In Cox's world, product description is never just that, but rather something more cosmic. "We are now changing within a generation the fabric of how humanity communicates with itself," he says at one point. At another he adds: "The social graph is something that has always existed as long there were two people on earth who knew each other," says Cox. "The one thing that there's never existed was a map of everybody in the world and their relationships with each other." The overall effect is compelling. Lise Buyer, the founder of Class V Group, an IPO advisory firm, says Facebook "has clearly taken the video roadshow to an entirely new level."
Buyer, who worked at Google during its IPO, says Facebook, in part, is trying to make peace with potential individual investors -- many of whom are Facebook users -- who were shunned in earlier financing rounds. Last year, for example, Facebook came under criticism when it sold some of its pre-IPO shares, but only high-net-worth clients of Goldman Sachs (GS) were allow to buy them. (People with direct knowledge of Facebook's offering say the company plans to make some of its IPO shares available to individual investors through retail brokerage firms.)
"Until this point, Facebook hasn't shown they cared a whit about the folks who helped to build the company," Buyer says. "This is attempt, and a successful one I think, to reach out and mend some of those fences."
It's always smart to mend fences, especially for a company that has struggled with its corporate image. Remember that the last time there was a movie about Facebook, the company didn't have much control, and the result -- the Oscar-winning The Social Network -- wasn't particularly flattering to Zuck or Facebook. So with the video roadshow Facebook isn't just mending fences, but also telling its own story and projecting a more cuddly version of itself. Says Buyer, "This video humanizes the behemoth."
