Facebook built a developer platform, and developers trusted Facebook -- dumb f*s.
Dear Mark Zuckerberg
261–270 of 272 posts
Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You really wouldn't be annoyed..... You're absolutely right, I would. The OP has a point. But let's be honest here, we're talking about a multi billion dollar company with thousands of employees, now traded on the stock market, so presumably aggressively trying to spin a profit. Expecting said company to be "nice" is naive at best.
You think expecting a company to behave is naive? What a depressing statement. Doubtless true but what a revealing and totally awful thing to take for granted. So now we live in a world in which not only are corporations people (thank you Judge Roberts) but they are psychopaths with no social conscience and we all take that pathology for granted. Enjoy the next century. :)
Did you not know corporations are psychopaths? It's true.
http://compenetration.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/corporation-l...
Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not OK to take advantage of a naive person. They could simply have explained their position in a way more appropriate for the kind of meeting they had portrayed. If Facebook wanted an acqui-hire from this meeting here, they sold it awfully poorly. They don't have to care, of course, they'll likely just look elsewhere and scoop up 5 people to do the same thing, but from a business perspective this meeting would h…
>It's not OK to take advantage of a naive person. Let's not insult Dalton. Let's assume Dalton is a smart guy and not a naive guy, but that he's in an unfamiliar situation and that THIS SHIT IS HARD. It's easy to sit on the sidelines and judge. It's quite another thing to figure out what to do when: you're a VP at FB who wants to talk with Dalton about an aqui-hire (seriously, how do you do this?); and when you're Da…
I should have said "a person's naivete" to emphasize its situational nature. Everybody is naive in unfamiliar situations, by definition, and I didn't mean to imply that he was a naive person through-and-through. I would venture that assuming I was pinning my support on an insult is not a particularly charitable interpretation.
I don't have to provide evidence of an opinion, so I don't know where you're pulling that from.
My original comment suggested that they couldn't.
Which was: how could FB have requested a meeting without acting in bad faith and without being dumb?
Really? First of all that appears to be a false dichotomy. Secondly, they have a lot of brains at FB, yet idiocy and bad faith were the only two possible motivators for the meeting? They can figure it out, and if they can't, well, maybe they take the more-informative route.
Dumb, right?
Saying you are at a disadvantage for having everybody on the same page and not being oppositional or predatory is a sign of a bad mind to me. Can't tell him in advance that it's really about acqui-hire? Pretty much the same kind of arbitrary rule as "don't call her for three days." If you want to go through life accomplishing your goals in an antagonistic way, then follow their examples, but engaging in business this way in terms of romantic relationships is "The Rules" type poppycock. I'm not even going to address your assertion and denigration of decency and information as "soap opera."
Oh, but they "couldn't." How powerless FB is in this situation! How ever did they find themselves so?
this is trying to figure out how to have a tense conversation with someone you respect
Isn't that tension entirely related to preserving the hustle? Let's all shed a tear for the difficulties FB has in maintaining a powerful negotiating position.
Thing is, in this case I would say that what you identify as "tension" is a reflection of their powerlessness. Obviously they wanted him on board rather than building it themselves with other people, by sheer dint of coming to him before what other people wind up being their follow-on choices. So the hustle was functional in that they just decided to wield the bat of money that apparently is all they have to offer when manners fail them. Of course Mark Zuckerberg is known to be a rude person, so we can also see this episode as evidence (as you so require) of the fish rotting from the head.
To suggest that the aqui-hirers are fools from whom to part money or that aqui-hires are sell-outs is to demonstrate extreme naivete
Hey, all I'm saying is that if you're open to selling in the first place and FB comes sniffing around, ask for more than you would normally when being ambushed in a meeting. And yes, it's foolish to treat someone you want to work with in the way that they did here. Perhaps their negotiator end-points aren't as highly-performing as you say the acqui-hire targets are.
But I appreciate your point: decency is too much to ask of Facebook.
Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can tell him that they're interested in an aqui-hire before hand. That's how they can act in good faith. If he shows, he gets the info they gave him at the meeting anyway. If he doesn't, they crush him, which they plan to do now, after the meeting they had in bad faith.
>They can tell him that they're interested in an aqui-hire before hand. I thought that I covered this in my comment under the "dumb" option. I don't mean to be disparaging, but I'm not sure how else to take the suggestion, so switching to a not-great analogy: Your suggestion is sorta like saying that people should walk into a car dealership and say "I want to buy this car. No, not that one. THIS car." It's a classic…
And if they won't sell it to you, you walk away. Classic negotiating success, which is what Caldwell did here.
