Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I was once a Facebook fool

public.numair.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 177 posts

Re: I was once a Facebook fool

#91

Post by ChuckMcM »

numair wrote: post #88

Wow, well, this got way more attention than I wanted. First, to be clear -- I have nothing against the guy who took Dave Morin's job (who wasn't supposed to be named -- Amazon CloudFront didn't bother to invalidate its cache when I uploaded the final edit of that paper). He played his cards right, came out hundreds of millions of dollars ahead, and then he got out . He's not in this to control your social life or any…

Wasn't it Cardinal Richelieu who said "Never write a letter and never destroy one." ? :-)

Re: I was once a Facebook fool

#92

Post by res0nat0r »

numair wrote: post #88

Wow, well, this got way more attention than I wanted. First, to be clear -- I have nothing against the guy who took Dave Morin's job (who wasn't supposed to be named -- Amazon CloudFront didn't bother to invalidate its cache when I uploaded the final edit of that paper). He played his cards right, came out hundreds of millions of dollars ahead, and then he got out . He's not in this to control your social life or any…

I think comparing Facebook to having access to water or power is a bit of a reach.

Re: I was once a Facebook fool

#93

Post by william42 »

gaius wrote: post #56
witten wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the more reason not to be a sharecropper and build your application on an open platform. If you know you're working in an environment in which everyone is looking out solely for their own interests, you might as well start out on even footing rather than with a Facebook or Microsoft holding the keys to your project's success.

What open platform? Diaspora is a joke at this point.

HTTP, HTML, and Javascript. (I will say, though, that I'm holding out a sliver of hope for Google+ becoming a federated platform.)

Re: I was once a Facebook fool

#94

Post by fauigerzigerk »

timr wrote: post #70

It's not especially interesting that Facebook made a deal for a music app (and subsequently supported that deal over a competitor). This is business, not charity. What's interesting to me is that iLike -- the success story of early platform days -- was being promoted heavily from within Facebook itself. If you read the press at that time, you'd have been excused for thinking that the Partovi brothers were the victims…

If everyone had known from the start that Facebook would make that kind of deal and kick all other apps of the same kind out, it would have been OK. But running a platform that is supposedly governed by rules and then using underhand tactics like these to kill apps arbitrarily is not OK.

It puts a big question mark on Facebook as a platform and I think the author of the article is right that everyone should think very carefully before building on top of that sort of "platform".

Re: I was once a Facebook fool

#95

Post by dhimes »

bstrand wrote: post #90
jseliger wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not endemic to Facebook. It applies to any platform. Apple, eBay, Amazon, etc. I'm not sure this is really true. If you build a regular application for Windows, Linux, or OS X, Microsoft, Red Hat, or Apple can't control whether I install your application. No one "approves" Firefox for OS X. Curated, for lack of a better term, applications only appear on particular platforms -- cell phones, sub-sections of web…

The desktop is moving in this direction as well. Your example of OS X is shaky in particular, given the App Store. Even if it's still _possible_ in the future, acquiring apps outside the official channel will be exceptional, done only by enthusiasts.

I was going to say the same- I bet it would have been done long ago if, for example, MS thought they could get away with it.

I'm curious as to how the law is going to interpret this in the future. The closed ecosystem of ios may be a bad (in my mind) precedent.

Re: I was once a Facebook fool

#96

Post by mbreese »

randomdata wrote: post #87
raganwald wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I accept that in response to abuses, the practice may have evolved over time. However, that does not in any way diminish the value of the metaphor, because the vast majority of people who encounter the word “sharecropper” think of the kind of farmer who can be evicted after harvest and often were. Further to that, I strongly suspect that most of those who are aware that the practice has evolved since those draconian…

The term computer used to mean a person who sat at a desk doing mathematical calculations. When someone talks about their Amazon computing cluster, I don't picture a huge office building full of people putting pen to paper, crunching numbers all day long, even though that is exactly what computing cluster would have meant at one point in time. When the term sharecropper is used, one will naturally turn to the meaning…

When the term sharecropper is used, one will naturally turn to the meaning of sharecropping today

Only people who know that this term is still being used today and in what context. I suspect that most people don't know this, and will revert to the historical meaning.

Re: I was once a Facebook fool

#97

Post by VladRussian »

numair wrote: post #88

Wow, well, this got way more attention than I wanted. First, to be clear -- I have nothing against the guy who took Dave Morin's job (who wasn't supposed to be named -- Amazon CloudFront didn't bother to invalidate its cache when I uploaded the final edit of that paper). He played his cards right, came out hundreds of millions of dollars ahead, and then he got out . He's not in this to control your social life or any…

the thing - Facebook - has been dirty from its very start

Re: I was once a Facebook fool

#98

Post by csarva »

danmaz74 wrote: post #37
zerostar07 wrote: post #11

As a facebook app developer i am aware of what shaky ground it is. I must attest the best days of the platform was when Morin was in charge, people were actually flocking to make apps and the platform was adding features. Ever since he left, feature pruning started, policies were not enforced, facebook changed their designs every month and the platform team inexplicably started reinventing the wheel. Then at some poi…

This could be an important differentiator for Google. Let's hope that the competition will heat up on this.

If you're looking to Google for a solution then I think you're looking in the wrong direction. Just look at the latest crop of anti-competitive complaints against them -- like Yelp for one.

Re: I was once a Facebook fool

#99

Post by abstractwater »

dxbydt wrote: post #89
nirvana wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can look out for yourself without lying, cheating, or backstabbing others. You can operate as a moral, ethical person, and not have to mislead people, or break your promises. Looking out for yourself is not the problem, dishonesty is. This becomes a bigger problem when dishonesty becomes part of the culture.

> without lying, cheating, or backstabbing...not have to mislead people, or break your promises. From my time in the valley, I'd say dishonesty, misleading clients, breaking promises, not delivering on time, all of that is very much a part of the sv culture. At Sun, we'd tell all our clients that Microsoft was evil, out to crush us. Our CEO Scott McNealy sent around a famous email about the sizes of MS & non-MS file…

Who was that "Princeton computer graphics intern" and what did he build afterwards?

Re: I was once a Facebook fool

#100

Post by nirvana »

TomOfTTB wrote: post #64
nirvana wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can look out for yourself without lying, cheating, or backstabbing others. You can operate as a moral, ethical person, and not have to mislead people, or break your promises. Looking out for yourself is not the problem, dishonesty is. This becomes a bigger problem when dishonesty becomes part of the culture.

I'll agree with outright lying in that a person knowingly lying to another person is wrong. But with the rest I'm not sure I can agree. Because again the Valley is a kill or be killed environment. The assumption is that others will look out for themselves. So, for example, if someone were to promise me something I'd ask for a contract. If I don't get a contract I'd assume that person was planning to violate that prom…

That's an interesting point. I've always thought of contracts as being the mechanism by which two honest parties clarify the terms of their agreement, such that the main value was getting the details written down, and agreed on, where they might otherwise be missed.

It depends on the business, of course, but while I won't sign something I disagree with, I'd never trust that a court would have my back in a dispute. I'm more more concerned with whether the other party has integrity, and has interests aligned with mine, than specific terms of an agreement.

In large part, I think of contracts as unenforceable, though maybe this comes from working at startups so much where you sign contracts, but you know that at your current size you couldn't afford the court case to enforce the contract, if it came to that.

Mediation makes them more viable, though, since it lowers the barrier for getting a dispute heard.

I think you and I don't live in Silicon Valley for very similar reasons. Plus, I just find the high risk focus a distraction from building a scalable business.

Post reply on HN