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The sad truth about Facebook

newsweek.com

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Re: The sad truth about Facebook

#61

Post by ugh »

“Facebook lets you keep in touch with your friends; for this profound service to mankind it will generate about $1.5 billion in revenue this year by bombarding its 500 million members with ads.“

This statement seems very indicative of the author’s cluelessness or hypocrisy. $1.5 billion from 500 million members means that they bombard each member on average with $3 worth of ads every year. I’m bombarded with more ads when buying three issues of Newsweek.

Facebook lets you keep in touch with your friends for $3 a year. That sounds like quite an impressive feat to me. There is much that is wrong with Facebook but I don’t think that they are making their money with ads is one of those things.

Re: The sad truth about Facebook

#62

Post by jacquesm »

zaidf wrote: post #5

Talk. About. A. Troll. (edit: ah, no wonder. the author is fake steve jobs blogger) This is almost as good as the article from the 90s making fun of the Internet and how useless it is. ...a place where smart kids arrive hoping to make an easy fortune building companies that seem, if not pointless, at least not as serious as, say, old-guard companies like HP, Intel, Cisco, and Apple. "Easy fortune" huh? That's what yo…

> "Easy fortune" huh?

It's easy money if you're a patent troll, he may be thinking that everybody has it that easy.

Re: The sad truth about Facebook

#63

Post by jacquesm »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #58

Two things. One positive and one negative. Positive. The author understands the gist of what's going on. Places like YC focus on Minimum Viable Product and doing just one thing that people want. These are great and wise strategies for both investors and entrepreneurs, but there's also another term for it that's not as flattering: bottom-feeding. Going after the little bits of value here and there, not being a hunter,…

That read like two negatives to me.

Re: The sad truth about Facebook

#64

Post by jacquesm »

starpilot wrote: post #11
zaidf wrote: post #5

Talk. About. A. Troll. (edit: ah, no wonder. the author is fake steve jobs blogger) This is almost as good as the article from the 90s making fun of the Internet and how useless it is. ...a place where smart kids arrive hoping to make an easy fortune building companies that seem, if not pointless, at least not as serious as, say, old-guard companies like HP, Intel, Cisco, and Apple. "Easy fortune" huh? That's what yo…

If you're not aware, most of the old guard companies pulled 15-20 hour days starting out too. And making a physical product is generally MUCH more frustrating than anything in web app land. Hurrying up and waiting, for a flawed product messed up by the machinists. Also much higher startup capital costs for anything nontrivial like semiconductors. Expensive equipment, office space, manufacturing space, all this stuff…

There is quite a bit of software in modern aircraft and I guarantee you that the guys that write it and review it are just as aware of the fact that their software could kill if done improperly.

It's very easy to think that your role (the designer) is the crucial one, but in the aircraft construction business there are very few jobs that require a less then 'mission critical' attitude.

Re: The sad truth about Facebook

#66

Post by jacquesm »

MalcUK wrote: post #52
rblion wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't shoot the messenger. His message: Before our arrogant, materialistic society hits the next iceberg or 'crash', it would be wise to create technology for the long-term survival of humanity and habitability of Earth. What problems are more important to solve? "The risk is that by focusing an entire generation of bright young entrepreneurs on such silly things, we’ll fall behind in creating the fundamental buildin…

Indeed. He's going on about how modern silicon valley, and to be honest much of the rest of the world, is geared around the short term. How start-ups are now light and fluffy, with a focus on making the world worse - by getting their users addicted, in their millions, to menial activities. I have been thinking about this recently, should the start-ups - which rely heavily on user addiction - be treated as gambling ou…

> should the start-ups - which rely heavily on user addiction - be treated as gambling outlets, and therefore be regulated and watched closely?

No, definitely not.

You might as well outlaw television for entertainment and the writing of fiction and poetry.

Everybody gets to decide how they spend their time, that's an individuals freedom, and every company gets to decide what product they want to make.

In the past companies have worked hard to give us more productivity and therefore more leisure time. New companies have stepped up that capitalize on that leisure time.

The times when people had to be productive (in the developed part of the world, that is) every waking hour is fortunately behind us, and bringing it back by force is not a solution.

For ever addict there are 100's or even 1000's of 'normal' users of those same services, you can't penalize everybody because of an inability for self-control in a minority of the population.

"Facebook" or "Wow" or any other so called addictive product is only as addictive as you let it be.

Re: The sad truth about Facebook

#67

Post by jacquesm »

maxawaytoolong wrote: post #25
zaidf wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That implies: (a) we know what comes next (b) we know what today's entrepreneurs are focused on (c) we know what we are currently focused on will not help us achieve (a) Counter: (a) we don't really know what comes next (b) heck, we don't really know what all stuff folks are working on. Just because there are two well-known start-ups called Twitter and Facebook does not mean there aren't dozens of start-ups doing stu…

The dot com bubble is back. You can get seed funding to the tune of 3/4 of a million dollars for any mediocre idea right now. If that is proving hard to accomplish in Silicon Valley, move your operations to NYC, where there is more money and the investors will invest in anything.

Yes, and hopefully it won't last too long. You just know the silly money is flowing again when you look at some of the stuff that gets funded and the amounts that are thrown at it.

It's sad, really that lessons from the past do not seem to stay learned, this cycle of extreme waste followed by extreme frugality isn't good for anybody.

Re: The sad truth about Facebook

#68

Post by [deleted] »

ugh wrote: post #61

“Facebook lets you keep in touch with your friends; for this profound service to mankind it will generate about $1.5 billion in revenue this year by bombarding its 500 million members with ads.“ This statement seems very indicative of the author’s cluelessness or hypocrisy. $1.5 billion from 500 million members means that they bombard each member on average with $3 worth of ads every year. I’m bombarded with more ads…

[deleted]

Re: The sad truth about Facebook

#69

Post by jacquesm »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #43
paraschopra wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure, but is his company every sued any startup for patent infringement. I read about his company in super-Freakonomics and he seemed to be genuinely caring about solving hard, big problems. He may be amassing patents to get protection but unless he actively screws small companies by buying patents, I'm not sure I would call his company a patent troll.

They create and acquire patents for revenue, not defense. They don't need protection from infringement suits because they don't sell any products (and their research should fall within US patent law's exemption for that purpose). There's also speculation they have backed some infringement suits raised by shell companies. I'm torn. There ought to be some way to compensate researchers for actually solving hard problems…

The cure is worse than the disease at this point, the situation is such that the patents to tend to go overwhelmingly to those that troll rather than to those that have ideas and actually implement them.

That's kind of logical too, after all having an idea and writing it up in a patentable form is much less work than following through so while the 'doers' are stuck on their first one the 'patenters' are on their 10th or more.

Re: The sad truth about Facebook

#70

Post by jacquesm »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #56

This article is full of it, but for more reasons than have been articulated so far. One problem is that the article mistakes light for heat. Just because they get less press than Facebook doesn't mean that old-school high-tech engineering startups don't exist. Facebook et al are focused like a laser on getting their names out. That is what social networking is : word-of-mouth viral publicity. Whereas most hardware st…

Would the person that thought this fit for downmodding please explain why?
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