I enjoyed his very direct analysis of the situation (however opinionated) and the list of links chronicling Facebook's recent changes were appreciated as well. Upvoted.
You have indeed said it before - but with all due respect ww.com is perhaps one of the shittiest websites I have ever had the displeasure to visit. From the horrific UI, to the icky spywarish ambiance, your website exudes an aura of danger.
I am no fan of Mahalo, but before you run around telling people that they are wasting their time on shit, how about you make sure you aren't excreting any yourself.
I'm as identifiable as can be, and I have not hidden in any way what I've been up to in the past. I speak to JC as myself, with my name and reputation in full view, not as some anonymous entity (like you are).
But, you're absolutely right that ww.com is nothing to be proud of (and believe me, I'm not), other than that it has managed to stay alive for 12 years and counting against pretty strong competiton.
The horrific UI is there because I suck as a designer and because for the longest time I simply wished for it to die so I could get on with my life. That's a long story, maybe one day I'll write it up, the word 'depression' should probably figure in it somewhere and I countered that by building windmills on a very sparsely populated island in Northern Ontario, Canada.
The content is a matter beyond my control, I've been upset about it since day one and I've tried very hard to keep it in check but there seems to be no way of stopping the influx of jerks. The current balance is just about as good as I can get it.
As for the the difference between mahalo and ww.com, the second that I find a way to diversify I'm out of the webcam business, I've made that more than clear in other posts, but at least it does not pollute another resource that is useful, such as search results. The last four years have been an endless succession of trial balloons, none of which had enough air in them to go very far.
And I don't have the illusion that I have the business acumen of JC either, even though I've been around the block, I attribute most of the success to simply blind luck.
I'm grateful for the chance it gave me to learn though, and it has allowed me to materially improve the lives of a fair number of people in ways that would have otherwise been absolutely impossible, and it introduced me to a large number of very nice people.
Ww.com has caused people to find each other and get married, and has caused people to get divorced. People were born on the webcam (and Elephants too!) and died there, after long bouts with disease. It's an indelible part of the early history of the internet, and it was at times lots of fun to be part of it. And at other times an enormous headache.
Thanks for the feedback by the way, I'll definitely try to improve things.
Think of ww.com as the millstone around my neck that somehow keeps me alive.
Feel free to tell me how to turn this around for the better, I'm open to any and all suggestions, I've been struggling with this for longer than I care to remember.
Why have you held onto it for so long if you wished it to die? Is there not some domainer that would pay millions for ww.com, regardless of whatever useful content may be there?
Not that I'm aware of. If there is such a person then he's free to mail me.
The reason I held on to it for so long is that it kept my ex-wife and son alive, and I've had my share from that as well (but not in the last year and a bit).
That period is drawing to a close as we speak so within two weeks I'll be free to dispose of it as I see fit.
Wow, how did you put that together? I'm impressed.
The domain was not really kosher for obvious reasons, nor was our derivative site design. Google eventually asked us for the domain. The idea is still going at http://MysterySeeker.com with a new layout but much diminished traffic.
If it's my current car, then she's done me a favor. The cars likely worth less than blue book value. Seriously, I call it my first "disposable car" because we only needed a car for a few months and I wasn't willing to pay much.
Luckily I have a rather marvelous mother-in-law, so I just need to find some other villain to borrow my junker.
Mahalo's not a business I can get excited about, but this Calcanis guy consistently writes extremely interesting stuff, has done huge things for entrepreneurs, and is prolific in ways that deeply impress me. Can't take that away from him.
Calcanis is the ringleader in a racket. He talks more than he actually does anything. He writes posts like this to get traffic. He's like the Sarah Palin of the valley. Amusing to watch, but otherwise worthless.
I prefer 'Zuckerpunched' over 'Zucked" - implies a level of underhandedness.
And I think the various items on the list represent different things. Duplicating Four Square and Twitter features is hardly the same level of Zuckerpunching as constantly changing privacy features.
Exactly. You are not stealing anything from Foursquare, or twitter, unless the whole industry is stealing from everybody all the time.
