EXCLUSIVE: The IM Conversation In Which 19-Year-Old Zuckerberg Decided To Build Facebook, This Year's $100 Billion IPO. Wirehog, Zuckerberg’s Side Project That Almost Killed Facebook. “We put a bullet in that thing.” That’s how Sean Parker fondly looks back at Wirehog. According to him and author David Kirkpatrick it was a side-project that Mark Zuckerberg found equally as interesting as Facebook itself. According to both of them, it was also the thing that almost killed Facebook. The two made the revelation today on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York.
Both were on the stage with our own Michael Arrington to talk about the state of Facebook, as well as Kirkpatrick’s new book about its history, The Facebook Effect. So what was Wirehog? Parker, of course, had a history with file sharing services — he was one of the founders of Napster. You can read more about Wirehog on Wikipedia, or check out Kirkpartrick’s book when it goes on sale — he goes more into it.
How TheFacebook Used To Woo Advertisers Back In The Early Days. I’m not sure exactly how easy (or difficult) it is to come by stuff like this, but I for one thought it was pretty cool. Eli Feldblum and Mayer Reich, co-founders of RankAbove, emailed me a number of documents this morning that Facebook used to send potential advertisers back when they were just getting started (and when the fledgling company was still called TheFacebook). The docs were originally sent to Feldblum by Kevin Colleran – the longest employee at Facebook other than founder Mark Zuckerberg – who still works there as Global Sales Lead, after they had met at a digital marketing conference.
The date: Thursday, May 19, 2005. I know, exciting, right? Anyway, the set of documents sent by Colleran consisted of a general overview of advertising opportunities on TheFacebook, a more detailed overview of how to buy ‘Group Sponsorships’ and a list of schools in the TheFacebook network (about 800 at the time). You can find screenshots of the documents below. Group Sponsorships. Mak Zuckerberg 21, speaking about FB (2005)
Facebook Reorganizes Around Key Products to Be More Nimble - Liz Gannes - Social.