It just so happens that what FB were selling was a position of some repute within their organization, which they not only failed to do, but they misrepresented the product in the first place.
Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes but there's a difference between a well-intentioned meeting that didn't pan out and a mal-intentioned meeting, and it would seem that it was the latter according to the OP
I recently had a meeting where our side came out of it literally saying "WTF was that?". We'd expected it to be about how a partnership would progress and it was more the other side questioning us about why there should be a partnership at all. In retrospect, our contact with the other side that had set up the meeting hadn't properly communicated to us what the meeting would be about, and presumably had not communica…
There doesn't have to be a specific badness to be mal-intentioned. Disparate, fuzzy, or nonexistent intentions are just as much a waste of time for the other side than specifically harmful goals. It's all garbage on the receiving end.
Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes but there's a difference between a well-intentioned meeting that didn't pan out and a mal-intentioned meeting, and it would seem that it was the latter according to the OP
I recently had a meeting where our side came out of it literally saying "WTF was that?". We'd expected it to be about how a partnership would progress and it was more the other side questioning us about why there should be a partnership at all. In retrospect, our contact with the other side that had set up the meeting hadn't properly communicated to us what the meeting would be about, and presumably had not communica…
There doesn't have to be a specific badness to be mal-intentioned. Disparate, fuzzy, or nonexistent intentions are just as much a waste of time for the other side than specifically harmful goals. It's all garbage on the receiving end.
Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg
#267Earlier 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.
> supposed business infrastructure provider Sorry but I don't think you know what those words mean. People who do, know that the business of an infrastructure providers revolves around SLAs and contracts.
Ad publishers and public communications media are marketing infrastructure.
Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope, unambiguously rude. This kind of negativity is why this community is worse than it used to be.
Pardon me for barging in on this discussion but I find the use of "Nope" in a manner not humorous, ironic, or otherwise deceptively rendered to be quite rude indeed. I do not question your motivations but maybe we are — many of us — to blame for the ills you decry.
Are you serious? "Nope" is just informal, it's not any more or less rude than "no".
Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, the real issue is that they're breaking their implicit promise to refrain from competing against the outside developers they rely on to improve their "open" ecosystem.
a) I disagree completely that there is any sort of implied promise not to compete with app developers. Even ignoring history on other platforms (where every single platform takes good ideas from apps and incorporates them) Facebook is too young a company for people to think they won't add something to their platform. b) Even if there is an implicit promise, in this case Facebook acted very ethically in offering to bu…
Of course there's an implied promise. If platform operators openly stated "anything you develop can and will be used against you - by us" then no one in their right minds would develop on those platforms.
As you note, the trust involved is invariably abused, but always within limits - vaguely defined as they may be. What Dalton Caldwell is observing is that these parameters appear to be shifting.
That's FB's prerogative, and I don't object to their exercising it. But there were two ways to handle the change. The first was to buy Dalton out, shut down the project, but provide jobs for his team. The second was to do what they did with Instagram, preserving the product and the team, and letting things evolve from there.
It seems like going the latter route would actually encourage people who really care about products to build on FB's platform. The former route also provides incentives, but of a much lower grade, and only appealing to people who don't really care about the products they develop, and see the compensated shut-down / aqui-hire as their highest goal.
Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
a) I disagree completely that there is any sort of implied promise not to compete with app developers. Even ignoring history on other platforms (where every single platform takes good ideas from apps and incorporates them) Facebook is too young a company for people to think they won't add something to their platform. b) Even if there is an implicit promise, in this case Facebook acted very ethically in offering to bu…
Of course there's an implied promise. If platform operators openly stated "anything you develop can and will be used against you - by us" then no one in their right minds would develop on those platforms. As you note, the trust involved is invariably abused, but always within limits - vaguely defined as they may be. What Dalton Caldwell is observing is that these parameters appear to be shifting. That's FB's prerogat…
If platform operators openly stated "anything you develop can and will be used against you - by us" then no one in their right minds would develop on those platforms.
There is a difference between "using something against you" and a platform keeping their options open.
But, to quote Tim Bray from 2003:
They own the ground you’re building on, and if they decide they don’t like you, or they can do something better with the ground, you’re toast. They can ship their own product and give it away till you go bust, then start charging for it; and use secret APIs you can’t see; and they can break the published APIs you use. All of these things have historically been done by platform vendors.[1]
My point is that no platform has ever behaved differently to how Facebook are now, and Facebook are at least offering money to companies they are planning on competing with.
People will continue to develop for these platforms, though, because they offer the incredible lure of money - they are were the users are, and where the users are the money is too.
[1] http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla...