Facebook
Play sample
  • Published: 1 June 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241297957
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 592
  • RRP: $26.00

Facebook

The Inside Story

Formats & editions
Paperback
1 Jun 2021
EBook
28 Jan 2020
Audiobook
27 Feb 2020
Buy from…
The Nile Mighty Ape BookHub Whitcoulls The Warehouse Paper Plus Fishpond Book Hero Unity Books University Book Shop Find Local Retailers

From renowned tech writer Steven Levy, the complete history of one of America's most controversial and successful companies

Today, Facebook is nearly unrecognizable from the simple website Zuckerberg's first built from his dorm room in his Sophomore year. It has grown into a tech giant, the largest social media platform and one of the biggest companies in the world, with a valuation of more than $576 billion and almost 3 billion users. There is no denying the power and omnipresence of Facebook in daily life. And in light of recent controversies surrounding election-influencing fake news accounts, the handling of its users' personal data and growing discontent with the actions of its founder and CEO, never has the company been more central to the national conversation.

Based on years of exclusive reporting and interviews with Facebook's key executives and employees, including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Steven Levy's sweeping narrative digs deep into the whole story of the company that has changed the world and reaped the consequences.
  • Published: 1 June 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241297957
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 592
  • RRP: $26.00
Categories:

About the author

Steven Levy

Steven Levy is senior editor and chief technology writer at Newsweek.He has also worked on many other magazines, including Macworld and New Jersey Monthly, where one of his assignments led him to discover Einstein's brain in a pathologist's office. His previous books include the bestselling Hackers, and Crypto, which won the grand eBook prize at the 2001 Frankfurt Book festival. He lives in New York City and western Massachusetts with his wife, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Teresa Carpenter, and their son.

Praise for Facebook

This absorbing book will inspire important conversations about big tech and privacy in the twenty-first century

Booklist

This fascinating book reveals the imperial ambitions of Facebook's founder

James Marriott, The Sunday Times

A tour de force of access journalism

Natasha Singer, The New York Times

Steven Levy is the founding guru of technology journalism

Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store and The Upstarts

Levy's narrative is richly detailed, thanks to interviews with Facebookers past and present...His account of Zuckerberg's abbreviated Harvard tenure and Facebook's early years feel fresh, with plenty of colour that reminds you the HBO show Silicon Valley did not have to reach far for its satire

NPR.org

Comprehensive and captivating history

Wall Street Journal

Levy writes with verve... [he] is able to trace the origins of the Cambridge Analytica scheme to Facebook's disregard for the privacy concerns of the first users... He doesn't shy from asking the tough questions

Washington Post

Fresh, up-to-date and insiderish

The Economist

Levy portrays a tech company where no one is taking responsibility for what it has unleashed... The book closes with a recognition that Facebook is bulldozing ahead with new innovations - from Facebook dating to its Libra digital currency project - while Zuckerberg continues to shrug off any ethical queries about his past behaviour

Financial Times