[imagesource: Jim Wilson/The New York Times]

The rise and rise of Facebook have been well documented, although public sentiment toward the social media giant has turned sour over the past few years.

It’s why your friend keeps threatening to leave Facebook, and then never does.

That picture above shows Mark Zuckerberg with Sean Parker on the right, and Dustin Moskovitz seated in the chair back in 2005, which were far simpler times.

A year later, journalist Steven Levy would meet with Zuckerberg and was taken aback by his almost robot-like persona. He did keep notebooks and journals, though, which offered great insight into the vision he had for Facebook.

Via WIRED, here’s some of what could be found in there:

A few weeks after I met him, he would lay out a ludicrously ambitious vision for Facebook. In a journal with unlined 8-by-10 paper, he sketched his mission and product design and explored how a tiny company might become a vital utility for the world. In detail, he described features called Open Registration and Feed, two products that would supercharge his company.

Zuckerberg found focus in that notebook and others. In his jottings are the seeds of what would come—all the greatness and the failings of Facebook. Over the next 10 years, Zucker­berg would execute the plans he drew up there…

Levy managed to get hold of 17 pages of one of Zuckerberg’s most important notebooks, named “Book of Change”:

The Book of Change outlines the two projects that would transform Facebook from college-and-high-school network into internet colossus. On May 29, he began a page called Open Registration. Up until that point, Facebook had been limited to students, a gated community where only classmates could browse your profile. Zuckerberg’s plan was to open Facebook to every­one. He diagrammed how someone could create an account. People would be asked whether they were in college, high school, or “in the world.”

He mused about privacy. Could you see profiles of “second-­degree” friends in your geographical region? Or anywhere? “Maybe this should be anywhere, as opposed to just your geo,” he wrote. “That would really make the site open but probably not a good idea just yet.”

I guess he had no idea just how fraught with danger Facebook’s general approach to privacy, and its users’ data, would become.

You can read the rest of that lengthy WIRED piece here, but let’s focus on Zuck’s ideas for so-called ‘dark profiles’.

Also found in amongst the pages of his notebooks was this, reports The Verge:

These would be Facebook pages for people who, whether by omission or intention, had not signed up for Facebook. The idea was to allow users to create these profiles for their friends—or really just about anyone who didn’t have a Facebook account—with nothing more than a name and email address. Once the profile existed, anyone would be able to add information to it, like biographical details or interests.

Yes, what could go wrong?

If you enjoy laughing at the gigantic follies of others, you’ll enjoy the story of Facebook’s founder turning down a $1 billion acquisition offer from Yahoo:

He did verbally accept the offer, but then Yahoo CEO Terry Semel made a tactical error, asking to renegotiate terms because his company’s stock had taken a downturn. Zuckerberg used that as an opportunity to end the talks. He believed that the two products he wrote about in the Book of Change would make Facebook more valuable.

Oh dear, Terry – not your finest moment.

According to reports, Zuckerberg has now destroyed most of his notebooks for privacy reasons, which does carry it with it a delightful dose of hypocrisy.

Try and delete your data from Facebook (not your account, but your actual data), and you’ll be met with hurdle after hurdle when what should really exist is a giant red button that you click and voila, you’re erased.

If Zuckerberg can erase his past conversations and ideas, both from Facebook and his personal notebooks, then Facebook users should be allowed the same privilege.

Except for those who constantly threaten to quit Facebook and never do, or those who talk about ‘going on a cleanse’, only to reappear the next day.

You’ve forfeited your right.

[sources:wired&verge]