Personally, as much as I fear facebook taking too much control, I don't see either of these as being big issues. I don't put important stuff on my fb account, and most people I know do not care that all this information is available.
These are the same people who see absolutely nothing wrong with supermarkets loyalty cards, and their details being sold off to other companies. This is the majority now, who think more CCTV cameras are a good idea and make the world safer, who agree with more stringent airline boarding procedures, and support the government taking away out rights if they want to.
This is the world we live in, privacy has been slowely eroded away for a number of years now, and there are much more important stuff to worry about on the entertainment news shows.
Half of his rant focuses on Zuck 'stealing' features from other websites and potential competitors. Since when did adding new features that someone else invented become a moral issue? In many industries, that's standard practice. Google didn't exactly invent email. There's no moral standard to apply here.
His other assertions about Zuck screwing over past partners is more troubling.
Zuckerberg: Someone is already trying to make a dating site. But they made a mistake haha. They asked me to make it for them. So I'm like delaying it so it won't be ready until after the facebook thing comes out.
I'm not ready to cut and run from Facebook yet, but of all the important tech CEOs I can think of, Zukerberg is easily the one I least trust and respect. He's young, has no other industry success, and is way too eager to try to dominate the Internet. It just doesn't feel right.
"I'm not ready to cut and run from Windows yet, but of all the important tech CEOs I can think of, Gates is easily the one I least trust and respect. He's young, has no other industry success, and is way too eager to try to dominate the PC. It just doesn't feel right."
This criticism of Zuckerberg is insular and reactionary. He's due for a minor user backlash, but there is no way the most recent Facebook changes could trigger a backlash at the level of Beacon 1.0. I think this hope that Zuckerberg crashes and burns is a combination of jealousy and wishful thinking.
I work for Facebook and am naturally biased, but even in my cap as a longtime HN reader, I was disappointed at the difference between the reception to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1339248 versus the other Facebook-related posts here.
Fair enough. I'm a user who isn't even all that concerned about privacy, but it's still not a pleasant feeling to have Facebook continually rearrange what they have decided to do with my information at their every whim.
It's sort of like dating someone who all the sudden decides to start calling you at work throughout the day. Just a bit unnerving.
Facebook ends up feeling dictatorial and paternal. And that's aside from whether the privacy concerns are valid (which at least some appear to be.)
Asperger's has nothing to do with being amoral or immoral. Asperger's people have trouble following certain more subtle social norms but that has little to do with morality.
Some of the biggest amoral criminals in the world have been very adept socially (think Goebbels or Bernie Madoff), while some people whose morality was always lauded were known to be socially awkward (e.g. Einstein).
So while Aspergers is a disorder it is completely wrong to equate it with lack of morality.
Actually, there is also some problem with Asperger's folks and empathy. They don't have a lot of it. This is a fairly well-known characteristic, and there are related things: only talking about things that interest you, that sort of thing. From this perspective, AS folks could be called "less moral".
Of course it wouldn't really be a fair comment. And calling them "amoral" is just being a dick.
The word 'amoral' is in the quote in the comment you are replying to. It's disingenuous to imply otherwise. You've also neglected to point to the whole comment that you are replying to, instead pointing at the part of the comment that you were replying to and insinuating that it is the entirety of the comment itself.
My point was that you were trying to imply that the part of the comment that you were replying to was the entirety of the comment itself, which wasn't true.
<sigh> It was linked with the word "amoral". Amoral is not an illness, it is a personal flaw.
It's his blog. He is allowed to call the guy a retard if he wants. I, on the other hand, don't have to like it, and it seriously detracted from selling me his POV. Just saying.
For the purpose of this comment, I'm going to assume that you're just ignorant and not actually a neurotypical bigot.
Understanding Asperger's "syndrome" through the metaphor of a "disease" is pretty misleading. It has its advantages and its drawbacks. Without people with Asperger's, we probably wouldn't have an internet to discuss this question on.
Diseases are progressive; often they are curable; often they are acquired; and they do not convey advantages. None of these things are true of Asperger's.
