Zuck: Facebook's code to success

Ten years ago, only students at Harvard University could use "The Facebook."

Today, Facebook has more than 1.2 billion monthly active users and, according to Alexa, is the second most popular website in the world after Google.

So how did the social platform achieve such incredible success?

Founder Mark Zuckerberg offered this insight (on Facebook, of course): "We just cared more about connecting the world than anyone else. And we still do today."

But "The Facebook Effect" author David Kirkpatrick goes one step further, crediting Zuckerberg himself for the company's stellar performance.

Kirkpatrick, then a journalist with Fortune magazine, first met Zuckerberg in September 2006 at a restaurant in Midtown Manhattan.

"He walked in and I said to myself, 'I'm wasting my time. He's so young. He's a baby,'" Kirkpatrick recalls. "But then he opened his mouth and I started listening to what he said and it was so extraordinarily big picture, long-term, visionary, and confident.

"I realized I seldom heard anyone with such a big picture, positive, and long-term view of what he engaged in. And it made me confident he would have extraordinary success."