13 Secrets to revealing Facebook's success

Facebook has a total of more than 2.2 billion active subscribers per month. Among them, the number of active subscribers to Facebook is 1.3 billion, the number of active users in the WhatsApp is 500 million, the number of active users in Instagram is 200 million, and the number of active subscribers per month is 200 million, which is an important business for Facebook, The number of users in all businesses is 2.2 billion people.

As Facebook was founded, many other social networks were chasing the same opportunity, according to foreign media reports, Business Insider, a leading Internet analyst and editor of the American Science and Technology blog, Henry Blogit (Henry blodget). As a result, Facebook won, and other sites were defeated. He lists 13 reasons to support Facebook's success and points out that these principles apply to all companies.

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8 years ago, Facebook was just a code project for Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg) in a Harvard dorm. Today, Facebook has become a global company that has a revenue of $4 billion trillion, with a share of one-eighth of the world's population, valued at more than $100 billion trillion.

When Facebook was founded, many other social networks were chasing the same opportunity. But the end result is that Facebook wins, and other sites lose.

Here are some of the reasons why Facebook has won, which is true for almost every company.

1. Take prompt action

Zuckerberg the first version of Facebook in his spare time at Harvard dorm.

At that time, he did not make a business plan, not endlessly let friends and advisers to provide his ideas, and did not study the market, patent or trademark, call group discussion, or the entrepreneur will do anything else.

He just quickly made a cool product and then released it.

This is how Facebook was born.

2. Remember one point: ideas abound, and it is important to implement

From the moment Facebook was released, the debate began about who made the site.

The Winklevosse brothers, two senior students at Harvard University, said it was their idea, but Zuckerberg "stole" it. This sparked a judicial war that lasted nearly 10 years.

At the same time, dozens of other entrepreneurs have had similar ideas outside Harvard, and many have come up with the idea, but today there is only one Facebook left.

Why? Because ideas abound, it is important to make them a reality.

As the fictional Zuckerberg said to the fictional Winklevoss brothers in the movie Social network: "If you created Facebook (the idea), you would have created Facebook." ”

When you have a good idea, do not waste time on complacency, but make it a reality.

3. Simplicity is beauty.

Many companies are obsessed with all the amazing features they want to build in their products, so that their products are too complex for anyone to know how to use them. Or they spend too much time developing products that have been overtaken when they are launched.

The first version of the "Thefacebook" is very simple, it is only a good thing. Then, over time, Zuckerberg and the Facebook team made continual improvements. In each of these improvements, they ensure that the service is still easy to use.

4. Figure out what's going to happen in the future that will "kill" your company and make sure it doesn't.

Although most people have long forgotten, Facebook is far from the first social network.

Before the founding of Faceobook in 2004, there were a number of other university networks, including the social networks of Columbia University and Stanford University.

Outside the university world, Friendster and MySpace also set off a global social storm. But then Friendster "committed suicide".

How did Friendster "Commit suicide"? Until the back-end infrastructure is available to support it, the site has never been limited in its use, and its demand has grown so large that its services have slowed dramatically. When the company finally fixes back-end problems, most American users have turned to other networks.

When Zuckerberg and his Facebook co-founder launched the site, they carefully controlled the new registrations, adding only one school at a time, until they were sure the infrastructure was up to date. So Facebook has been running. In other words, Zuckerberg correctly discovered something that was enough to "kill" Facebook and made sure the site was not a victim.

5. Focus on products, not "business" or "shareholder value"

As everyone knows, Zuckerberg was not interested in Facebook's business early on, but focused on Facebook's products.

The obsession with the product was so high that Zuckerberg kept rejecting advertisers because he didn't want Facebook services to be "tainted" by advertising. The ads aren't cool, and Zuckerberg wants Facebook to be cool all the time.

As Facebook grew, Zuckerberg kept a focused focus on the product. He hired executives, such as chief operating Burchelli Sandberg (Sheryl Sandberg) and chief financial Officer David Ebersman (David Ebersman), to run the company's business and financial activities.

