Zuckerberg crowdsources New Year’s resolutions, decides on book club concept

Zuckerberg crowdsources New Year’s resolutions, decides on book club concept

"For background, every year I take on a challenge to broaden my perspective and learn something about the world beyond my work at Facebook," Zuckerberg wrote in the post.

Want Mark Zuckerberg to climb Mount Everest? Write the great American novel? Run for public office? Now is your chance to make your voice heard in the matter of the Facebook CEO’s personal endeavors.

According to a report from TechCrunch, Zuckerberg has decided to “crowdsource” his New Year’s resolutions this year. Rather than come up with another personal challenge for himself, the Facebook chief wants the social community he built to give him the ideas.

Zuckerberg started the conversation on the evening of December 30, making a public post about his New Year’s resolutions on his Facebook profile. He said that he already had an idea for a personal challenge that he might want to undertake in 2015. However, he also welcomed comments from users on the subject.

“For background, every year I take on a challenge to broaden my perspective and learn something about the world beyond my work at Facebook,” Zuckerberg wrote in the post.

Some of the CEO’s past challenges have included wearing a tie every day, writing daily thank you notes to people who made the world better, and even learning how to speak Mandarin Chinese.

Unsurprisingly, given Zuckerberg’s high profile as one of the richest and most famous people in the world, his status asking for community input got a substantial response. The “crowdsourcing” post got more than 57,000 comments and more than 140,000 likes.

Along the way, Zuckerberg got countless different suggestions for a possible New Year’s resolution. One user suggested that he spend an hour each week teaching in a K-12 classroom; another user suggested that he learn Arabic in addition to Mandarin. Undoubtedly, Zuckerberg had a lot of ideas to sort through in the last hours of 2014, or the first hours of 2015.

Update: As of the evening of January 3, Mark Zuckerberg has chosen his personal challenge for 2015. In a new post on his Facebook page, the tech titan said that he would read one new book every other week, “with an emphasis on learning about different cultures, beliefs, histories and technologies.”

He has also created a Facebook page called “A Year of Books” to chronicle his journey and get community members involved in discussions. In other words, Zuckerberg is turning his latest New Year’s Resolution into one big internet book club. The first book he has selected for the project is The End of Power by Moisés Naím.

Zuckerberg said that the idea did come at least partially from user comments, and said that many community members suggested different variations on a reading challenge.

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