Dear Mark Zuckerberg
daltoncaldwell.com
Dear Mark Zuckerberg
1–10 of 272 posts
Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg
#2Could you care to elaborate on what the app/service you were demoing to FB?
Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg
#3I don't understand what you think Facebook did wrong.
They intend to enter this new space, using their technology and their people.
As a courtesy they offered to hire you / throw a lot of money at you.
What would you have had them do instead?
Not compete with you, because you're a precious snow flake?
Acquire you and treat you like a prima donna, giving you your own team and allowing you to take your own technical direction?
Why should Facebook - or any competitor - do either of these things?
Seems to me like they acted pretty reasonably here.
Of all the things you said, this struck me as the weirdest:
> Strangely, your “platform developer relations” executive made no attempt to defend my position.
What do you think the purpose of the “platform developer relations” executive is? To advocate AGAINST Facebook and for random outside developers?
I'm not a fan of the Facebook app (not a member) or the company...but in this case, the firm seems to be acting 100% reasonably.
Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg
#4Could you care to elaborate on what the app/service you were demoing to FB?
Presumably this: http://app.net/home/
Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg
#5I don't get it. FB took an opportunity to make an acquisition offer (or at least open the dialog) and used some hard tactics (in this case the threat of direct competition) to improve their negotiating position.
What's the problem here? This is just business. Facebook has every right to develop that app, just like Dalton Caldwell did. If it makes sense for them to do it themselves, then they will. If it makes sense for them to buy an existing player, ditto. And if so, clearly they'd want to acquire that player at a good price, right?
I just don't see the ethical problem here. They didn't lie, and they offered a check (that it happens the OP didn't want).
Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg
#6Could you care to elaborate on what the app/service you were demoing to FB?
Presumably this: http://app.net/home/
I am not sure how App.net, at least what it is now would have become a service on the FB platform.
Was App.net trying to do some other stuff before the attempt to build a 'real-time, ad-free social network'?
Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg
#7Mark will probably see this, but will anything change? Probably not.
The simple fact is that as a company, FB have to meet their targets and Dalton's app is a bit of a conflict of interest. So, no surprises there.
However, I agree with his point about big "media company" social networks being eventually replaced by a much larger number of specific micro-networks. One network for photo sharing, music sharing (Soundcloud?), messaging etc.
Even once you have all these niches, I'm sure there's space for two or three due to the fact that people have different priorities and visual tastes.
As a company, Facebook aren't on course to die but I'm sure we're going to continue to see decisions like this being made that surprise us as the tech community due to the fact that they don't align with the vision we thought the company once had.
Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg
#8Step 1) Code features for a large platform that is actively iterating and implementing new features at an incredibly rapid pace.
Step 2) Complain when there is eventual feature overlap.
Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg
#9Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg
#10This is one of the reasons why I hate open letters. They are almost always annoying.
This person is complaining because he didn't want to be acquired by Facebook but would like them to not compete with him. Oh well.