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Dear Mark Zuckerberg

daltoncaldwell.com

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Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg

#161

Post by slantyyz »

lubujackson wrote: post #118

Don't build a house on a river and then blame the water. There has never been a company-controlled ecosystem that has EVER thrived for long without the company swooping in to get that easy money. In fact, now that Facebook is public, its their fiduciary duty to do just that. They could get sued if they DIDN'T try to cheaply build out their own versions of successful products. The only surprise is that anyone is surpr…

I agree. It's risky to bet a company on someone else's platform, whether it be Facebook, Craigslist or someone else. You are at that company's mercy.

Even the most stable company can decide to pivot their strategy, change management (i.e., your cheerleader/sponsor retires, gets fired or worse), and at that point, you're just collateral damage.

Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg

#162

Post by Jare »

reinhardt wrote: post #113
hollerith wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they suggested they were wiling to compensate Dalton (by buying his company) which makes it decidedly less uncool. P.S. did people here believe before this story broke that Facebook would never revoke API access when it is in their strategic interest to do so? What did Facebook say or do to give off that impression? Is this an industry norm I am not familiar with?

Starting a company on top of FB's platform without the confidence that your API access is safe from FB's "strategic interests" is not business, it's russian roulette.

An awful lot of startups these days are created on top of an existing giant's rather volatile shoulders: Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, heck even Gree and Zynga. The APIs and platforms are a rat trap for developers, but the massive userbase is oh such tasty cheese. Most hope to be quick enough delivering value for a buyout to make more sense than a shutdown, but few can pull that off.

Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg

#163

Post by downandout »

tjic wrote: post #3

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…

> "Your team doesn’t seem to understand that being “good negotiators” vs implying that you will destroy someone’s business built on your “open platform” are not the same thing."

It's Facebook's platform. Sometimes they are going to create internal products that compete with developers' ideas. The fact that they brought you in, explained what they were doing, and raised the possibility that they were willing to give you what I assume to be a boatload of cash to compensate you for your efforts seems almost comically generous to me.

The simple fact of the matter is that they CAN crush your business. They seem to be cognizant of that fact and were wiling to do something to help you. All I can say is that I'll bet most people reading this wish they had this kind of "problem" and would be writing "thank you" letters to Mark Zuckerberg, even if we ultimately rejected the offer. The title of this story could easily have been "This Just In: Facebook Has a Heart".

Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg

#164

Post by jlgreco »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #51
DevX101 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong handed and entirely legitimate.

All's fair in business is a bullshit perspective. It's the self justification of those who want to engage in behavior they know is sociopathic. Deception is occasionally a necessary tactic, but it would be insane to try to argue that it is a behavior that creates economic value. It should not be the expected default behavior, and in fact, is not. Which is why there are both civil and criminal penalties for fraud. Dec…

I've been seeing comments like the one you have responded to more and more here. Commenters seemingly confusing legality with ethics and politeness, or perhaps mistakenly thinking that the later two do not exist.

If we swapped out companies with strangers and HN with facebook, would these people be responding to their friends posting venting comments about whistlers on the bus to work with "It's a free country, they are allowed to whistle on the bus, so shutup."? To be honest, I don't think so. I think the reason this reply is absurd is patently is likely obvious to them when the subject of the criticism does not involve a corporation. It seems as far as they are concerned, as soon as a company enters the picture, all criticisms become invalid if they do not involve law-breaking.

Why this is the case I can only guess.

Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg

#166

Post by [deleted] »

quartus wrote: post #97
ryanmerket wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you were extending Facebook's core features and you didn't expect Facebook to think that was being too competitive? I'm pretty sure I've seen this somewhere else... at least a dozen times.

We used Facebook's APIs and Open Graph in our app discovery service. It was built and released before Facebook's App Center was announced, and Facebook dev-relations employees had previously been supportive of our endeavor.

[deleted]

Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg

#167

Post by [deleted] »

quartus wrote: post #97
ryanmerket wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you were extending Facebook's core features and you didn't expect Facebook to think that was being too competitive? I'm pretty sure I've seen this somewhere else... at least a dozen times.

We used Facebook's APIs and Open Graph in our app discovery service. It was built and released before Facebook's App Center was announced, and Facebook dev-relations employees had previously been supportive of our endeavor.

[deleted]

Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg

#168

Post by mattknox »

dalton wrote: post #101
notJim wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey dalton, I've posted my thoughts in this thread, and I'm also considering writing a blog article about this, but I have one meta thing to share with you. This letter doesn't make two things clear to me: 1) what exactly it is you're upset about and 2) what you think should have happened. Because of this, people in this thread are making a lot of assumptions which are uncharitable and inaccurate, and you come across…

1) I am unhappy that I wasted my time and energy building on a platform that encouraged me to do so, and within the matter of months changed their mind. This is the same thing that makes me unhappy with what Twitter is doing to their ecosystem: http://daltoncaldwell.com/what-twitter-could-have-been 2) Once Mark Zuckerberg gave personal blessing, he shouldn't have changed his mind. I have an interesting email thread a…

How much elapsed time would make it OK? 6 months? a year? 10 years? Expecting a large company to know where it's going a year in advance and reveal it to outside devs seems unreasonable, even for pure platforms.

Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg

#169

Post by nl »

jedberg wrote: post #20
tjic wrote: post #3

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…

I think his issue was that the meeting was in bad faith. He was under the impression that he would be demoing his technology so it could get visibility within Facebook, not walking into a negotiation. If they had been upfront about their intentions with the meeting, he probably would have never gone. What do you think the purpose of the “platform developer relations” executive is? To advocate AGAINST Facebook and for…

I think his issue was that the meeting was in bad faith. He was under the impression that he would be demoing his technology so it could get visibility within Facebook, not walking into a negotiation.

While it is true that he said the thought he would be demoing, I don't think the discussion about an acquisitions was a problem in itself:

I said that if Facebook wanted to have a serious conversation about acquiring my team and product, I would entertain the idea.

I think his problem was that Facebook were negotiating from a position of strength (and were honest about that), and he didn't like it.

Re: Dear Mark Zuckerberg

#170

Post by jay_kyburz »

Hrrm.. much of the discussion here is missing what I think is the important point.

If you build on Facebooks platform, there is a good chance you will end up competing with Facebook. Or Twitter.

We need a social platform that is distributed and that nobody "owns".

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