Is Larry Page the Consummate Anti-Social CEO?
Google's new CEO isn't much for the social Web. If he has a presence on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, it was created with deep privacy settings or a fake name. I couldn't even find a fleshed-out Google profile for Larry Page.
Context & Ripple Effects
Bloomberg's pickup framed this as a competitive story, not a personality piece: "Google Turns to Co-Founder to Step Up Attack on Facebook." That framing lands in a market moment the same day's data makes vivid — Facebook accounted for the biggest share of trading on SecondMarket's private exchange and just cleared a $70 billion valuation there, while Twitter took Best Startup of 2010 at the Crunchies. The social Web is where the money and momentum are.
First-order effects
- Larry Page takes over as CEO of a company whose declared battleground is social — yet carries no verifiable presence on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, and not even a fleshed-out profile on Google's own service.
Second-order effects
- Google's social product teams will now be judged by a leader who demonstrably does not inhabit these networks, which shapes what gets funded and how credibly the company can pitch users on living inside its products.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, maturing platform companies increasingly hand control back to founders when a rival category surges — trading managerial polish for product conviction — while a CEO's personal participation in his own category becomes a visible strategic signal rather than a private matter.
The trend: As social platforms absorb the industry's valuation and attention, founder-led CEOs are being installed to lead counterattacks — and their own online behavior becomes part of the strategy story.