Business origin stories that'll make you want to run through a brick wall. Released every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Enjoy.
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It’s 2003. The leaves on the trees outside Harvard's sophomore dorms are changing colors. There's a slight breeze blowing through the open dorm window. In da Club by 50 Cent is blasting on the radio. It’s number 1 on the billboards (the whole album is great, by the way). Mark Zuckerberg—half-man, half-robot (possibly full-robot) sits with his face glued to his computer screen. He’s writing the first lines of code for “The Facebook”, later to be known as simply “Facebook"...  But, as a wise man once said (probably), "In order to build cool stuff, you first have to practice building cool stuff." Zuck is no exception. He had plenty of other creations predating Facebook. In high school, he constructed the Synapse Media Player. Spotify and Apple Music have gotten pretty good at creating customized playlists for listeners. Zuck did it first. The software used machine learning in order to determine someone’s music taste and listening habits. Then, based on the artist, genre, and song, it generated music recommendations. Microsoft and AOL both offered to buy the app. In a display of absolute savagery, Zuck released it for free. A man of the people. Another one of his creations started by him posing the question “How can I take my computer science genius and dehumanize the people around me in the most effective way possible?” (Sorry, Mark. We know that was a low blow) The answer was a website that put pictures of two different Harvard students on the screen, and allowed people to vote on who was better looking. It cycled through the whole student body. Then, students were ranked from worst to best looking using an algorithm. "Facemash" was so popular, it ended up shutting down the Harvard servers. Here at Freshly Squeezed, we're stoked on the concept of taking an idea and turning it into reality. No one does it without practice. Even a genius like Zuck. **Read more FS Stories here. If you liked reading this article, you might also like The Wedge: a quick-to-read weekly e-mail newsletter with awesome business stories that'll increase your creativity and resourcefulness just by reading them. Learn more and sign up here. Comments are closed.
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