Zuckerberg - Dot complicated: untangling our wired lives

To my incredible husband, Brent Tworetzky, for always being Dot Calm and Collected, and never Dot Complicated. Thank you for being such a wonderful father, a loving husband, and the worlds best teammate.

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You only live once. So make sure you spend 15 hours on the internet every day, desperately seeking the validation of strangers.

@ChrisRockOz

F or the past eight years I have had a front-row seat to how technology, mobile devices, and social media have changed, enhanced, and complicated almost every facet of our livesfrom how we interact with our friends to how we elect presidents, from how we manage our careers to how we support the causes were passionate about, from how we find love to how we raise our children.

Ive seen the world radically shift from a place where connecting online with others was so new, so novel, so special, and where being reachable on a mobile device felt almost magical... to a world where were now so connected online, so reachable, and so comfortable interacting with others from behind a screen, we often forget to look up and enjoy the world around us.

In the following pages, I take you through some of my own experiences, as I witnessed this remarkable shift firsthand, and share some of my personal observations on how social media has transformed the world we live in.

We have such powerful technology at our fingertips. But we need to make sure our attachment to being online doesnt get in the way of our lives and relationships offline. We need to find balance between being connected to millions of people around the world and being present with the people we love, standing right next to us.

Its complicated.

Over the past few years Ive spent a lot of time thinking about the concept of techlife balance. What does that even mean? How do we find it? In an era where we are constantly connected, always on call, and reachable around the clock... is this kind of balance even possible?

But before I dive further into my thoughts on finding techlife balance within our friendships, our families, our relationships, our careers, and our communities, I want to take you back a few years, to a time in my life that was anything but balanced. To a time where I worked tirelessly to help build one of the very tools that today presents us with so much joy and so much anxiety.

Maybe youre picking up this book because you and I are connected through social media. Maybe youve been a loyal Facebook user from day one. Maybe you dont have a clue who I am, but you think my brother is cool. Or maybe you have no idea why youre even reading this right now, but here you are. However these pages landed in your hands, thanks for joining me on this adventure. I am thrilled to have your attention, and I hope this bookpart personal story, part thoughts for the future, and part guide for finding the right balance of tech in your lifecan spark a dialogue around using technology mindfully, thoughtfully, and meaningfully to truly enhance our lives.

T here are moments in life when everything changes.

Sometimes these moments come out of nowhere, ambushing you. Sometimes they approach from a distance and arrive so slowly and expectedly that change is nothing to be surprised about.

And then, sometimes, the moment comes when you open your mouth and blurt your heart out at the most random and surprising opportunity. Thats how my life changed on April 20, 2011.

Sitting at my desk at work that morning, I had no idea this day would become one of the most important of my life and come to define my dreams, my career, and my views on technology and society in so many ways. But I already knew that it was going to be a very special day. Or at least a very strange one.

I had stopped by my desk for a quick breather. I dont normally start the day tired. Most of the time, Im a morning personone of those terribly perky people who are always ready to roll, even before their morning coffee. But I was thirty-five weeks pregnant at this stage, and the baby felt like it weighed fifty pounds. At a short five feet two inches, I was officially all stomach and none too sprightly on my feet.

Id also been at work for about eighty hoursand things were only just getting started. My desk was a mess of call sheets, floor plans, and the wreckage of discarded takeout meals. I slumped in my chair and took a moment to collect myself.

Suddenly, the mess began to buzz. I fumbled wildly beneath the papers for my phone. I tapped the keypad and pressed it against my ear.

Randi!!! boomed an enthusiastic voice. Its Ron!

It was Ron Conway, the legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist. Hes a good friend, and I have all the time in the world for Ron on any occasion. Well, almost any occasion. This time I wilted slightly in my chair. It was too early, and I was too tired for such a rousing greeting.

Hello, Ron, I said, forcing as much energy into my voice as I could, hoping I sounded less leaden than I felt. What can I do for you?

Ron paused for a moment. Then he spoke, as focused and earnest as he always is. Listen, Randi. I need you to get M. C. Hammer in to see the president.

For a moment, my brain struggled to process the sheer unlikelihood and absurdity of what Id just heard. And then I began to smile. Suddenly I felt a lot less tired.

The presidents motorcade was on its way to Facebook. This was the day Id been waiting for, the crescendo of my entire career to date.

The call had come in from the White House exactly two weeks earlier.

At Facebook, I was often contacted by people asking us to do events with them, sending movie scripts for our consideration, and pitching opportunities for our executives. Most of the time, these invitations werent exactly right for us, and I was used to politely declining several dozen a day.

Then, out of the blue, the White House communications office phoned. They had seen some of my Facebook Live broadcasts and were wondering, would Facebook be interested in hosting President Obama for a town hall event in two weeks?

Its not every day that you get a call from the White House. So, even though I knew we would have to move mountains to pull this one off, even though all we had was an empty warehouse and a couple of cameras, I did the only sensible thing. I agreed on the spot.

Not only did the president want to come to Facebook to talk to our employees, he also wanted to answer questions submitted by people on the website as part of a Facebook Live event. The town hall would be streamed live, and people could tune in on Facebook to watch and ask questions. This was no idle PR stunt. The president was coming as part of his nationwide tour to make his case for a new economic policya strategy for cutting the deficit while maintaining investment in growth. For the president, it was a tough moment politically, and it wasnt clear whether he would prevail over congressional Republicans.

For Facebook, this was a defining moment. The president had every distribution channel available to him to communicate to the country. But out of every website, every TV channel, every radio station at his disposal, he had chosen Facebook as the best way to speak directly to the nation.

Power, drama, technologyall the makings of an epic marketing moment for Facebook. Even as I digested the basic details of the event, my brain was already racing through the possibilities of what we could doand what we needed to doto host the president at Facebook in only two weeks.

We worked nonstop for thirteen days. It was a crazy, exhilarating, and terrifying whirlwind in which each day blended into the next, and my team and I lived from conference call to conference call, meeting to meeting, espresso shot to Red Bull can (or for my pregnant self, decaf coffee to herbal tea). We had to sort out logistics and security with the White Housenot something to mess around with. We had to work out how to market the event so that people on Facebook would know when and how to tune in. We had to decide who would get to attend, how we could collect questions, and whether we should try to focus the conversation at all.