Sandberg: The Woman Who Created "Face" And "Money"

Cheryl Sandberg is the chief operating officer of the social networking site Facebook (Facebook), the company's "second in command".

At the beginning of her accession, "facebook" was just "looking very beautiful", and the "financial situation" was "out of nowhere".

But in just three years, she made the company's annual income hundreds of millions of dollars, and achieved a network myth.

And she herself was also attacked by a woman dominated Silicon Valley culture.

Sandberg originally worked in Google. In March 2008, she joined the new social networking Facebook as chief operating officer.

Over the next 3 years, the number of Facebook users surged from the original 60 million to 700 million today, and advertising revenue rose from $300 million in 2008 to $1 billion 900 million in 2010.

If the surge in user numbers is due to the founder Mark Zuckerberg and engineers, the doubling of advertising revenue is almost entirely what Sandberg created.

Sandberg, who participated in building Google advertising platform, found a new business mode for Facebook, which led the company to convert user resources into positive cash flow.

Excellent partner: Organization

In 2007, Facebook has been ranked among the top users of social networking sites in the United States, but Zuckerberg, now 23 years old, feels he has limited operating capacity and is in urgent need of help.

He was recommended to Sandberg, vice president of Google Corporation global online sales and operations, but he did not contact it.

In his view, the "facebook" at that time may not be attractive to Sandberg, who has 4000 employees in the world's largest search engine operator.

One day in December, Zuckerberg met Sandberg at a Christmas party.

Knowing that Sandberg was interested in job hopping, Zuckerberg visited Sandberg one or two times a week in the next 6 weeks.

This contact made Zuckerberg sure that Sandberg, who is good at management, is the best partner he has ever sought.

"Some people are excellent managers and some people are good at analyzing or focusing on development strategies," Zuckerberg said. "These two qualities usually do not exist on the same person.

I myself belong more to the latter.

In March 2008, Sandberg was invited to take office.

When Sandberg took office, she found that Facebook employees were "afraid" of her.

This "fear" probably stems from her working for large companies like Google, but also because she is a woman, but has become the "second in command" of Silicon Valley enterprise, the most male employee in Facebook.

In the days after that, Sandberg gradually dispelled staff's doubts by frank communication.

"She first established trust with sincerity," said Chris Cox, vice president of the company.

Zuckerberg was grateful to Sandberg for handling his propaganda strategy, personnel appointment and removal, business management and political public relations.

He said, "she dealt with all the things I had to do, and she was much better at it."

Achieving profitability:

When faced with "facebook", the biggest problem facing Sandberg is how to make the website popular and profitable.

Most of the Facebook founders and executives, including Zuckerberg, are engineers. They focus on creating a cool website.

In their view, the website is "cool", the proceeds will come naturally.

However, as a social networking site, Facebook has collected more users' personal information than many other websites, including users' circle of friends, work units and photos. This makes the protection of user privacy a complex and sensitive issue, and also makes the most profitable way of web advertising in web pages difficult to implement in Facebook.

At that time, some people doubted that "facebook" could not be profitable, and may soon fade out of the Internet competition like some of the most popular websites.

Others believe that Zuckerberg's character is shy and lacks managerial skills, which may make it difficult for him to push the "facebook" to business success.

Sandberg regularly held executive meetings to try to find ways to make profits and encourage participants to debate on how to increase website revenue.

Sandberg and her subordinates found that Google's advertisement was generated according to the user's search needs and belongs to the "demand satisfaction" advertisement.

Only 20% of the advertising industry in the world is up to 600 billion.

More advertisements are intended to attract attention, belonging to the category of creating demand.

But in the Internet industry, no company has focused on the latter. This is the chance of Facebook. Facebook customized interactive social advertising mode was born and has been used so far.

This strategy is effective.

After 3 years of joining Facebook, the number of Facebook users surged from the original 60 million to 700 million today. Advertising revenue rose from $300 million in 2008 to $1 billion 900 million in 2010, six times more than two years ago, while Google's advertising revenue slowed down in the three years of 2008.

Such brilliant achievements in Sandberg's career without precedent.

When she joined Google at the end of 2001, Google was just a Private Companies that had not yet achieved stable profits.

Sandberg helped Google to make profits in a short time by advertising projects like AdWords and AdSense.

Influencing Silicon Valley: encouraging women to be brave leaders

Sandberg was born in Washington, D.C., in 1969. He was an excellent economist. He went to Harvard University to major in economics and became an economist Lawrence Summers student.

Sandberg was deeply appreciated by Summers and served as his research assistant after Summers became chief economist of the world bank in 1991. Summers became Vice Minister of finance of Bill Clinton government in 1995 and invited Sandberg to be his office director.

In 2000, Sandberg decided to enter Silicon Valley, and then achieved remarkable results in Google.

However, when she married and had children, she was deeply aware of the injustice that might happen to professional women and the efforts needed to balance work and life.

Among the many Silicon Valley enterprises including Google, there are few female executives, and the female members in the board are almost zero.

Sandberg found that many girls quit their jobs directly after becoming mothers.

Sandberg delivered a speech last December at the TED women's conference entitled "why women are too few leaders."

She believes that there are few female executives in Silicon Valley. It should not be entirely attributed to gender discrimination, social stereotypes, gender differences, or family division. It is also related to the lack of confidence and momentum in women's self employment.

She therefore appealed to women not to patronize complaints, "let us introspection".

In her speech, she offered 3 suggestions for women in the workplace: sitting at the negotiating table like men, striving for jobs that they could do well and deserving salaries, communicating effectively with partners, sharing responsibilities for housework and raising children, and "don't mention leaving before you get the job you want."

During the six months after the end of the conference, Sandberg's speech video was seen more than 65 thousand times, triggering discussions among female researchers and concerns.

Sandberg set up the "women's leadership day" in Facebook this spring, inviting 12 female management members to attend the meeting to encourage female employees to strive for leadership positions.

She also holds a buffet dinner at home every month, inviting famous persons such as business executives, educators, mayors and dramatists to communicate with female employees.

TED Patricia Michel, a female organizer, also attended a buffet dinner at Sandberg's house.

She praised the gathering as "a new network of women in Silicon Valley".