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The Lost Chapter

aarongreenspan.com

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Re: The Lost Chapter

#31

Post by blhack »

brooktree wrote: post #30
mattmaroon wrote: post #6

"Perhaps the lesson here is that competing with and using your 'friends' in serial fashion until you totally and completely ravage each relationship is key to achieving financial success—but then it's certainly no way to define friendship." That's certainly not the lesson. In fact what's always made me believe these sort of attacks against Zuckerberg's character is the fact that you don't see this happen with really…

The first person who comes along and hits the web industry jackpot at an unprecedented level who is also not a stereotype antisocial nerd douchebag* is going to thoroughly debunk all theories that correlate this sort of character to financial success without any evidence of causation. * The degree to which sheer luck and network effects are factors in this particular sector makes this plausible.

Um Jack Dorsey?

Re: The Lost Chapter

#32

Post by brooktree »

formeraapl wrote: post #13

It's damn hard to pull emotion out when writing about one's life story, but Greenspan's writing style so distracts from the meat of his story that it's frustrating. For instance: "both so-called Facebook veterans (a phrase that actual veterans might find laughable)" or "It was an expense I simply could not afford all over again (unlike the Winklevoss twins, my father did not have millions of dollars of disposable inc…

The worst was complaining about a cab fare(?) to JFK.

But don't shoot the messenger. There are plenty of facts he's giving us. It is not pure opinion. An eye witness is an eye witness. He was there. As long as he is credible, his character, for our purposes, is irrelevant.

Re: The Lost Chapter

#33

Post by asr »

dasil003 wrote: post #7

People get screwed over all the time. Getting screwed over by Zuckerberg, well, that's an elite club, but time to move on with your life. If you keep it only as a good story for the grand kids maybe it won't eat up the rest of your potential.

Seriously, does this guy not have any parents/siblings/super close friends who can tell him it's time to move on? This is a great happy hour story, but not such a great epitaph.

On the bright side, at least he's thematically consistent! "I keep getting screwed over by life" is the only reason I can think of to start the post with so many words about Final Clubs before the pivot.... Suffice it to say, anyone who can graduate from Harvard with a CS degree and feel screwed over needs some perspective.

Re: The Lost Chapter

#34

Post by powertower »

anon808 wrote: post #15

A very large chunk of his articles are negative http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/index.html Not saying they aren't all true, I'm sure they are. Why focus on the negativity? Recognize it and move beyond.

95% of the news is negative.

Re: The Lost Chapter

#35

Post by dbul »

So it happened that in my junior year of college, I came across the web site of one of the many finals clubs on campus, the Fly Club.

It's "FINE-UHL clubs" not "FINE-UHLZ clubs."

And he shockingly did not understand why information privacy might be a controversial issue.

And then

He had been searching the houseSYSTEM Facebook for the twins' profiles

So much for privacy.

Aside from the Facebook, the sites had overlapping features for course schedulers, photo albums, message boards, digital posters for student groups, and eventually exchanges for buying and selling on campus and mapping your network of friends.

Irrelevant. People only used Thefacebook for obvious and simple things: connecting with people they knew, poking, messaging, and photos. No one used mapping your network of friends (which sucked, incidentally, and also was faily most of the time) and no one even used the course scheduler. To state the obvious, facebook was not successful for its features, it was successful because how it was executed!

This was claimed to have been written for historical significance, but I know that every time an article is written by this author and about this subject dozens of people are thinking the same thing: move on. Create a successful company first, then retire and write about this topic. I'd love to see blog posts regarding Think Computer's technology. As it stands, this blog post gained a lot of attention but there isn't even a a sidebar with "Hi, I'm Aaron Greenspan and I'm the CEO of Think Computer. We have this product, click here to learn more." It's a marketing failure to not capitalize on such an opportunity.

Re: The Lost Chapter

#36

Post by fletchowns »

mycroftiv wrote: post #20

The accumulated evidence of Zuckerberg's poor character was already overwhelming. For me, all it took was the infamous "dumb fucks" quote to make me decide to never use Facebook. That alone disqualifies someone to be a responsible custodian of my privacy. This article's evidence isn't as significant as other established facts like Zuckerberg's invasion of other people's email accounts, but it is consistent with every…

How old was he when he made that comment? We all do/say dumb things when we are young...

Re: The Lost Chapter

#37

Post by rjzzleep »

fletchowns wrote: post #36
mycroftiv wrote: post #20

The accumulated evidence of Zuckerberg's poor character was already overwhelming. For me, all it took was the infamous "dumb fucks" quote to make me decide to never use Facebook. That alone disqualifies someone to be a responsible custodian of my privacy. This article's evidence isn't as significant as other established facts like Zuckerberg's invasion of other people's email accounts, but it is consistent with every…

How old was he when he made that comment? We all do/say dumb things when we are young...

he hasn't gotten much nicer with age, he just got a bit more careful on what he says in public.

Re: The Lost Chapter

#38

Post by danielweber »

fletchowns wrote: post #36
mycroftiv wrote: post #20

The accumulated evidence of Zuckerberg's poor character was already overwhelming. For me, all it took was the infamous "dumb fucks" quote to make me decide to never use Facebook. That alone disqualifies someone to be a responsible custodian of my privacy. This article's evidence isn't as significant as other established facts like Zuckerberg's invasion of other people's email accounts, but it is consistent with every…

How old was he when he made that comment? We all do/say dumb things when we are young...

It was about 5 years before he became a billionaire.

If "he was young" is a defense, then "he is too young to trust as a CEO" suddenly becomes a very very valid criticism of Zuck.

Re: The Lost Chapter

#40

Post by gee_totes »

dbul wrote: post #35

So it happened that in my junior year of college, I came across the web site of one of the many finals clubs on campus, the Fly Club. It's "FINE-UHL clubs" not "FINE-UHLZ clubs." And he shockingly did not understand why information privacy might be a controversial issue. And then He had been searching the houseSYSTEM Facebook for the twins' profiles So much for privacy. Aside from the Facebook, the sites had overlapp…

At the bottom of the blog post, it says: Aaron Greenspan is the CEO of Think Computer Corporation and author of Authoritas: One Student's Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era. He is the creator of the FaceCash mobile payment system, ThinkLink business management system, and PlainSite legal transparency project. (and there are hyperlinks)
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