the help of a few friends. The social networking site quickly gained popularity and within a few years, Zuckerberg became one of the youngest billionaires in the world. Today, Facebook has over 2 billion monthly active users and has revolutionized the way people connect and communicate online.

The Start of Facebook and its Explosive Growth

In 2004, Zuckerberg and his college roommates launched a social networking website called Facebook from their dorm room at Harvard University. Within a few months, the platform gained immense popularity on college campuses across the country. Facebook continued to grow, and within a few years, it became the world's largest social media platform, with more than 2 billion monthly active users.

One of the key factors that contributed to Facebook's success was its ability to constantly innovate and introduce new features. For example, in 2006, Facebook introduced the News Feed, which allowed users to see updates from their friends in real-time. This feature was a game-changer and helped to keep users engaged on the platform for longer periods of time.

Another reason for Facebook's explosive growth was its ability to expand globally. The platform was initially only available to users with a .edu email address, but it quickly expanded to include users from all over the world. Today, Facebook is available in over 100 languages and has a strong presence in countries like India, Brazil, and Indonesia.

Mark Zuckerberg's Leadership Style: What Makes Him So Successful?

One of the key reasons for Zuckerberg's success is his unique leadership style. He is known for his hands-on approach, and he is deeply involved in every aspect of Facebook's operations. Zuckerberg is passionate about innovation and is always pushing his team to come up with new ideas and features that improve the user experience. He is also known for his ability to make difficult decisions quickly, a trait that has helped him steer Facebook through many challenges over the years.

Another aspect of Zuckerberg's leadership style that contributes to his success is his focus on long-term goals. He is not afraid to take risks and invest in projects that may not pay off immediately, but have the potential to be game-changers in the future. This forward-thinking approach has led to Facebook's acquisition of companies like Instagram and WhatsApp, which have become integral parts of the social media giant's ecosystem. Additionally, Zuckerberg is committed to using Facebook's resources for social good, as evidenced by initiatives like the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which aims to advance human potential and promote equality.

The Importance of Innovation in Zuckerberg's Success

Zuckerberg's commitment to innovation is one of the major factors that has made Facebook so successful. He is constantly looking for ways to improve the platform's functionality and exploring new areas of technology that can take Facebook to the next level. Facebook has been at the forefront of major technological developments, including virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and connectivity in remote areas.

One of the most notable examples of Zuckerberg's commitment to innovation is the development of Facebook's "Like" button. Originally, Facebook only had a "Poke" feature, which allowed users to simply acknowledge each other's presence on the platform. However, Zuckerberg recognized the need for a more nuanced way for users to express their feelings towards posts and comments. Thus, the "Like" button was born, which has since become a ubiquitous feature on social media platforms worldwide.

How Zuckerberg Maintains Focus Amidst Challenges

No entrepreneur can achieve success without facing challenges, and Zuckerberg is no exception. He has faced numerous challenges over the years, including government regulations, privacy concerns, and competition from other social media platforms. However, he has displayed an impressive ability to maintain focus and stick to the company's long-term vision despite these challenges.

One of the ways Zuckerberg maintains focus amidst challenges is by surrounding himself with a strong team. He has built a team of talented individuals who share his vision and are committed to achieving the company's goals. This allows him to delegate tasks and responsibilities, freeing up his time to focus on the bigger picture and long-term strategy. Additionally, Zuckerberg is known for his disciplined approach to time management, setting aside specific blocks of time for different tasks and avoiding distractions. By prioritizing his time and staying focused on the most important tasks, he is able to navigate challenges and keep the company moving forward.

The Role of Teamwork in Zuckerberg's Achievements

Despite being the face of Facebook, Zuckerberg is known for acknowledging the contributions of his team in the company's success. He has publicly stated that Facebook's achievements are a result of teamwork and not just his individual efforts. Zuckerberg fosters a collaborative work environment that encourages his employees to share ideas and work together to achieve the company's goals.

One of the ways Zuckerberg promotes teamwork is through the company's open office layout. The lack of walls and cubicles encourages employees to interact and collaborate with each other. Additionally, Facebook has a company-wide hackathon every year, where employees from different departments come together to work on new projects and ideas. This event not only promotes teamwork but also fosters innovation and creativity within the company.

Zuckerberg's emphasis on teamwork has also extended beyond Facebook. In 2015, he and his wife Priscilla Chan launched the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic organization that aims to "advance human potential and promote equality." The organization works with a team of experts and partners to tackle issues such as education, science, and criminal justice reform. The success of the initiative is attributed to the collaborative efforts of the team, which includes scientists, educators, and policy experts.

Zuckerberg's Philanthropic Contributions and Social Responsibility

Mark Zuckerberg is not just a successful entrepreneur but also a philanthropist committed to making the world a better place. He has pledged to donate 99% of his Facebook shares to charity over his lifetime, and he established the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic organization that aims to tackle pressing social issues worldwide. Zuckerberg believes that technology can be a force for good and that he has a social responsibility to use his wealth and influence to make a positive impact.

One of the key areas that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative focuses on is education. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, believe that every child deserves access to a quality education, regardless of their background or circumstances. Through the initiative, they have invested in various education programs and initiatives, including personalized learning and teacher training programs.

In addition to his philanthropic efforts, Zuckerberg has also been vocal about the need for social responsibility in the tech industry. He has acknowledged the negative impact that social media can have on mental health and has taken steps to address this issue, such as implementing tools to help users manage their time on the platform. Zuckerberg has also been a strong advocate for data privacy and has called for greater regulation of tech companies to protect user data.

Lessons from Zuckerberg's Failures and Setbacks

Zuckerberg's journey to success has not been smooth sailing. His experiences have taught him valuable lessons that apply to all entrepreneurs. He has failed before, but he has also learned from his failures and used these lessons to improve the way he approaches business challenges.

One of the most important lessons that Zuckerberg has learned is the importance of listening to feedback. When he first launched Facebook, he faced criticism from users who were concerned about privacy issues. Instead of ignoring this feedback, Zuckerberg took it to heart and made changes to the platform to address these concerns. This willingness to listen and adapt has been a key factor in Facebook's continued success.

The Future of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg's Vision

Mark Zuckerberg has big plans for the future of Facebook. He aims to continue pushing the boundaries of technology and make Facebook an even more significant force for good. With his innovative spirit, exceptional leadership skills, and philanthropic values, Mark Zuckerberg's success story looks set to continue for years to come.

In conclusion, Mark Zuckerberg's success can be attributed to his unique leadership style, commitment to innovation, ability to maintain focus amidst challenges, the role of teamwork, his philanthropic contributions, and lessons learned from setbacks. His ambition and vision for the future of Facebook make him one of the most inspiring entrepreneurs of our time.

One of the key areas that Mark Zuckerberg is focusing on for the future of Facebook is artificial intelligence. He believes that AI can be used to improve the user experience on the platform, by providing more personalized content and recommendations. Additionally, he sees AI as a way to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing society, such as climate change and healthcare.

Another area of focus for Mark Zuckerberg is virtual and augmented reality. He believes that these technologies have the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with each other and the world around us. Facebook has already made significant investments in VR and AR, and Zuckerberg has stated that he sees them as the next major computing platform.

Ready to build an advisory board?

• Who is Mark Zuckerberg and what is his claim to fame? Mark Zuckerberg is a co-founder of Facebook, the world's largest social media platform that has revolutionized online communication.
• What are some characteristics of Mark Zuckerberg's leadership style? Mark Zuckerberg is known for his hands-on approach, passion for innovation, long-term goals, and ability to make quick and difficult decisions.
• What is the secret behind Facebook's explosive growth and success? Facebook's success can be attributed to its ability to constantly innovate and introduce new features, expand globally, and provide a user-friendly interface.
• What is the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and how has it made a positive impact on society? The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is a philanthropic organization that aims to advance human potential and promote equality. Through this initiative, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife support various education programs and fight for data privacy and regulation of tech companies.
• What areas of technology does Zuckerberg believe will shape the future of Facebook and society? Zuckerberg sees artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality as the next major computing platforms that have the potential to revolutionize the way people interact with each other and the world around them.

