joining me ken auletta, tim o reilly, jonathan safran foer an jane frieman. >> i like the idea of ebooks how they can democratize books. ma what i am afraid of is on platforms that have distracks an are inherently fast makes it harder to make books books. >> it is so important to have historical perspective. you know what we consider the book today is a relatively recent historical phenomenon. i totally disagree that homer would recognize the book. you know actually we probably more recognize the ebook. >> rose: hurricane sandy, politics and publishing when we continue. >> funding for charlie rose was provided by the following: captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> this has been a difficult week for the city of new york four days after hurricane sandy made landfall life has not yet returned to normal. gas shortages, power outages and disruptions of mass transit stand in the way of a full recovery. joining me now is ray kelly, new york city police commissioner. his force has been at the front line of rescue and relief effor

ken auletta is here, he writes for the "new yorker" magazine. his column "the annals of communication" extensively covers the tech giants of silicon valley. in july he wrote a profile of sheryl sandberg called "a woman's place: can sheryl sandberg upend silicon valley's male-dominated culture?" tonight we'll look at where facebook stands, the recovery from the highly disappointing i.p.o., the move towards mobile technology, the enduring concerns about privacy and the competition with google. i am pleased to have ken auletta back at this table to talk about that before we show you an interview i did with sheryl sandberg and marc andreessen who's on the board of facebook. we begin with this question, though. where is facebook today after all the controversy about that i.p.o. >> they're in a very strong position. they've got over a billion users in the world. that -- two months ago it was 900 million users in the world. so they're growing. and they're not yet in china and other parts of asia. so they are in a nice growth trajectory. their revenues