Facebook’s All Star Board

18.02.12 | facebooknycsocial mediaUNCpeter thielnetflixdonald grahamjim breyeraccel partnersobamamorgan stanleyAndreessen HorowitzMarc AndreessenZyngaMark ZuckerbergNingReed hastingsBill clinton

Facebook added a new member to its board in September and I missed the release. The cast of characters on the board of arguably the planet’s most powerful social media company is a bit scary because it implies the movies we watch and the sites on which we connect are controlled by a handful of men. 

Why do I think FB is more powerful than Twitter? Because FB already knows how to use our data and FB has the power of being a platform, for example, FB gets 30% of the revenue from Zynga (Mafia Wars, Farmville, Words with Friends…) much like Apple reportedly gets 30% of app revenue. 

According to the company Fact Sheet, these are the current board members: 

Mark Zuckerberg - needs no explanation

Marc Andreessen - co-Founder & General Partner of Andreessen Horowitz. You also may know a few companies he helped to start, namely Netscape and Ning.

Jim Breyer, partner, Accel Partners

Donald E. Graham, chairman and CEO, The Washington Post Company

Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix

Peter Thiel, founder of Paypal

Erskine Bowles, President emeritus of UNC and co-chair of Obama’s National Commisson on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. He is also on the board of Morgan Stanley. Under Clinton, he at different times served as chief of staff and administrator of the SBA. 

BTW, here’s a BusinessWeek piece on social media giants setting up shop in NYC’s Silicon Alley. This comes on the heels of a 12/2/11 FB announcement that it plans to open a NYC engineering office early this year.