Build your advisory board today

See how easy we've made it to build an advisory board

See what boards you're qualified for

See what you qualify for with our 2-minute assessment

Similar Articles

Uncovering Ginni Rometty's Secrets to Success

Uncovering the Secrets to Success of Carlos Slim Helu

Unlocking the Secrets to Success: Insights from Billionaire Real Estate Mogul Donald Bren

Uncovering the Secrets to John D. Rockefeller's Success

Uncovering Ratan Tata's Secrets to Success

Uncovering Sheryl Sandberg's Secrets to Success

Uncovering the Secrets to Robin Li's Success

Uncovering the Tim Cook Secrets to Success

Uncovering the Secrets to Meg Whitman's Success

Former PepsiCo Exec Guides Canadian Beverage Company to U.S. Success

Uncovering Pony Ma's Secrets to Success

Uncovering the Secrets to Jerry Yang's Success

Uncovering Bill Gates' Secrets to Success

Uncovering Brian Acton's Secrets to Success

Decorated Veteran & CEO Leads Fitness Startup to Success

Start an advisory board.

Join an advisory board

Bringing the individual back in: Private entrepreneurs as actors in international relations – the case of Mark Zuckerberg

Review of Economics and Political Science

ISSN : 2631-3561

Article publication date: 6 September 2019

Issue publication date: 19 September 2019

This paper aims to study individuals in international relations especially private individuals in global politics. Therefore the paper focuses on analyzing the case of Mark Zuckerberg the founder and chief executive of Facebook who affects the international arena. The paper illustrates Zuckerberg’s strategies to assert wide influence and power within Facebook’s network and through multiple networks.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper follows new theories of studying the human agent in international relations, concentrating on private individuals as new actors in international relations (IR). Thus, depending on “network making power theory” and the “three-dimensional power perspectives; (discursive, structural and instrumental)”, the paper illustrates the case of Mark Zuckerberg as a private entrepreneur and his authority in the era of social media dominance with a focus on: Zuckerberg's discursive/ideational power strategy. Zuckerberg’s strategy to work as a switcher through multiple networks. The most obvious one is the Facebook network, through which he can assert global influence.

Formal state officials are not the only type of individuals who can affect international relations. Technological evolution has empowered private individuals as influential actors in international relations (IR). Interdisciplinary approaches became essential tools in studying new actors affecting IR. There are new patterns of power linked to individuals without formal positions. Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook and global philanthropist, is considered an influential actor in IR depending on programming and switching strategies to assert his power in a networked world.

Originality/value

This paper is able to prove that there are new forms of power which belong to private individuals in a networked world.

• Bottom-up approach
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Network programmer
• Networks switcher

Abdelhaey, S.A. (2019), "Bringing the individual back in: Private entrepreneurs as actors in international relations – the case of Mark Zuckerberg", Review of Economics and Political Science , Vol. 4 No. 4, pp. 304-320. https://doi.org/10.1108/REPS-04-2019-0048

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019, Samah Abdelsabour Abdelhaey.

Published in Review of Economics and Political Science . Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

The realist paradigm in international relations focused on the study of nation-states as the main actors in IR. Initially, the state behavior emanating from a sovereign entity was given priority in understanding international relations. The state level of analysis was the dominant paradigm for a long time. This traditional vision was limited and incomprehensible as it neglected a large part of the crucial interactions in the international arena.

The study of non-state actors in international relations began as one of the most important manifestations of globalization. Nye (1990 , p.157) mentioned that the idea of power diffusion in international relations resulted from newly sprouting issues that changed the influence of the nation state. This has increased the activities of transnational actors.

Initially, the influence of individuals in international relations has emerged in the form of the leadership paradigm as official governmental leaders in the international system. This is through decision-making processes concerned with the nation state's foreign policy. Non-traditional patterns of non-state actors in international relations have emerged as a result of increasing communication between people. The spread of information and communication technology enabled the existence of individuals as actors in IR.

Private entrepreneurs are private individuals who established transnational networks across their nation states in different domains: technological, economic and cultural. Some of them are called social entrepreneurs. They seek to tackle global problems to refine societies in the direction of global change via networking power.

Accordingly, the study seeks to analyze the role of individuals as actors in the international arena, and mainly the transnational effects of private entrepreneurs. It delves deep into the case of Mark Zuckerberg – CEO of Facebook and the founder of the “Chan-Zuckerberg initiative” for philanthropy work. It shows various strategies and tools of power.

Consequently, this paper answers the main research question: how individuals with informal authority have crucial influence on global affairs in a networked world. It manifests the case study of Mark Zuckerberg and his influence.

The first part studies the theoretical framework that deal with individuals in international relations theory. It begins with analyzing the individual, as presented in formal state officials and ruling elites. Afterwards, it investigates new models of individuals affecting the international arena without having any formal authority, whether they are collective or individual.

The second part is concerned with private entrepreneurs in international relations and their authority, examining the case of Mark Zuckerberg, and his private authority as a global actor in a networked world.

The individual as a level of analysis in international relations

The levels of analysis in international relations have emerged in the studies of Waltz, Kaplan and David Singer. Waltz, in his book, “Man, The State and War ”, cited in Schneider (1960) defined three levels of analysis for understanding the international phenomenon. They are the individual level of analysis, the state level of analysis and the international system level. This division of levels of analysis shows that it is a geographical division. At a macro level, it is represented in the international system. At a micro level, it is represented at the level of nation state and the level of individual ( Chatterji, 2013 , p. 34).

Scholars of IR have ignored the study of individuals’ influence on the international scene and turned to study other analytical tools. However, some trends have started to re-focus on the individual level of analysis. As a result, questions concerning the influence of individuals in international relations have been raised. For example, “What is the behavior of states affected by individuals?”, and “Under what circumstances do individuals become more influential?” Indeed, Individuals do not only affect the behavior of their states, but also the behavior of other states, especially when there is a concentration of power which allows leaders to have the upper hand in times of crisis and major changes ( Byman and Pollack, 2001 , p. 109).

After the cold war and the failure of traditional international relations perspectives to predict its end, international relations theorists recognized the need to focus on the human side to make war and peace decisions in politics. Those human choices have become a crucial element in the understanding of events elaborated in the post-cold-war era. All international transformations assert that human will and human perception are important forming and interpreting international affairs ( Hudson and Vore, 1995 , p. 210).

The phenomenon of individuals as actors in the international arena is initially associated with the model of political leadership. The decision-making process in the nation state represents the perception, the mind and the will of those individuals. Accordingly, many theories have evolved like great man theory, personality theory and attitudes theory ( Fox, 1959 ). All these theories deal with the role of leadership at both the domestic and international levels.

The analysis of international relations must focus on people-centered analysis, and the decision makers on national and international levels. This is due to the fact that individuals are the ones who feel threatened or safe. They are the ones who perceive, who are misunderstood, who cooperate or refuse to cooperate, and who determine the needs and interests. Welfare and dignity issues are related to the human element and not to institutional symbols ( Kelman, 1970 ).

Thus, the individual level of analysis helps us to understand the role of the human being in the decision-making process, and how the leader’s personality influences the foreign policy decisions depending on their beliefs and experiences. It should be noted that the evolution of international relations does not arise from international institutions, but it arises from changes in people's minds, attitudes, and priorities. Those changes determine the patterns of change in institutions and decisions ( Kelman, 1970 , p. 3).

Consequently, the individual level of analysis was limited to individuals with official positions and authorities in the state based on their ability to formally make political decisions, and thus, they have a direct impact on the international arena.

