I wrote this post after reading today’s article from Douglas Rushkoff for CNN (see below link).

Their common point? Part of minority, maybe even disregard by others. That teach you tolerance. Also being multi-cultural, you already get exposed to opposite view and values, you learn realize that they are not one right, one wrong, just one that you prefer.

You learn to be curious about other people? Do they also feel out of place? Because you are curious, you take more risk, to talk to people, reveal yourself and you learn faster.

For Zuck there is maybe no ethnical factor, jew in an Ivy league school, maybe nothing too special. But he is a hacker. Like Hacker and Painter from Paul Graham he must have feel different form the “cool kids”. But Hackers, like Honey badgers, don’t give a sh*t. What is important for them is to understand the world, not that the world love them.

With time Zuck softer his character and probably learn that if he is faster than other in understanding things, he can not expect from them to go as fast as him. He is the one who should adapt. See my post “If you are the smarter one,you are the one who have to make the effort”. 

My favorite part of the articles: 

[…]Yet it also evokes the spirit of our current era — one in which networks and connections are coming to matter more than individual skill or personal gain.

>> One of my colleague at nciku, Dan Ciez, taugh me a lot when I work there. We didn’t always get along but the most important thing he taugh me was “You shouldn’t waste time trying to be good at something you suck. Just find people who are good at it and work with them. Focus on YOUR strength”.

And I understand it even more when I read Michael Porter article “What is Strategy?”. What maybe you number one, is not being the best at your field. It is being the best at your field and work the other best at their fields.

We all have limited time, we can not be good at everything. So just let it go. Individual skill is not competitive enough today, today is about individual skill + quality of your network.

These are not the kind of people we traditionally think of as heroes in sports, technology, and politics. Compare Jeremy Lin, Mark Zuckerberg, and Barack Obama to, say, Michael Jordan, Steve Jobs, and Bill Clinton. Jordan, Jobs, and Clinton were stars in their own right. Their campaigns and their victories were about themselves. It was Jordan who made the dunks, Jobs who showed us the iPhone, and Clinton who made his presidency about himself. Lin, Zuckerberg, and Obama, on the other hand, are rather underwhelming as tribal leaders. They are leaders of the Net generation, who owe their power to the networks they can catalyze.

 I also hope to be this kind of person. That is why I want to start my company. More on that later.

Zuckerberg’s greatest liability is the possibility that the people actually energizing Facebook — those of us who use it to connect — begin to suspect that his company and shareholders matter more than us. Once it feels like we’re creating more value for him than he is for us, we’re out.

 >> That is the danger. Always put your user first and I think Zuck Open letter replied to this critics. But you are so far from your users, they will keep being suspicious. My best friend (who is anti-facebook) send me this comic below. Funny but this is what anti-facebook people think. They are not sure how, but they think they are being used.

For me I have never been a big fan of the plot theory. If someone throw  free party but use my name to make people come. In exchange I get free booze… I am happy 🙂

Reference articles:

Lin, Zuckerberg, Obama: New kind of heroes?, Douglas Rushkoff, CNN, 2012/02/17

Zuckerberg’sletter to investors, REUTERS, (2012/02/01)

 Also to read:

Obama “The audacity to hope” – that is when I really start loving Obama.