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Let's be clear, the only purpose of this post is to bring attention to App.net. Calling Facebook 'rotten-to-the-core' isn't a great way to capture the sympathy of its CEO.
I 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 di…
In fact, this completely confirms my previous post from two weeks ago:
>All these aquisitions are more insidious, they are being done by the big players to stifle diversity in the market and continue to solidify their leads on online services under the guise of talent acquisition to better their companies - rather its an effort to prevent that talent from building something that would be a detriment to their positions
As well as:
>The acquiring of the teams is defensive in that they take that team and their IP etc off the market from their competition. It is offensive in that it squashes any possibility that whatever service it was the startup had would compete for their similar service.
And:
>Attention is the resource that social services are harvesting from their users and monetizing.
...
Companies that provide features, utility and services that keep the attention of users (especially when providing no physical product) are those that will have longevity.
So, capturing those that would build things that direct user attention away from your product is critical to these huge companies.
I 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 di…
It's one thing to use Facebook for authentication. It's easy and takes little investment. However, building a REAL product on the platform is a risk. If Facebook behaves like this, they show that it's a risk NOT worth taking, and they devalue their own platform, putting short term gain (product) over long term gain (platform).
I 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 di…
What they'd really be paying for is avoiding exactly this situation they're in now, with him talking quite loudly about how they shut him down. Can't blame 'em for trying, but they need to suss out their target a bit better before threatening them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like Dalton was under the impression that he was rather explicitly threatened with being denied access to the Facebook platform through a change in terms of service, in a way that is critical to his business. That's a strong-handed negotiation tactic for a supposed business infrastructure provider.
Strong handed and entirely legitimate.
It sucks that you were naïve about this, but that's hardly Facebook's fault.
One thing I don't get, and I've started to feel really stupid for it, is this whole Social as Infrastructure meme that has started going around and that the author touches on. I'd love for someone to explain to me exactly what it would entail, why any company would move to become a commodity, and where the user value would be? I'm not saying there aren't any really good answers to these questions, I'm just too thick…
Now in reality no one owns English. Its an open form of communication that anyone can use, anywhere. You can even create variants of it and use it with your friends as long as they understand your dialect.
"Social Infrastructure" would require a common social protocol as a specification. This would open up an entire ecosystem of smaller players to contribute to it, providing delicious synergy and innovation along the way. Kind of like modding Minecraft, etc.
Not every company wants to become a billion dollar start up. There are many IT service providers and MSPs that are perfectly comfortable servicing 30 clients and making a lifestyle business for everyone involved. If its a commodity, it opens up locality and niche markets easier than a monolithic implementation.
Nothing but good would come from a true technological social protocol. Right now online social behavior is dictated through the mind of one man, which isn't really social at all.
The user value is in that the users have all the power. If social service providers are a commodity, if they misbehave or provide a bad user experience they could simply take their social graph somewhere else. This empowers the user. This is also why Facebook does everything in its power to retain hegemony.
I 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 di…
By creating an open platform, Facebook has made the big picture decision that encouraging third party developers to build applications leveraging their social graph is beneficial to the company's bottom line, allowing them to be embedded in places where they otherwise wouldn't be. This is where utilizing a product company's platform can be very morally dicey. They offer a platform for others to build on, because it r…