Therefore, individuals' roles increased in the international arena, and theoretical trends explored the role of individuals who have no official positions in international relations. This resulted from globalization and the increasing communication between people, regardless of time and space constraints.

Bottom-up approach in international relations

The geographical divisions of the three levels of analysis in international relations resulted in a strict definition of state sovereignty. However, according to the great reformation of globalization, the meaning of definite state borders and state sovereignty were redefined. The globalization new trends have contributed to understanding the bottom-up approach in international relations studies regarding individuals' roles. Accordingly, non-official citizens and individuals new interactions created a “citizen-driven approach”. It contributed massively to the understanding of international relations ( Crooks et al. , 2014 , p. 206).

Due to the impact of individuals’ roles in the international relations, scholars introduced the concept of “politics for human beings”. It redefined politics as a social act to provide humanitarian needs and social realities. Individual needs are prerequisites for human existence as these needs are the motives of human beings across different cultures. If politics are contemplated this way, individuals’ needs will become a starting point for both domestic and international policies. Therefore, some scholars argued that it is theoretically wrong to deal with individuals according to the constraints of the nation state or the international system, which can ignore the importance of the human element. Even when attention is paid to individuals, it is only related to formal decision-makers as nation states representatives ( Isaac, 1974 , p. 264)

Therefore, individuals have become an area of interest in international relations. Many questions have been raised about the non-official individuals. This is due to the existence of formal authority which was the criteria of judging the influence and legitimacy of individuals' role in international affairs.

Global developments have enabled individuals to influence international relations. Thus, the skills of individuals developed resulting in a “skill revolution” at mass levels, which made citizens press their leaders effectively. These developments have empowered the individual to be an important agent in international relations. Citizens are traditionally defined by their affiliation to the nation state. In the context of the globalization era, the ability of the nation state to shape the identities of individuals has been reduced; individuals are considered to be less nationalist and more cosmopolitan. Accordingly, there have been large movements of individuals in the context of “civic responsibility”. As a result, the concept of citizenship has been broadened to include the voluntary affiliation to any internal or external activity to satisfy human needs ( Rosenau, 1997 , pp. 235-277). Consequently, more and more highly functional societies have governed global politics.

There are “collective action” movements of individuals represented in the forms of social movements, activist networks and global public opinion. Bayat, in his book, “Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East” referred to the movements of individuals and how ordinary people have become increasingly influential regardless of formal or institutional frameworks. He refers to “non-movements” as the collective actions of millions outside the institutional frameworks in public squares, streets, homes and communities which he calls the “Art of Existence”. These movements consist of workers, women, youth and students. This contributed to the change of the Middle East since the Iranian revolution ( Bayat, 2013 ).

Increasing opportunities, mobility, advanced technology and high levels of education, together with increasing opportunities for training and experiences at the local and international level have enabled more networked international relations. The concept of contentious politics has evolved; it is broader than the study of social movements as it seeks to study the protest movements, strike waves and transnational activist movements. Hence, it is related more to the informal institutional and non-institutional interactions that bind the local and the global together. In the context of globalization, the movement of individuals and groups in different communities and states has increased. Cosmopolitans identified as the groups and individuals who employ local and international opportunities and resources to achieve common goals with international allies ( Tarrow, 2005 , pp. 24-29).

Consequently, the methodology of bottom up approach based on the individual level of analysis has become an important interpretative approach in international relations studies. The role of individuals in global politics has developed to be more populist, grass-rooted, and not yet a traditional elitist one. Thus, there are individuals at the leadership and elite level, as well as empowered individuals at the informal levels.

The power of networking/communicating and individuals’ empowerment in IR

The increasing popularity of the internet and communication tools has empowered new actors. Information technology has led to structural changes in societies and at the international level, because it empowers certain social groups more than others, as it redistributes power, values, beliefs and the principles of societies ( Bae, 2003 , p. 83). Therefore, new patterns of non-state actors have emerged in the international arena, such as activists who advocate women rights, environmental issues and human rights.

Humanity has become a common framework for social sciences giving recognition to the individual’s rights in dealing with state authority. This is shown in several areas, particularly in the areas of human rights and in the field of environmentalism. The common property of humanity has been confirmed. Thereupon, the role of individuals as actors in the international relations has been elaborated. The idea of a global citizen, especially in the Cosmopolitan school has evolved to set individuals as the basic unit of analysis. They gained universal rights, regardless of states and borders through the international humanitarian community and surpassing the narrow national boundaries ( Cabrera, 2008 , p. 87).

New actors have gained the potential to challenge the state authority and have influence globally. Non-state actors have entered the sphere of international scene as individuals, groups and civil society organizations. These entities tend to have horizontal networking rather than traditional vertical and hierarchical forms of authority. Studying global civil society and human rights in institutions and networks has created transnational interactions by individuals outside the government positions ( Ruggie, 2004 ).

The monopoly of power at the national level has been reduced to give a chance for new forms of power at the sub-national level and at the transnational level. The civil society became a part of individuals' negotiations and debates realizing that the individuals' community is more important than the community of nations, and that the humanitarian tie is strengthened through political groups rather than states. The perspective of the global community or world society has emerged to consider individuals as non-state actors ( Buzzan, 2004 , pp. 8-9).

The world has become more networked and the individuals have become aware of networking power. Official or unofficial actors cannot influence the international arena without building communication links with other networks sharing the same values and interests. The goal of networking is to build power capable of influencing an area of interest. The ability of individuals and groups as non-state actors penetrating the state power spatial control has grown, because networking depends on transnational links. Hence, networking creates a state of collective power for individuals to act as transnational actors ( Hanafy, 2015 , p. 4).

Traditional visions of power studies focus on the possession of both material and moral sources and assume a structural form of power, regardless of context, issues, topics and areas of influence. The network analysis focuses on the dynamic dimension which coincides with the complexity of the international phenomena, so it allows the study of different levels of analysis. Thus, power in a networked society lies in the bonds and relationships that bind one another together. The actor's influence depends on his influence in the network which is indicated by his relationship with other actors in the network and outside ( Khafaga, 2015 , p. 7).

Through networking and communications, individuals can impart information to create awareness of new global issues and exert pressures and influence in international domains. The impact of these networking strategies lies in the ability of creating attention, changing agendas, influencing institutional processes and changing the policies of the target, which advocate accountability policies ( Keck and Sikkink, 1999 , p. 29).

The social power of networks arises from the ability to create meaning in the minds of individuals through communication processes. The individuals have interest in building networks and communication links. Thus, they create a network impact, through which individuals seek to achieve their goals and activities in the international arena ( Kahler, 2009 , p. 26).

A “programmer”: the one who is able to program a network, develop its objectives and reprogram it to deal with surrounding environment. This process differs from one network to another.

A “switcher”: who is responsible for networking within the network and in relationships with other networks to enhance the network’s power, ( Castell, 2011 , pp. 776-77) especially networking between media, political, cultural and economic networks.

Networking power and communication strategies lead to increasing individuals’ roles in international relations, whether they are collectively or individually. Hence, new patterns of individuals as actors in the international arena have evolved. When it comes to political actions of individuals in the international arena in a globalized world, we can mention leaders as formal state representatives, citizens and entrepreneurs with their own private agendas ( Partzsch, 2011 , p. 6).

Private individuals in international relations

Influential private individuals in IR have emerged with different spheres of influence and tools of power in the political sphere. A new type in the list of non-state actors is represented in individuals outside the governmental positions who possess the skills and resources to have an international impact. They have financial, economic or informational capacity to influence transnational events within their own states and in the regional or international sphere.

Influential private individuals and ideas inventors have emerged either by relying on wealth or fame. There are models of businessmen, owners of technology and communication networks, owners of media companies, armed groups leaders, international mafia leaders, private entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, and internet hackers. All these individuals have their impact on a global level away from the formal state authority. Some of them may clash with nation state officials and others may enter a complementary relationship with state officials.

