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Inside Early Facebook with Andrew Bosworth: Culture, Ads, and AR Glasses

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Sep 4, 2025
Andrew Bosworth, CTO of Meta and a key player in Facebook's mobile transition, shares his insights into the early, vibrant culture of Facebook. He reveals the fun chaos behind creating the News Feed and the challenging shift to mobile advertising. The discussion dives into Meta's innovations in AR and VR, emphasizing the delicate balance between software and hardware development. Bosworth also reflects on how military leadership principles can apply to tech, urging for closer ties between the tech and defense sectors.
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ANECDOTE

Joining Facebook On Day Two

  • Andrew Bosworth joined Facebook on day two as a Harvard undergrad and became user 1,681.
  • He and six friends left Microsoft and joined Facebook on January 9, 2006 after a revelatory visit.
ANECDOTE

When The Internet Was Plugged Into Itself

  • The site once went down because an employee plugged an ethernet cable into itself, ping-flooding the network.
  • Engineers fixed it by walking the wall and unplugging cables, turning a chaotic moment into a legendary story.
INSIGHT

Hand‑Tuned News Feed Before ML

  • News Feed began from simple intuition about attention curves for different story types.
  • Early ranking was hand-tuned and manual until machine learning matured to automate it.
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