When Facebook was ready to go public, Zuckerberg wrote to shareholders that the company planned to focus first on its "social mission" and put its business in second place. There is no doubt that this is a "heresy" on Wall Street. In the eyes of Wall Street, companies should devote all their energy to creating value for their shareholders;

But, as Amazon and other companies have shown, to create huge amounts of value for shareholders in the long term, one of the best ways is to focus on products and customers. If this can be done, then the business will follow. This will not be the same as many companies do, that is, at the expense of products to focus on the business. There is nothing more than emphasizing "business" and neglecting products that can put you at risk of being destroyed or becoming mediocre.

6. Make yourself good at recruiting employees, but also good at firing employees

The strength of a company has nothing to do with its technology or current product, but with talent, because technology and products change rapidly.

Even Apple's late co-founder Steve Jobs has happily admitted that no one can prop up a company on his own. So if you want to build a great company, you have to build a great team, and to build a great team, that means two things: being good at hiring and firing.

Being good at hiring is easy to understand: you have to find the best candidates for each job and convince them to join the company. At the same time, being good at firing is also critical, there are two reasons: first, no matter how careful you are, you will make mistakes in hiring employees, and you need to fix them as quickly as possible; second, if your company is growing fast, it will eventually grow faster than some of its early executives Then you need to find a replacement. In short, if you can't be good at firing, your company will become mediocre.

In the early stages of Facebook, the company made a number of mistakes in hiring staff, but then quickly solved the problems. Facebook is also adept at replacing outdated executives as the company grows rapidly.

7. Maintain control

Each company has three main supporters, customers, employees and shareholders, and the best companies can balance the interests of those three. At the same time, weaker companies have only emphasized the interests of one of the supporters at the expense of the other two. Companies, for example, would push down employees ' pay to meet their expenses, or try to save on manufacturing costs and produce crappy products, or pay too much for their managers, who actually perform very mediocre jobs.

One of the reasons some companies fall into this trap is that they are ultimately controlled by short-term shareholders, and the interests of these shareholders are vastly different than those of corporate clients and employees.

If Facebook has always been controlled by its risk investors, it is likely that the company has already been priced for sale. As a listed company, if Facebook is responsible for the short-term needs of public shareholders, it could be tempted to cut research and development spending or take other shortcuts to improve quarterly results.

But in fact, Facebook has always been in the hands of Zuckerberg, and Zuckerberg has been focused on building his long-term vision, rather than working towards short-term financial returns.

So one way to make sure your company doesn't go astray is to keep control of the company. If you don't have outright voting control like Zuckerberg, you can have a major shareholder that supports your vision.

8. Don't stop "panel discussions", just introduce new features and make changes based on the screams of discontent

Mr. Jobs once said the famous word that consumers don't know what they want. Apple's job, he says, is to determine what products consumers want and then do it for them.

Facebook has been doing this all along, and the company has not "panel discussions" about its new features, but just the introduction of new features. In some cases, these new features are subject to strong opposition and a scream of discontent. Facebook will then make changes or cancellations to the new features.

For example, Facebook has made changes to the News Feed feature to address the concerns of some users. This feature was criticized at the beginning of the launch, but it has now become one of the most important features of Facebook. And for the "Beacon" feature, Facebook is finally completely withdrawn.

Whenever Facebook's new feature screams, some observers say it "made a mistake". While these new features may, to some extent, indeed contain "bugs," the process itself is deliberate.

9. Develop wise advisers and learn anything that can be learned from them

Leadership and management skills are skill, so they can be (and must) be studied.

As venture capitalists Benholovitz Ben Horowitz: Chief executives are acquired, not born.

Mr Zuckerberg's skill as chief executive is now astonishing, and it is a skill he has deliberately acquired. In the early stages of Facebook's development, Mr. Zuckerberg's performance as a leader was so poor that executives told him he needed "CEO lessons." Since then, Zuckerberg has devoted himself to learning these skills as much and as quickly as possible. To help his study, he trained a team of advisers, including some of America's best entrepreneurs, investors and executives, such as jobs, venture capitalists Markendersen (Marc andreesse), investor Pittel (Peter Thiel), venture capital, Accel Gimbreye (Jim Breyer), Warren Buffett (Warren Warren), The Washington Post's Donald Greham (Donald Graham), and so on. He has learned enough from these people and many of the executives he has recruited for Facebook. Gradually, he became a great leader.

No one can have all the answers. The more talented people around you, the more likely you are to get some good answers.