Some of the world's rich people are working to solve global problems with social projects in international relations. Their presence is linked to the emergence of private authority in global governance. These individuals work in the areas of poverty, environment, and education. They have become internationally influential creating social and political changes ( Partzsch and Fuchs, 2012 ).

George Soros , who is a global businessman and the owner of the Open Society Foundation that works worldwide in nearly 60 countries around the world. It represents a transnational network operating mainly in central and eastern European countries and the former Soviet Union. He adopts a wide range of initiatives to advocate human rights, education, independent media, and public health ( Stone, 2010 , pp. 267-268).

Bill Gates , who is the owner of the Microsoft Corporation. It is an international company operating in 102 countries. His fortune is estimated around 79.2 billion. Bill Gates plays a major role in charitable works worldwide through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It supports programs in Islamic countries amounting to $7bn, and its institutions work in education and health to eliminate diseases. The Bill Gates institutions have disbursed nearly $472m in higher education since 2006 ( Strauss, 2013 ).

Fethullah Gulen , considered internationally as one of the most influential Islamic reformers, advocates for education, consolidation of peace and civilizational dialogue. Many individuals have been affected by his speeches and efforts in the educational field in both Turkey and abroad. His efforts have already contributed to peace-building in many areas of conflict, including the Balkans, Iraq, Northern Ireland and the Philippines ( Mohaned, 2007 ).

Private individuals are capable of making a significant impact due to several reasons. First, those individuals are less bound by the rules of the political game, unlike individuals in official positions, who are restricted by such rules. Second, they are less accountable to the public; they are working far away from the bureaucracy, which makes their movements easier than the movements of many leaders in governmental positions. Third, they possess vast resources and are connected to transnational networks that enable them to successfully champion the values they believe in.

The technological revolution and the advent of cyberspace have helped technology entrepreneurs’ role at international levels. They can have local and international influence regarding their states, and they have a clear role in lobbying governments for internet policies. They have a large amount of resources and powerful tools. Therefore, they can have direct confrontations with nation states authorities.

Scholars often focus on structures and not human agents in the study of network power, but some scholars focus on the role of the human agent through “the concept of the protocol”. The protocol, here, is defined as the scientific and technological rules and standards governing relationships within the network. It is considered as an explanation of how human control exists. Consequently, they can have the power to connect or disconnect in the networks. This is what can be called “network sovereignty”, as these networks operate based on the data transmitter settings and rules ( Stumpel, 2010 , pp. 9-13).

Network making power strategy is a crucial tool of power which means the ability to control a network. This control appeared in two strategies, the first one is to constitute a certain network and to have the ability to program and reprogram network goals and mechanism. The second one is to have the ability to work as a switcher to connect with other networks to set common goals ( Arsenault and Castell, 2008 , p. 489). Therefore, the crucial elements of power in the network society are the ability to set the rules, program a network and switch between different networks.

Arsenault and Castell (2008) tested this hypothesis through the case of Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp as a media giant. They discovered that Murdoch's strategies and business model penetrate new markets and leverage public and political elites’ opinions to achieve more targets by controlling multiple connecting points through switching actions. Thus, they assumed that the switcher power is crucial in a networked world.

Depending on the network making power strategies, Moran (2018) investigated the case of Mark Zuckerberg's network switching power. She assumed that Zuckerberg, as a media mogul, gains power through interconnections across multiple networks. Moran added two updates to the results achieved by Arsenault and Castells. First, she highlighted that the power of the switch is a double edged sword as it creates opportunities, and weakens the power of seekers. The second result of Moran’s study is that technological media networks, especially social media ones differ from others. Therefore, to asset power, requires “mega-switchers.

From a different theoretical framework, Partzsch and Fuchs (2012) investigated the cases of Bill Gates and Michael Otto’s power model, as individual entrepreneurs and transnational philanthropists, who influence globally through their financial contributions. The power model of those individuals has three dimensions. The first is the instrumental dimension, which means the ability of those individuals to influence political decision makers through pressure, alliance, or cooperation through lobbying activities. The second is the material structural dimension, which means the ability of individuals to constitute private institutions and global networks that have the ability to enforce rules and standards. The third is the discursive/ideational dimension, which focuses on the strength of values and beliefs adopted by these individuals, and embraced by the institutions that have chosen to exert political pressure. They achieve values globally and locally in context through speeches seeking global change. It means that those private actors do not pursue interests, but they create them. Hence, this framework highlights the discursive and ideational power besides the instrumental and material power of private individuals in international relations.

This paper seeks to examine the case of Zuckerberg by bringing together network making power theory and the three-dimensional power perspectives. Network making power theory helps in understanding the structural and instrumental power dimensions of private individuals. Thus, Castell (2011 , p. 776) mentioned that the programmer role is decisive. Once the network is programmed, it can work efficiently to achieve its goals.

Hence, depending on the network making power strategies of programming and switching, the main power strategies clarifies well Zuckerberg’s case. Programmers control network goals and rules, as well as contact points. Network programmers have the ability to determine the content of what the public can see and the search engines results. They are also capable of producing, distributing and controlling the content. Thus, this power can be used for political, commercial or personal purposes ( Moore, 2016 , p. 29).

Castell (2011 , pp. 781-82) mentioned that:

Network-making power is the capacity to set up and program a network and that the owners and controller of media networks are the ones who have the financial, legal, institutional, and technological means to organize and operate mass communication networks to accomplish the goals they assign to the network.

Accordingly, Mark Zuckerberg can reprogram Facebook goals and resources to assert his authority vertically within Facebook’s network. Besides this, he can be networks switcher by asserting his authority horizontally as a switcher between the Facebook network and other technological and non-technological networks. Consequently, Mark Zuckerberg’s power and authority model is programming and reprogramming the ethics and objectives of the Facebook network and developing relationships across different networks as well.

Although Moran (2018) applied network making power strategies to illustrate Zuckerberg’s case as an influential actor, she does not pay attention to the discursive and ideational power dimension. It is a crucial tool of analysis as social networks are governed and ruled by their programmers’ speeches that determine what can be done and what cannot. These speeches do affect people by shaping their minds.

Castell (2016 , pp. 12-13) mentioned that the ability to program a certain network depends mainly on enhancing effective discourse and persuasion methods in favor of the programmer's goals and plans. Therefore, this paper aims to add the discursive and ideational power of Zuckerberg’s case, as it illustrates his strategy as a programmer of Facebook’s network and other technological and philanthropist networks. It is reflected in his discourse which shapes values and identities across multiple networks. This frames Zuckerberg’s public image as a global actor.

Accordingly, this paper discusses strategies of Mark Zuckerberg to assert power and authority represented in three main mechanisms. The first one is the ability to program the Facebook network goals and vision through his declared speeches aiming at building a global community of people. It can have a transnational effect depending on Zuckerberg’s vision and tools represented by the discursive power of Zuckerberg. The second one is to assert his vertical authority within the hierarchal and financial administration of Facebook depending on the founder-led culture that represents his structural power. The third one is to assert horizontal authority by connecting Facebook with other technological and non-technological networks through which he can gain more power and authority. Hence, he supports his instrumental power by lobbying decision makers depending on the power of the switcher.

Mark Zuckerberge's discursive/ideational power strategy

Mark Zuckerberg was Time's 2010 “Person of the Year”. The reason behind this was that Zuckerberg was able to connect more than half a billion people and was able to redraw their social relations creating a new system for exchanging information. Zuckerberg could change the way we live. It is also reported that Zuckerberg is able to connect 12 per cent of humanity in one network together, so that he is able to create a social entity nearly twice the size of the United States. If Facebook was a country, it would be the third largest country, just after China and India ( Grossman, 2010 ).

