Facebook, Napster, YouTube. What do all of these big companies have in common? These online companies were created by young individuals who went out on a whim and ended up creating raging businesses. What does it take to make such a successful online company and how do you know that your idea will work? These are the questions that intrigued me when I was reading the chapter on "Innovators" in the book Born Digital.
Let's look at each innovator separately starting with the creator of Facebook Mark Zuckerburg. Zuckerburg dropped out of Harvard to create Facebook with his friends but he was faced with some dilemmas along the way. Another group of Harvard students claimed that Zuckerburg stole the idea of Facebook from them. Zuckerburg also faced a speed bump when his idea of a "News Feed" caused controversy among its users because it was too invasive of their privacy. Zuckerburg fixed the problem and the masses gobbled up the idea of controlling how much they want to share on Facebook.
Napster was created by Shawn Fanning, a student at Northeastern University. Fanning had the idea of creating an online website where people could trade music. Fanning's idea may have seemed fine but it was seriously flawed because it was illegal. Soon enough, YouTube co founder Chad Hurley came up with the idea of posting movies online without it being illegal. When looking at all of these young innovators, it is obvious that they took a risk when creating these highly successful businesses and they figured out how to work out the problems that came in their way. More information can be found about young innovators by reading the book Born Digital or visiting the website Born Digital.
I agree with you 100%. All three of these men took great risks to achieve their goals. Although their goals could have possibly put them in jail, there was always a way for them to figure it out. To me, Shawn Fanning is probably the most important out of these three primarily because he changed the way the music companies work. Because of Shawn, we no longer use CD's and we now focus all of our attention on downloading where it be illegal or legal.
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