Friday, January 8, 2010

Friday Book Review: The Accidental Billionaires

Mark Zuckerberg is a dick! Or at least that is what reading The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal leads you to believe. It's hard not to reach this conclusion as it appears that Zuckerberg has screwed over many a person to get to where he is these days as the CEO of Facebook. Unfortunately, the author Ben Mezrich, was unable to get Zuckerberg to agree to an interview so we are dependent on what other people have to say about him. This is the main failing of this book as we don't get a full picture of what really happened behind the scenes.

My other gripe with the book is that Mezrich tries to sensationalize Zuckerberg's first attempt to create a Harvard centric clone of the Hot or Not website. In it his describes in exacting detailing how he downloads class photos from other Harvard web sites. Mezrich makes it sound like he is cracking the Enigma code but for those of us with technical savvy realize it is a dirt simple process. It is these first few pages which probably put me off for the rest of the book.

I have to pants this book as it is not a fair and balanced look at Mr. Zuckerberg. The book is a bit of a sensationalized tell all with bitter people pilling on.

This is the second book in a row I've pantsed. I'm looking for some good book recommendations so please leave some in the comics section.

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