The discursive approach of power is considered one of the most important of Zuckerberg's strategies to gain and assert power. Thus, Zuckerberg adopts a discursive strategy worthy of mention and analysis, as he offers important political, cultural, and social insights. Scholars considered it as an appropriate approach for better understanding of Facebook network strategy and policy towards its users and its surrounding environment. Thus, understanding Zuckerberg’s own language is performative and functional, as it is framing debates surrounding social networking ( Zimmer and Hoffmann, 2014 ). Studying Zuckerberg’s discourse sparks questions and concerns about common online social life complexities as Zuckerberg has power and influence in a wide range of public talks and conversations. This shapes social networking platforms main issues like privacy, online identity and people to people online relations rules.

“A useful directory for quickly finding information about people.”

“A social network connecting and enabling the sharing of information between people.”

“A critical social infrastructure for the Web and the world.”

At the beginning- as the founder and the CEO of Facebook- Zuckerberg declared that Facebook was originally built to “make the world more open and connected” and that Facebook was created to give people the ability to participate. Zuckerberg believes that Facebook is a not-for-profit company as it aims to achieve an important social mission. This mission is accomplished through “giving more people a voice”. According to Zuckerberg’s vision, Facebook aims to:

Strengthen people to people relations : Zuckerberg believes that personal relationships are the basic unit of society, so Facebook builds the tools that facilitate more connections. He declared that, “ We have already helped more than 800 million people map out more than 100 billion connections so far, and our goal is to help this rewiring accelerate.”

Improving people’s connections to products, businesses and economy : in an open and connected world, it is easy to communicate with high quality products: therefore, Zuckerberg has mentioned that, “More than four million businesses have Pages on Facebook that they use to have a dialogue with their customers. We expect this trend to grow as well.”

Changing people's relations with their governments : communication increases accountability and transparency, and leads to more empowerment of people and greater solutions to problems. Thus, governments will respond to the demands directly formulated by people and there is no need for political mediators. ( The Telegraph, 2012 ).

Mark assumes that there is great need and opportunity for everyone in the world to get in touch and connect. Zuckerberg gives global community and global citizenship priorities on his agenda, as he referred to in his speech at Harvard University on May 25, 2017:

What defines us […] It is not nationality, religion or ethnicity, but the fact that we are global citizens […] Progress now requires convergence, not just as nations, but as a global community. This is the struggle of our time. ( The Harvard Gazette, 2017 ).

Mark Zuckerberg has defined the characteristics of the desired global community as the goal of the Facebook entity. Zuckerberg gave a detailed speech in February 2017, on his personal Facebook page entitled “Building the global community”. He assumes that our world is facing global problems; therefore, humanity must unite, not only as states, but also as a global community. He said:

The most important thing we can do in Facebook is to develop social infrastructure to give people the ability to build a global community that works for all of us.

Supportive community : Mark Zuckerberg’s speech shows that the Facebook community includes a variety and layers of relations. It begins with personal relationships, and then institutional relationships. Zuckerberg believes in the importance of online communities to enhance physical communities. Consequently, Zuckerberg argued that “ there is a real opportunity to connect more groups that will be meaningful to social infrastructure in our lives” . As a result, Zuckerberg believes in “ a healthy society that needs these communities to support our personal, emotional and spiritual needs”.

Safe community : Zuckerberg mentioned that Facebook helps individuals to be safe by enhancing a community that “ prevents harm, helps during crises and rebuilds afterwards in a world where anyone across the world can affect us ”. According to Zuckerberg, Facebook gives “ a real opportunity to build global safety infrastructure ”, where Facebook, as noted by Zuckerberg, can help prevent damage, help during crisis, or to rebuild after the crisis. There is a safety check feature to verify “friends who might be affected by an attack or a natural disaster” . Zuckerberg said that The ‘Safety Check’ feature has been activated 500 times in two years. Zuckerberg announced also that during an earthquake in Nepal, Facebook community collected 15 million dollars to help people recover and rebuild, which according to Mark is the largest collective relief effort in history.

An informed community : Zuckerberg believes that Facebook is a historical and civilized force, as it can enable everyone to have a voice. It supports what he called public discourse, which advocates the possibility of creating the greatest positive impact on the world by building a common understanding worldwide.

A civically engaged community : Zuckerberg believes that collective values are reflected in societies through participation in the civil process. Therefore, he believes that there are two distinct types of social infrastructure that must be built. The first is the infrastructure that encourages participation in existing political processes, such as voting, and expressing opinion. This happens through the great interactions provided by the Facebook community ensuring that the political process reflects societal values. The second one is to establish a new process for citizens around the world to participate in collective decision-making. As our world is more connected than ever, and individuals face global problems that stretch across national borders, Zuckerberg sees that Facebook, as the world's largest community, can provide a great opportunity globally to encourage civic engagement. Zuckerberg gave an example of the 2016 US presidential election where Facebook helped more than two million people to register and vote. Zuckerberg sees this as one of the largest voting turnout efforts in history, and is greater than the combined efforts of the two major parties in the USA.

An inclusive community : that reflects common human values from local to global levels. Zuckerberg believes that building an inclusive global community requires the establishment of a new process for citizens around the world to participate in community governance. Therefore, Zuckerberg declared that Facebook is not just a technological or media entity, it is a community of people. This means that we need community standards that reflect our collective values for what should or should not be allowed. ( Zuckerberg, 2012 ) Therefore, Zuckerberg represents a crucial node in the Facebook network through his position. He is able to create his own vision for transnational networked community through Facebook. He assumes that Facebook network can strengthen a connected global community of people both online and offline.

Zuckerberg’s description of Facebook relations with its user is unstable, changeable and contradicted somehow. There are sometimes democratic relations calling for democratic negotiations and civic participations. Those relations are top-down at other times.

Although Zuckerberg refers to Facebook as a global community of people that enhanced global citizens’ approach, Zuckerberg’s top-down approach of governance enhances nationhood pattern.

In spite of calling for democratic and civic participation through the Facebook community, Zuckerberg considers himself and the Facebook executive body as social leaders, innovators, and architects through codifying and reinforcing his values and beliefs system. He formed the Facebook platform architecture with himself occupying the prominent figurehead position.

Accordingly, Zuckerberg's rhetorical strategy plays a major role in expanding his power and authority through his ability to define concepts, draw relationships and set governing rules within the Facebook network and its relationship with users and the surrounding environment.

Asserting vertical authority within the Facebook network

The Facebook Company had revenues of $41bn in 2017 and more than 2 billion users per month. The first IPO in 2012 was the largest ever subscription to a technology network at the time. The majority of Zuckerberg's wealth is derived from a 13 per cent stake on Facebook ( Bloomberg Billionaires Index, 2019 ).

The power to command attention : Technology giants have a significant impact on the social and political context as they have the ability to form the virtual domain. This means increasing their ability to attract public attention to shape priorities by controlling access to technology networks’ content and services, especially in democratic societies. They have become alternative channels of information and they have a great role in protecting the security of citizens globally. Therefore, technology entrepreneurs might act as gatekeepers, but they are non-neutral ones.

The power to communicate news and information : Technology giants have the power of inclusion and exclusion through their worldwide networks. In 2015, about nine news organizations have been allowed to broadcast on Facebook. Consequently, the Facebook administration has the right to choose the quality of the news and the content allowed to be broadcasted; additionally, their search engines have the ability to exclude certain results. Mark Zuckerberg declared that Facebook aims to build the perfect personalized newspaper for every person in the world.

The power to enable collective actions : Technology giants have the ability to gather people for certain collective actions through empowering them to achieve rapid political and social changes. At the same time, those entrepreneurs can use their exclusion power to put obstacles in the way of certain collective actions, as they have the ability to control their networks’ access. Consequently, they have the power to give people a voice and to influence peoples’ voting.

