“The book, The Facebook Effect, was a promise that connecting on Facebook would allow you to move mountains socially. But then it turned out the money was clicks. And so Facebook never measured on the server how much friendship you were building.”
More or Less · Startups & Venture · October 2026
Context
Asked which social network had done best by its users rather than its market cap, Gordon used Facebook as the example of a network that optimised for clicks instead of the friendships it promised. He then named LinkedIn endorsements as the closest thing to measuring social capital.
Transcript
But, you know, friends is it. You can see with your own kid, they'll do a lot to be popular, to build long-term friendships. You'll have playgroups. My kids in their 30s still remember the playgroups when they were four.
Can I ask you which social network you believe has done the best job outside of market cap?
You know, we can talk about Facebook. So the book, The Facebook Effect, was a promise that connecting on Facebook would allow you to move mountains socially. But then it turned out the money was clicks. And so Facebook never measured on the server how much friendship you were building. And clicks were thought to be a proxy for friendship, but instead they're an unramped advertising. So the social networks think have become viral networks so far. And many of the people I know who were in the early inventive days, even if they got rich, they'd like to do a make-good. LinkedIn with the endorsements thing is the closest to a social capital building network that I see.
How much do you think endorsements has influenced LinkedIn from a game design?
It's a huge part of their value because before endorsements and before publishing, if somebody was on LinkedIn, they were an exec recruiter or they just started a job hunt. Nobody else came. Reed saw that early on and he saw it, you know, right around the time we saw him. I met him as a Zynga board…
Ooh, that's us.
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