On February 4th, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room. What started as an online student directory is now the world’s biggest social media platform with 2.7 billion users. The company’s mission is “to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together." But Facebook has become much more than that, influencing popular culture and world events in both positive and negative ways.

Like it or loathe it, Facebook is here to stay. If you want to learn more about the story behind the one of the most influential companies in history, here are some suggested titles to get you started.

The Facebook Dilemma (DVD) is an excellent, though sobering documentary from PBS’s acclaimed “Frontline” series  that chronicles exponential growth and explores how that growth prevented company executives from understanding or responding to the reality that the platform was being used for nefarious purposes. The documentary includes interviews with many former employees who left the company because of the direction it was taking.

 

 

 

 

Becoming Facebook: The 10 Challenges That Defined the Company That's Disrupting the World by Michael Hoefflinger

Hoefflinger,  a former Facebook employee explains Facebook’s success by describing how the company recovered from missteps, and found solutions to problems.  He makes the point that Facebook was far from an overnight success.  According to the Huffington Post, “the lessons in this book can help you become the next Facebook in your business domain”

 

 

 

Targeted: The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower's Inside Story of How Big Data, Trump, and Facebook Broke Democracy and How it Can Happen Again by Brittany Kaiser 

In this memoir/expose, Kaiser chronicles her time working at Cambridge Analytica—a voter profiling company that mined online data to create political ads aimed at very specific audiences. She explains how Facebook's careless policies allowed campaigns in the US and Britain to manipulate and mislead voters and sounds a warning for the future if Facebook and other data companies remain unregulated.

 

 

Facebook, The Inside Story by Stephen Levy

Author Stephen Levy had unprecedented access to Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg and its CEO Cheryl Sandberg over a three year period.  Much of what is included comes from countless interviews with people both inside and outside the company.  At times, the author seems too in awe of the creative visionaries, but this is a mostly fair and well researched account of Facebook’s journey from a college lark to a social media giant.

 

 

 

A Burning by Megha Majumdar

This novel, on almost every “Best Books” list for 2020, tells the story of a young Indian girl arrested for murder because of an impulsive post on Facebook.

 

 

 

 

 

Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe by Roger McNamee

 As the title indicates, If you are an opponent of social media, this book will cement your position because it delves into the manipulative ways Facebook (and other tech giants like Amazon and Google) uses our personal information to manipulate our thoughts, promote social media addiction and, as we’ve seen all too recently,  threaten our democracy. Named one of The Financial Times’ Best Business Books of 2019.

 

 

 

The Social Network (DVD)

This film, starring Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, chronicles the early days of the company, and is written by West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin

 

 

 

 

 

If you want learn how to use and navigate Facebook, the Library also has a plethora of “how-to” books such as Facebook For Beginners in Easy Steps, Facebook for Dummies and many others you can find in our catalog.