10. Make your skin as thick as a thick leather animal

If you want to do something difficult, innovative, or interesting--in short, something worth doing--then you are bound to be criticized. The more successful you are, the more severe the criticism will be. You don't have to be happy, but you do have to learn to put up with it, because something is absolutely impossible to prevent it from happening.

People will be jealous, will be angry, will not understand. They (the media, competitors) will set the agenda, frustrated by the way they are treated, and want money and credit cards. In short, they will ignite countless "hellfire fires" on your path. And there are times when the criticism is right.

In the past few years, Zuckerberg has received numerous criticisms, some of which are correct. At first he was a poor leader. He has made many mistakes and has done some questionable things. He used to annoy a lot of people.

That criticism is bound to hurt, but Zuckerberg has never let it stand in the way of his desire to build Facebook, and has never given up his dream.

In your life, no matter what you do, as long as you succeed, someone will throw stones at you. If you keep succeeding, then you have to make your skin thick enough for the stones to bounce off.

11. If you ever think you're done, you're screwed.

When Facebook finally overtook the crumbling myspace a few years ago, the company "won" in the social media competition. At the time, Facebook could have been able to lie down and sigh and celebrate that it had done a good job.

For everyone in the company--and for users and shareholders--Facebook has not done so, but continues to move as quickly and diligently as possible, pulling as far as it can from its rivals. The company continues to tap talent from rivals and potential rivals, and every time a new startup creates something cool, Facebook copies it for you. Facebook has rightly maintained its course of development: Mr Zuckerberg likes to say that the company has done only 1% of its work.

Andy Grove, a Jewish-American entrepreneur and one of Intel's main founders, once said something Andigrove: "Only paranoia can survive." "In most companies, that is true. If you ever thought you were done, you'd be screwed.

12. Ignore Wall Street and other people who want to be a trader (unless you really want to make a deal)

If things are going well, your door will be rung and the knocker will want to meet you to see how you can "collaborate" or want to "know more about where your future is going".

These potential partners and service providers will include consultants, bankers, investors, potential acquirers and competitors, and will include any number of other people who want to sell you something. Some of these people will be very intelligent, wealthy and powerful. They will talk about the big game and will keep nagging you. Some people may actually be helpful to you--to help, to provide information and advice, or to recommend something, and so on.

But what these people can't do is that they can't help you produce better products or services. In most cases, they will only distract you and waste your time. If you really need a banker or other service provider, it's not hard to find. As long as you pick up the phone, many very qualified people will immediately appear outside your door.

The same is true for most other potential partners and service providers.

The actual usable time of the day is only 12-16 hours, 365 days a year. If you let these potential partners and service providers drive your schedule, they will take up all of that time. So don't let them do it. Focus on products and customers, and let those potential partners and service providers "know more about where you are going in the future" by focusing on your approach.

13. Emphasizing long-term prospects

If you've ever seen financial media, it's understandable if you assume that success is only "month" and "quarter".

Every listed company makes a ludicrous ritual every quarter, declaring that their performance is "beyond expectations" or "less than expected". Their share prices will then rise or fall. Then the media will start to comment differently. Like。

You may not know that these quarterly rituals are usually staged: companies publicly or privately send "performance forecasts" to analysts, which are set at very low levels so that even mediocre quarterly results will "exceed expectations". Investors know this, so the "whisper" (Whisper numbers, Wall Street's latest estimate of the profits of each company in a given quarter) represents its real expectations. This is why there are times when the company's performance "exceeds expectations" and the share price declines.

At the same time, some companies are too focused on quarterly performance to start distorting sales procedures and pricing, just to meet this random time barrier. Customers will soon know that they will get much better terms if they wait until the end of the quarter to sign the agreement. Soon, no one will sign the agreement until the end of the quarter.

So the short term "game" is not just a waste of time managing investor expectations, but also damaging the company's business. The best way to deal with this "game" is to minimize it if possible. No great company is obsessed with quarterly results, and they are built to focus on a vision that will take many years or even dozens of years to create. In addition to Facebook, think about how Wal-Mart, Google, Apple and Amazon do it.

In other words, it's a marathon, not a sprint sprint. You should be clinging to the finish line of the marathon, rather than "exceeding expectations" every single mile of the race.