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Mark Zuckerberg's Most Valuable Friend

nytimes.com

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Most Valuable Friend

#21

Post by mquander »

najirama wrote: post #6
mikedanko wrote: post #3

Oh Jesus, can't we all stop gawking at Facebook bullshit? No one can figure out what Facebook is, but if you haven't succumbed to it, you're intimidated by it. It's worth billions of dollars and for what? The pure evil of having everyone's marketing data? In the mindset of Rodney King, can't we all just move on? Can't we all just get past not being Zuckerberg? Can't we all get back to being hackers who do things beca…

Downvote the above if you will, but there is truth in those words, if only masked behind palpable bitterness... ...and honestly - I feel the guy. We humans have a tendency towards the shameless worship of heroes. We seem to need to create legends and demigods and to praise and glorify acts that upon careful examination are little more than the progeny of good fortune and timing. Providence itself isn't worthy of our…

This used to be called "Startup News." It's a news site explicitly established for people who want to become Mark Zuckerberg. Flag it if you don't like it, but move on.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Most Valuable Friend

#23

Post by gruseom »

smakz wrote: post #12
btmorex wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of the aspects of the HN community that I most dislike. It's like Puritan divine providence, but applied non-religiously to business. X succeeded so he/she must be great. HN sees these people as masters of business: smart, ambitious, persistent, etc. What if they were lucky? Unscrupulous? Manipulating? I'm not saying it has to be all one way or all the other, but I often think only one point of view gets s…

"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." -- Eleanor Roosevelt Completely agree, the name dropping around here can get tiresome quick. There was a great article on Mint vs. Wesabe posted here recently - in my opinion we need more articles like that and less Jobs is a design master/Zuckerberg is a genius/etc.

Eleanor Roosevelt didn't say that. From Wikiquote, which is slowly approaching authoritativeness on quotes online:

This has been quoted without citation as a statement of Eleanor Roosevelt. It is usually attributed to Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, but though Rickover quoted this, he did not claim to be the author of it; in "The World of the Uneducated" in The Saturday Evening Post (28 November 1959), he prefaces it with "As the unknown sage puts it..."

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Most Valuable Friend

#24

Post by Aetius »

jlgbecom wrote: post #20
mikedanko wrote: post #3

Oh Jesus, can't we all stop gawking at Facebook bullshit? No one can figure out what Facebook is, but if you haven't succumbed to it, you're intimidated by it. It's worth billions of dollars and for what? The pure evil of having everyone's marketing data? In the mindset of Rodney King, can't we all just move on? Can't we all just get past not being Zuckerberg? Can't we all get back to being hackers who do things beca…

Also, can we stop to consider the fact that a company that is worth billions of dollars can only barely eke out a profit, despite having access to the personal lives of 500 million people? It's not like they lack the capability to be evil. More likely, they're a paper tiger. They don't have much time to build the killer app that people will pay for before their investors start gettin anxious. The approach to social n…

Think about an Oil rig, if you will. Just because it takes half a billion dollars to get it started doesn't mean it is barely eking out a profit while it's being built. Once it's built, its going to make the owners billions.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Most Valuable Friend

#26

Post by jv22222 »

mturmon wrote: post #7

As a response to the movie, they know it would be a good time to put a human face in front of the press. Hence, they're pushing her forward rather than Zuckerberg. And the NYT slurped it up. I wonder how long the back-and-forth over how the story was to be structured took. [edit: I'm not saying Zuckerberg is not human, just that he's overexposed in the media at the moment, and they need to connect Facebook to somethi…

I'm betting it's an overarching PR strategy that will be executed over the next few months. To try to fix Zuck's reputation by association, rather than directly.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Most Valuable Friend

#27

Post by jlgbecom »

Aetius wrote: post #24
jlgbecom wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, can we stop to consider the fact that a company that is worth billions of dollars can only barely eke out a profit, despite having access to the personal lives of 500 million people? It's not like they lack the capability to be evil. More likely, they're a paper tiger. They don't have much time to build the killer app that people will pay for before their investors start gettin anxious. The approach to social n…

Think about an Oil rig, if you will. Just because it takes half a billion dollars to get it started doesn't mean it is barely eking out a profit while it's being built. Once it's built, its going to make the owners billions.

I think a comparison to an oil rig is wishful thinking, to say the least. You have a basically clear and proven business model that's existed for 100 years, based on selling a tangible product that everybody inarguably needs.

Facebook has none of those characteristics, and nobody's proven that there's anything substantial where they're digging.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Most Valuable Friend

#28

Post by wensing »

btmorex wrote: post #9
najirama wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvote the above if you will, but there is truth in those words, if only masked behind palpable bitterness... ...and honestly - I feel the guy. We humans have a tendency towards the shameless worship of heroes. We seem to need to create legends and demigods and to praise and glorify acts that upon careful examination are little more than the progeny of good fortune and timing. Providence itself isn't worthy of our…

That's one of the aspects of the HN community that I most dislike. It's like Puritan divine providence, but applied non-religiously to business. X succeeded so he/she must be great. HN sees these people as masters of business: smart, ambitious, persistent, etc. What if they were lucky? Unscrupulous? Manipulating? I'm not saying it has to be all one way or all the other, but I often think only one point of view gets s…

Not sure what you think of Malcolm Gladwell, but I am finally reading Outliers and he casts new light on the many factors of success -- new in the sense that, contrary to mythos, success is not attributable primarily to personal greatness/willpower, but rather having the right-place-right-time + family upbringing + opportunities, etc. (things that are not in the person's direct control).

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Most Valuable Friend

#29

Post by vdm »

gruseom wrote: post #23
smakz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." -- Eleanor Roosevelt Completely agree, the name dropping around here can get tiresome quick. There was a great article on Mint vs. Wesabe posted here recently - in my opinion we need more articles like that and less Jobs is a design master/Zuckerberg is a genius/etc.

Eleanor Roosevelt didn't say that. From Wikiquote, which is slowly approaching authoritativeness on quotes online: This has been quoted without citation as a statement of Eleanor Roosevelt. It is usually attributed to Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, but though Rickover quoted this, he did not claim to be the author of it; in "The World of the Uneducated" in The Saturday Evening Post (28 November 1959), he prefaces it with…

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eleanor_Roosevelt#Disputed

Its still a nice quote regardless of who its attributed to.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's Most Valuable Friend

#30

Post by stuhacking »

aspir wrote: post #22
dchs wrote: post #19

I think this will go down in history as one of the great working relationships in the technology industry along with Larry & Sergey and Jobs & Woz.

It also seems a bit like a Gates/Ballmer relationship as well: sharp hacker and a sharp MBA.

..but with a sharp MBA.
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