The power to call to account : Mark Zuckerberg believes that enabling people to participate and giving them voice via Facebook leads to a real transparent dialogue discussing governments' credibility. This results in extensive accountability policies and tools worldwide. Consequently, through the Facebook community, people are empowered to cast the first stone at public authorities.

In the cases of social media networks, their founders play the most crucial role and completely control their networks as Freedman (2015 , p. 4) mentioned that,

In the cases of social media proprietorship may be seen as a means of maintaining a focus on innovation and retaining the ‘vision’ of the founder in order to extract maximum profits in a growing industry.

Accordingly, Mark Zuckerberg’s position as the founder and chief executive officer of Facebook enables him to play a major role in the network society. He is the most important node in the network; he can connect vertically and horizontally with other relevant actors and networks.

On the financial side : Zuckerberg has restructured the Facebook institution according to “Action plans 2016” that targeted creating “class C shares”. It represents a “non- voting share class”, so Zuckerberg can control the decision-making process and can even sell off large amounts of his stock in Facebook.

On the technological side : Zuckerberg has expanded his effect technologically in two ways; one of them is to get new technological tools to expand Facebook’s reachable zone by buying augmented reality (AR) and automatic speech recognition (ASR) technologies. The second one is to enhance Facebook’s terms of profile by buying “WhatsApp”, which is the famous mobile messaging service.

On the administrational side : Moran has assumed that Facebook is a worldwide network with geographical divisions and hierarchical division. It is represented by board of directors and function-based teams to give the impression of decentralization, but in fact it is more like a top-down decision-making power.

Consequently, Zuckerberg has asserted his authority within Facebook by programming and reprogramming Facebook goals and tools according to global developments. Additionally, he controls its hierarchical, technological and financial sides. Zuckerberg asserts his rule to set power through vertical control over the Facebook network, which enhances his material structural power dimension.

Switching power: asserting horizontal authority across multiple networks

The success of Facebook and its spread make it a crucial node in global technology networks. It means that Mark Zuckerberg has broad authority to contribute widely in programming the objectives, tools, and values that govern the wider technology networks. Hence, Zuckerberg is pursuing a horizontal expansion through the acquisition of technology competitors. Thus, besides getting WhatsApp services, Zuckerberg, in 2010, got key patents and intellectual property from Friendster, Instagram photo sharing application, “Beluga”, a group messaging tool, and “Karma”, a social gifting platform. ( Moran, 2018 , p. 7).

Mark Zuckerberg has announced in December 2015 that he would plan to donate about 99 per cent of his shares for charity works; thus, he launched in cooperation with his wife Priscilla Chan “Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative”, which announced on its official website that “Our mission is to find new ways to leverage technology, community-driven solutions, and collaboration to accelerate progress in Science, Education, and within our Justice and Opportunity work” ( Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, 2019 ).

Zuckerberg became an important actor in philanthropy. In 2016, his foundation donated about $3bn in charitable grants to fund medical projects to cure disease. Besides that, he donated $600m over 10 years to create a new medical research institution in the San Francisco area. This charitable work also supports a range of reform projects in immigration and criminal justice areas ( Benner, 2016 ). Zuckerberg’s philanthropy network enables him to lobby law-makers and to engage in political networks to advocate his political agenda. Zuckerberg’s efforts in charitable works give him a lot of advantages as he has complete control over his organizations. Moreover, he gained a greater ability to switch between political and economic networks with less restrictions and transparency requirements ( Reiser, 2017 , p. 926).

Data are big power source referred to as “data power”, and is a new way of figuring out how the public thinks, and what it is saying. It is used by companies and governments through data collection and mining. Therefore, Facebook is not just a tool of communication in the case of revolutions and political changes ( Kennedy and Moss, 2015 ). Zuckerberg is involved in the international political scene, as an important actor, who can influence public opinion and shape the political trends. He has available information and data which can shape public opinion.

Facebook tracks the political interactions of its users in the run-up to elections. It can have a profound effect on the election results. As an obvious example, “Cambridge –Analytica” showed the Facebook data scandal in early 2018. It revealed that the British company was charged for analyzing Facebook users’ personal data without the users’ permission for political reasons and to interfere in the US presidential election in 2016. It worked in favor of President Donald Trump’s campaign and in the referendum of Brexit. Mark Zuckerberg has declared in Congress that it was his responsibility, stating that:

I started Facebook, I run it, and I'm responsible for what happens there. It's not enough to just connect people, we've got to make sure those connections are positive. It's not enough to just give people a voice; we've got to make sure people aren't using it to harm others or to spread misinformation ( Spross, 2018 ).

Zuckerberg is a crucial switcher between many networks. His increasing contributions in terms of material and ideational influence have been widely recognized. Working as a switcher across multiple networks has given Zuckerberg instrumental power to influence decision-makers via lobbying. In Zuckerberg’s lobbying activities in 2013, he led a campaign with other leaders in the technology and business communities to command attention against immigration law in the US. As a result, FWD.us, as a political organization, was established. It announced on its website that, “Our goal is to influence policymakers and those around them to make the policy changes that create opportunity and unlock America’s potential”. ( FWD.us, 2019 ). Hence, he has become a significant global player; as he can tackle global concern issues and can lobby for a certain interest.

This paper is mainly interested in investigating the human agent effect in international relations, which corresponds to the extreme interest in the nation state as the unitary actor in IR. Thus, dealing with human will and beliefs demands a broader lens than the systematic theory of IR. It advocates interdisciplinary approaches in international relations, which appeared as an explanatory need to study new actors in the international arena.

As a result of the communication revolution, private individuals and mainly private entrepreneurs with transnational activities become skilled role-takers in international arena. They are able to conduct a large part of international affairs. Private individuals' influence in global affairs is related to their private authority. They have the power to influence decision-makers and masses. Through vast resources and transnational activities, individual entrepreneurs have become the new actors having a global impact in the international arena.

Investigating the human agent role in network societies depends on the ability of programming tools and strategies. Additionally, it can switch between many networks to assert power and influence. Hence, Mark Zuckerberg’s authority has extended across many networks. The most obvious one is the Facebook network, through which he can assert global influence. He can set standards and rules that can be adopted by relevant actors in other social networks. Mark Zuckerberg’s impact in a globalized and networked world is a simple fact. His power strategies depend on material, as well as ideational tools; he mixes discursive power strategy with structural and instrumental power tools.

Accordingly, this paper has argued that material and ideational power are relevant to network making power theory. The discursive power approach is an essential dimension in enhancing strategies and techniques of power within the network society and beyond. Thus, the ability of being a programmer of a certain network, or a switcher through many networks depends on a coherent performative and functional discursive strategy, which is relevant to structural and material power dimensions.

Arsenault , A. and Castell , M. ( 2008 ), “ Switching power: Rupert Murdoch and the global business of media politics: a sociological analysis ”, International Sociology , Vol. 23 No. 4 , pp. 488 - 513 .

Bae , Y.J. ( 2003 ), “ Information technology and the empowerment of new actors in international relations ”, Journal of International and Area Studies , Vol. 10 No. 2 , pp. 79 - 92 .

Bayat , A. ( 2013 ), Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle Eas , Stanford University Press , CA .

Benner , K. ( 2016 ), “ Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan pledge $3 billion to fighting disease ”, The New York Times , available at: www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/technology/mark-zuckerberg-priscilla-chan-3-billion-pledge-fight-disease.html (accessed 27 March 2017 ).

Bloomberg Billionaires Index ( 2019 ), “ Mark Zuckerberg, Bloomberg Billionaires Index official website ”, Available at: www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/mark-e-zuckerberg/ (accessed 13 May 2019 ).

Buzzan , B. ( 2004 ), From International to World Society: English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalization , Cambridge University press , New York, NY .

