New book out: Inside Facebook

October 13, 2006 | Matt Marshall | Comments |

Karel Baloun, an employee of popular social networking company FaceBook who left over the summer, has penned a book about the company.

Liz Gannes, of Gigaom, provides a review. She doesn’t recommend reading it, but provides the notable tidbits:

…recollections of [YouTube co-founder] Steve Chen deciding to leave a promising job at Facebook to take the risk of founding YouTube; an anecdote about CEO Mark Zuckerberg getting held up at gunpoint in East Palo Alto the same day he closed Facebook’s $11 million first round…

A large part of the book is an ode to Mark Zuckerberg, or “Zuck,” as Baloun fondly calls him. Zuck is portrayed as an ascetic visionary, a managerial genius, even a “Greek god prototype.” Despite his colossal ambition, Zuck disdains advertising, writes Baloun: I think [Zuck] had to be physically tied up at some executive meeting to allow that ad on the left side of the page…