Maybe the biggest difference is that it's not something that can be cured; it's a fundamental part of who you are. A person with cancer is still the same person as before the cancer; if they cure the cancer, they're still the same person afterwards. The cancer doesn't give them the ability to do anything other people can't do. None of these things are true of Asperger's.
So I think the closest analogy is, what if he had said, "Last year, when I realized that Zuckerberg was an amoral, Negro-like entrepreneur..."?
(This analogy is weak in a couple of ways: first, clear memory, near immunity from social pressure, and improved logical ability are probably more significant abilities in today's world than resistance to sunburn; second, people with Asperger's tend to be wealthier than average, not poorer, so it may seem a little strange to treat them as an oppressed group.)
Calacanis is a neurotypical bigot. The clear implication of his statement is that people with Asperger's tend to be amoral. This is entirely false.
I'm on the borderline, pook. The NIH page describes my childhood pretty accurately, although calling autism a "developmental disorder" is kind of like calling being white a "melanin deficiency disorder".
Companies that I strongly dislike do that all the time. They sometimes end up great in terms of earning potential, but rarely are they the ones that I respect or admire.
I disagree, great designers innovate. You build on the shoulders of those who came before, but if you're not doing something new and innovative, it's not great.
I find Calacanis a bit annoying, but I think he's mostly right. Contrary to what Calacanis thinks, adding new features that let you compete with other apps isn't wrong. Its part of business. If they want to muddy the purpose of their product by adding 101 bells and widgets to compete with everyone under the sun, they sure can do it.
I do agree with Jason that Zuckerberg seems to have a questionable history of integrity...based on rumor. And I certainly agree that Facebook seems hell-bent on harvesting the souls of their users. The latter is far more troubling that any competitive feature additions.
When this is all over, when Facebook has returned to Orkut status, its bold dreams of the entire web wired up by Like buttons and Instant Personalization into the Facebook mothership dashed upon the iceberg of the fickle social market, what will we have learned?
disagree. i think few people write as persuasively as Calacanis - his ability to make a case for something and to articulate it is, despite the tasteless self-promotion, admirable.
Of course, you're not paying them for their effort. You're paying them for creating a distribution channel you can access, and then the ongoing product development that maintains and grows that distribution base.
Linking it to subsequent effort is like saying a programmer should only charge $1 for all bar the first copy of their program, given how easy it is to burn new dvds.
Actually reading this I wonder why facebook gave applications the ability to collect email addresses easily? Lowers platform lock in as someone like Zynga if they do move away from facebook can just use the email to keep the user base they have acquired.
They had to give the FB app developers some alternative to newsfeed notifications to keep them from getting to enraged when their primary source of recruiting users was yanked out from under them.
And it was disappointing. The best part of the whole goddamn article was the self-promoting opening. The rest was tired, you've already heard this, let's jump on the band wagon, analysis.
Anyone who calls fb credits a "tax" knows nothing about payments. A ubiquitous payment system where users are already authenticated could easily double conversion rates once deployed at scale.
None of those are ubiquitous. I'm describing the network effect, making this quite relevant. Also, I'm pretty sure some of those do charge 30% regardless.
Apple takes 30%. Needing to enter only a password to pay for something (instead of a credit card) probably makes that worth it. Facebook doesn't even require the password.
Pretty sure they don't charge 30% - I know the guys behind half the list.
Facebook are starting from scratch with credits, these companies and others have millions of existing users who have existing money in their accounts. Facebook on the other hand have hundreds of millions of facebook users, not people topping up their credits to buy stuff in games. Most of their users don't even play games.
That doesn't make Facebook ubiquitous and it will leave people wondering why they can't use the balance of their other account in the games they play like previously, and it will leave developers eating a fee that is up to 22% higher than it was through 3rd parties.
Although some will 'win' and make assloads of money overall it's not a 'win' anymore than it would be if you could only accept Visa.
Social Gold is very ubiquitous -- I would even argue more than Facebook Credits. Developers use Social Gold even outside of the Facebook platform -- where FB credits have zero value.
Social Gold enables single click across games -- and a huge number of users already have stored credit cards. And of course it comes with a much better conversion and much lower fee for the developer.
