Q: What makes Facebook successful?

Mark Zuckerberg:

I just think that there's this core part of people where they want to express things about themselves. So the question isn't what do we want to know about people. It's what do people want to tell about themselves.

Still the vast majority of people don't want to share everything, or. don't even want to share anything with everyone publicly. But if you give people tools that they can share with just their friends or just one group of friends--I think that people go through a learning process, too, where- I mean, maybe when social networks were first ramping up on the web, some people shared a few things too broadly.

If you're gonna be sharing publicly, there's a little globe and it says the word "public," and if you're gonna be sharing with friends there's this icon of a few people and it, it says the word "friends,” and you can just click and you can change that really easily every time you post anything.

Q: What makes Facebook successful?

Mark Zuckerberg:

I just think that there's this core part of people where they want to express things about themselves. So the question isn't what do we want to know about people. It's what do people want to tell about themselves.

Still the vast majority of people don't want to share everything, or. don't even want to share anything with everyone publicly. But if you give people tools that they can share with just their friends or just one group of friends--I think that people go through a learning process, too, where- I mean, maybe when social networks were first ramping up on the web, some people shared a few things too broadly.

If you're gonna be sharing publicly, there's a little globe and it says the word "public," and if you're gonna be sharing with friends there's this icon of a few people and it, it says the word "friends,” and you can just click and you can change that really easily every time you post anything.