Byman , D.L. and Pollack , K.M. ( 2001 ), “ Let us now praise great men: bringing the statesman back i ”, International Security , Vol. 25 No. 4 , pp. 107 - 146 .

Cabrera , L. ( 2008 ), “ Global citizenship as the completion of cosmopolitanism ”, Journal of International Political Theory , Vol. 4 No. 1 , pp. 84 - 104 .

Castell , M. ( 2011 ), “ A network theory of power ”, International Journal of Communication , Vol. 5 , pp. 773 - 787 .

Castell , M. ( 2016 ), “ A sociology of power: my intellectual journey ”, The Annual Review of Sociology , Vol. 42 No. 1 , pp. 1 - 19 .

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative ( 2019 ), “ Chan Zuckerberg initiative official website ”, available at: https://chanzuckerberg.com (accessed 25 March 2019 ).

Chatterji , R. ( 2013 ), “ Developments in international relations: issues and controversies ”, Jadavpur Journal of International Relations , Vol. 17 No. 1 , pp. 1 - 39 .

Crooks , A. , Masad , D. , Croitoru , A. , Cotnoir , A. , Stefanidis , A. and Radzikowski , J. ( 2014 ), “ State-Driven and Citizen-Driven networks ”, Social Science Computer Review , Vol. 32 No. 2 , pp. 205 - 220 .

Fox , T.R. ed., ( 1959 ), Theoretical Aspects of International Relations , University of Notre Dame Press , Notre Dame .

Freedman , D. ( 2015 ), “ Media moguls and elite power ”, Political Economy Research Center, paper no: 2 . available at: www.gold.ac.uk/media/documents-by-section/departments/politics-and-international-relations/PERC-2-Freedman-Elites.pdf (accessed 25 March 2019 ).

FWD.us ( 2019 ), “ FWD.us official website ”, available at: www.fwd.us/ (accessed 20 April 2019 ).

Grossman , L. ( 2010 ), “ Person of the year 2010: Mark Zuckerberg ”, Times Newspaper, 10 December available at: http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2036683_2037183_2037185,00.html (accessed 12 December 2018 ).

Hanafy , K. ( 2015 ), “ What is the role of networks in changing our world? ”, Al-Siyasa Al-Dawlia , Vol. 50 No. 202 .

Hoffmann , A.L. , Proferes , N. and Zimmer , M. ( 2018 ), “ Making the world more open and connected: Mark Zuckerberg and the discursive construction of facebook and its users ”, New Media and Society , Vol. 20 No. 1 , pp. 199 - 218 .

Hudson , V.M. and Vore , C.S. ( 1995 ), “ Foreign policy analysis yesterday, today, and tomorrow ”, Mershon International Studies Review , Vol. 39 No. 2 , pp. 209 - 238 .

Isaac , R. ( 1974 ), “ The individual in international politics: Solving the level of ”, Analysis Problem”. Polity , Vol. 7 No. 2 , pp. 264 - 276 .

Kahler , M. (Ed.) ( 2009 ), Networked Politics: agency, Power and Governance , Cornell University Press , New York, NY .

Keck , M.E. and Sikkink , K. ( 1999 ), Transnational Advocacy Networks in International and Regional Politics , Blackwell publisher , Oxford .

Kelman , H.C. ( 1970 ), “ The role of the individual in international relations: some conceptual and methodological considerations ”, Journal of International Affairs , Vol. 24 No. 1 , pp. 1 - 17 .

Kennedy , H. and Moss , G. ( 2015 ), “ Known or knowing publics? social media data mining and the question of public agency ”, Big Data and Society , Vol. 1 No. 1 , pp. 1 - 11 .

Khafaga , R. ( 2015 ), “ Networks and power evolution in IR ”, Al-Siyasa Al-Dawlia , Vol. 50 No. 202 .

McGeachy , S. ( 2019 ), “ Encoding the social: a critical discourse analysis of zuckerberg’s construction of mediated sociality ”, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) , available at: www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/assets/documents/research/msc-dissertations/2018/mcgeachy.pdf (accessed 2 june 2019 ).

Mohaned , Y. ( 2007 ), “ The educational theory of fethullah gülen and its practice in South Africa ”, Muslim World in Transition: Contributions of the Gülen Movement ”. October , SOAS University: School of Economics , London .

Moore , M. ( 2016 ), Tech Giants and Civic Power , King’s College London, Center for the Study of Media Communication and Power , available at: www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/policy-institute/cmcp/tech-giants-and-civic-power.pdf (accessed 25 February 2019 ).

Moran , R.E. ( 2018 ), “ Examining switching power: Mark Zuckerberg as a novel networked media mogul ”, Information. Communication and Society , Vol. 20 No. 9 .

Nye , J. ( 1990 ), “ Soft power ”, Foriegn Affairs , 80 , pp. 153 - 171 .

Partzsch , L. ( 2011 ), “ Private individuals in international relations: Conceptualizing social entrepreneurs as a new type of actor ”, ECPR-Workshop: University of St , Gallen , 12-17 April , available at: https://ecpr.eu/Filestore/PaperProposal/0e876790-8716-4ec5-8606-22fc9fc30370.pdf (accessed 27 May 2019 ).

Partzsch , L. and Fuchs , D. ( 2012 ), “ Philanthropy power with in international relations ”, Journal of Political Power , Vol. 5 No. 3 , pp. 359 - 376 .

Reiser , D. ( 2017 ), “ Disruptive philanthropy: Zuckerberg, the limited liability company, and the millionaire next door ”, Legal Studies Paper No. 536 , Brooklyn Law School (accessed 27 April 2018 ).

Rosenau , J.N. ( 1997 ), Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Exploring Governance in a Turbulent World , Cambridge University Press , New York, NY .

Ruggie , J.G. ( 2004 ), “ Reconstructing global public domain: Issues, actors and practices ”, European Journal of International Relations , Vol. 10 No. 4 , pp. 499 - 531 .

Schneider , F.J. ( 1960 ), “ Man the state and war, by Kenneth N. Waltz ”, Indiana Law Journal , Vol. 35 No. 2 , pp. 281 - 285 .

Spross , J. ( 2018 ), “ The madness of king zuck ”, The Week . available at: https://theweek.com/articles/766362/madness-king-zuck (accessed 25 February 2019 ).

Stone , D. ( 2010 ), “ Transnational philanthropy: policy transfer networks and the open society institute ”, Policy and Politics , Vol. 38 No. 2 , pp. 269 - 287 .

Strauss , V. ( 2013 ), “ Bill gates expands influence and money into higher education Washington post ”, 15 July , available at: www.washingtonpost.com/ (accessed 22 March 2019 ).

Stumpel , M. ( 2010 ), “ The politics of social media: Facebook: Control and resistanc ”, “ Master thesis ”, University of Amsterdam: Department of Media Studies . available at: https://marcstumpel.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/stumpel_ma_thesis_the-politics-of-social-media_facebook_control-and-resistance.pdf (accessed 25 April 2019 ).

Tarrow , S. ( 2005 ), The New Transnational Activism , Cambridge university press , New York, NY .

The Harvard Gazette 2017 . “ Mark Zuckerberg's commencement address at Harvard ”, available at: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/05/mark-zuckerbergs-speech-as-written-for-harvards-class-of-2017 (accessed 20 May 2019 ).

The Telegraph 2012 . “ Facebook IPO: Letter from Mark Zuckerberg ”, available at: www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/9055830/Facebook-IPO-Letter-from-Mark-Zuckerberg.htm (accessed 27 May 2019 ).

Zimmer , M. and Hoffmann , A.L. ( 2014 ), “ Privacy and control in Mark Zuckerberg’s discourse on Facebook ”, Paper Presented at Internet Research 15: The 15th Annual Meeting of the Association of Internet Researcher , Daegu .

Zuckerberg , M. ( 2012 ), “ Building global community, Zuckerberg official facebook page ”, available at: www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-global-community/10154544292806634/ (accessed 20 January 2019 ).