Facebook is ubiquitous, but even on their own platform, Social Gold is far more widely used than FB credits. FB can force credits to be ubiquitous on their own platform, but the world is a much bigger place.
Yes, it is 1.4 times the deal people had, if and only if the conversion rate goes up that much. Whether the terms will change or not in the future is also something that a businessperson would consider.
P.S. Yeah, I know the mathematics above isn't exact if there is already a fee for transactions, etc., etc.
Actually the numbers could be much, much better than 2X.
But your last point about the risk of a changing playfor
is very valid. In the case of payments, I'd bet for a conservative initial system that gets more flexible over time. The nature of anti-fraud almost mandates that approach.
>Actually the numbers could be much, much better than 2X.
Or the numbers could be exactly the same, either way, he's muscling in on 30% of their revenue for providing pre-existing functionality and expecting them to like it or lump it.
If it was a smaller cut, I imagine it would be a much easier pill to swallow, but 30% is just plain greed.
The hyphen is the key on your keyboard. It's what goes between some words when they're acting as one word, e.g. mother-in-law.
The dash is longer--it's either a long ("em") dash character or 2 hyphens, as I used here--and it's the grammatical construct that acts somewhat like a comma.
And I'm not just nit-picking. It's confusing to use a hyphen when you mean dash, especially when you also have hyphens in the vicinity. Here's the sentence that convinced me to post this:
>I predict a complete heads-up match with
Facebook–Zynga’s now been double-crossed not once but twice by
Zuckerberg.
The characters in "heads-up" and "double-crossed" are both hyphens, but the character between "Facebook" and "Zynga" should be a dash (or 2 hyphens).
Edit: So he's using en dashes, which are shorter, but they are different from--and slightly longer than--hyphens. But it's much easier to tell an em dash from a hyphen than an en dash from a hyphen, and the em dash is proper.
Here's a hyphen, followed by an en dash, followed by an em dash:
Were you actually confused? Are you smart enough to know what an "em" dash is and not smart enough to know that the hyphen in heads-up works differently than Facebook-Zynga. The only way that would make sense is if they merged and for some reason kept Zynga as part of their name. Given the context that's obviously not happening.
An em dash is typically considered bad practice in formal writing. If he wanted to be formal he would have used a semicolon I think. In informal writing an em dash often replaces the work of other punctuation.
Note: I don't care. I was able to understand him just fine and that's all I care about. If he was writing a scholarly paper I'd take the time to correct it and send him some suggestions. I'd also only do this if I was asked to do so.
Was I able to figure it out? Sure. But did I have to pause for a second to figure out what he was saying? Yes.
Proper punctuation makes it much easier for readers to read and comprehend the material quickly. If you don't believe me, try reading a paragraph with no punctuation at all. You'll spend most of your time trying to figure out what words are grouped together because there's no punctuation to clue you in.
I think it's better done with spacing, as in "to-day - a good day - is the middle of the week", when you're not being anal enough to use &emdash; or Unicode literals etc.
I think the non-spaced -- looks a lot like double-spacing after full stops (periods): quite old-fashioned. Reminds me of books from the 50s I read in the 80s.
Many of these typographical conventions are fashion and culture based, anyhow. Quotation marks are especially diverse, with the << >> in French, the em-dashes used by Joyce, etc.
Hm, you're right. They look basically identical on his blog, but different here. And now that I look really closely, they appear to be slightly longer on his blog as well.
Edit: Also, it's a lot easier to tell in Firefox 3 than Chromium. Ah, the web.
I like the comparison with poker. Doesn't mean that Facebook
is out of the game by a long shot, it does open the space up for some competition. Maybe the companies that helped push FB along should get together and start their own?
Very persuasive. I finally pulled the trigger and deleted my account tonight. I'm not sure that Diaspora is the answer either, but frankly privacy is only half of my problem with Facebook. The other half is that it's simply a massive timesuck. That hour a day I wasted being a voyeur of friends and family's lives can now go back toward living my own life.
Wait, am I missing something or is Jason really labeling fb's clamp down on crapville spam as a stab in the back? Not a zuck defender by any means, but defending zynga... Come on.
Couldn't agree more.