Corresponding author

Related articles, all feedback is valuable.

Please share your general feedback

Report an issue or find answers to frequently asked questions

Contact Customer Support

Leadership Case Study of Mark Zuckerberg

Added on   2023-06-03

End of preview

Want to access all the pages? Upload your documents or become a member.

Strategic Leadership and Stakeholder Management lg ...

Leadership for global hospitality lg ..., leadership contents lg ..., mark zuckerberg's leadership and stakeholder management lg ..., study on leadership of mark zuckerberg lg ..., leadership analysis of mark zuckerberg lg ....

• Undergraduate
• High School
• Architecture
• American History
• Asian History
• Antique Literature
• American Literature
• Asian Literature
• Classic English Literature
• World Literature
• Creative Writing
• Linguistics
• Criminal Justice
• Legal Issues
• Anthropology
• Archaeology
• Political Science
• World Affairs
• African-American Studies
• East European Studies
• Latin-American Studies
• Native-American Studies
• West European Studies
• Family and Consumer Science
• Social Issues
• Women and Gender Studies
• Social Work
• Natural Sciences
• Pharmacology
• Earth science
• Agriculture
• Agricultural Studies
• Computer Science
• IT Management
• Mathematics
• Investments
• Engineering and Technology
• Engineering
• Aeronautics
• Medicine and Health
• Alternative Medicine
• Communications and Media
• Advertising
• Communication Strategies
• Public Relations
• Educational Theories
• Teacher's Career
• Chicago/Turabian
• Company Analysis
• Education Theories
• Shakespeare
• Canadian Studies
• Food Safety
• Relation of Global Warming and Extreme Weather Condition
• Movie Review
• Admission Essay
• Annotated Bibliography
• Application Essay
• Article Critique
• Article Review
• Article Writing
• Book Review
• Business Plan
• Business Proposal
• Capstone Project
• Cover Letter
• Creative Essay
• Dissertation
• Dissertation - Abstract
• Dissertation - Conclusion
• Dissertation - Discussion
• Dissertation - Hypothesis
• Dissertation - Introduction
• Dissertation - Literature
• Dissertation - Methodology
• Dissertation - Results
• GCSE Coursework
• Grant Proposal
• Marketing Plan
• Multiple Choice Quiz
• Personal Statement
• Power Point Presentation
• Power Point Presentation With Speaker Notes
• Questionnaire
• Reaction Paper
• Research Paper
• Research Proposal
• SWOT analysis
• Thesis Paper
• Online Quiz
• Literature Review
• Movie Analysis
• Statistics problem
• Math Problem
• All papers examples
• How It Works
• Money Back Policy
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• We Are Hiring

Mark Zuckerberg, Case Study Example

Pages: 3

Words: 862

Hire a Writer for Custom Case Study

Use 10% Off Discount: "custom10" in 1 Click 👇

You are free to use it as an inspiration or a source for your own work.

Mark Zuckerberg demonstrates remarkable leadership techniques as portrayed in The Social Network.   What makes his leadership style remarkable is that he presented characteristics from just about all forms of leadership theories. At the age of 10, Zuckerberg taught himself C++, which is a coding language used to write software systems. This is the coding language he used to write the code for Facebook as it was demonstrated in the movie when he was constantly writing the code for the platform for his first version of Facebook. Being so self-sufficient at such a young age, Zuckerberg’s leadership traits may have initially derived from his individual characteristics. Self-efficiency is one of the six components to the trait leadership theory, along with intelligence, adjustments, extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness to new experiences. Zuckerberg appears to carry all of these components in the traits leadership theory. His intelligence is unquestionable. Creating Facebook caused for major adjustments in the social networking industry. His extraversion shows in the movie as he is reaching out to his colleagues for what he needs to expand the network. In the beginning of the movie, Zuckerberg was so stimulated by the idea of creating a new social network when the idea was given to him by the Winklevoss brothers. The movie does show a lack for Zuckerberg’s conscientious as it emphasizes that he cares more about the success of Facebook than any ethical standards. He also used his intellectual capabilities in the beginning of the movie to sexually humiliate the women in his school.

In regard to the behavioral theory of leadership, Zuckerberg demonstrates an authoritarian edge as he takes charge in what direction Facebook is going to go. He does show some democracy when consulting with Dustin, Eduardo, and Sean about what the next steps should be for Facebook, but ultimately he makes the executive decisions based on his own intuition. An example was when Eduardo wanted to fill Facebook with advertisements to generate ad-revenue. Zuckerberg did not agree with this as he did not want to drive away users with the same ad pollution found on My Space. After consulting with Sean Parker whom he looked up to, he decided to hold off on putting up ads.

From a business perspective, Zuckerberg demonstrated a great deal of functional leadership towards his generation of college students. The functional leadership theory governs that a leader’s essential responsibility lies in what the desire of his followers. In the case of creating Facebook, Zuckerberg focused on what potential users of the social network would desire. He catered to what he thought they would want to see on Facebook and how they would want it to operate. Zuckerberg monitored every environment of social networking to pick up on trends that stimulated users. The most relevant scene in the movie regarding this style of leadership was when he told Edwardo “Let’s take the entire experience of college, and put it online, it’s what people want so let’s give it to them”.

The culture of social networking had been around years before Facebook. Social networking site such as Xanga, Friendster, and My Space dominated the internet throughout the late 90’s and early 2000’s. What all of these social networks had in common was their user interface was cluttered with ads and fancy designs. In the early phases of the social networking culture, this presentation was considered acceptable among users. These sites however, featured nearly every aspect that Facebook currently has to offer. Private messaging, commenting, digital photo galleries, and a network of one could communicate with online.

As Zuckerberg mentioned in the movie, he wanted Facebook to stand out from all of the previous sites. He wanted to innovate social networking to a new level. What made Facebook different was ironically its lack of design. Zuckerberg stated in the movie “there’s no Disney Land, it’s just simple” in referencing the user interface for Facebook. As Facebook skyrocketed in popularity across universities all over the country, Zuckerberg could have easily followed Eduardo’s advice and generated thousands of dollars in ad revenue. What makes Zuckerberg a remarkable leader is again, ironically he does not care about money.

Zuckerberg’s will to serve the social networking community is what drove the culture in a new direction in the mid to late 2000’s. Suddenly, social networking became easy because of the simplicity Facebook had to offer. Then Zuckerberg started imposing new features no other social network had thought of. Zuckerberg created a “relationship status” feature as it presented in the movie where users could specify if they were in a relationship or not. Then the idea of tagging photos became a phenomenon as users no longer had to scan through pages of photos to see which ones they were in.

Because Zuckerberg ignored money at the startup of Facebook and focused his intuition on what the users would want, Facebook currently has 1.23 billion users as of January 2014. Zuckerberg waited for years to put Facebook public because he wanted his employees to focus on developments rather than profits. The most important factor about the startup of Facebook is in the movie when Zuckerberg told his team that Facebook will never be finished “the way fashion is never finished”.

Stuck with your Case Study?

Get in touch with one of our experts for instant help!

Liberation by the People, Essay Example

A Report of an AMIA Special Task Force, Coursework Example

Time is precious

don’t waste it!

Plagiarism-free guarantee

Privacy guarantee

Secure checkout

Money back guarantee

Related Case Study Samples & Examples

R. v. labaye, case study example.

Words: 821

Employment Law/California Employment Law, Case Study Example

Pages: 6

Words: 1770

Travel Sawa Failure to Penetrate Egyptian Inbound Travel Market, Case Study Example

Pages: 8

Words: 2065

Severe Weather, Case Study Example

Pages: 16

Words: 4308

Boeing Company, Case Study Example

Pages: 7

Words: 1808

Property Matters, Case Study Example

Pages: 11

Words: 3048