Institutional investors made the mistake - again, and again, and again - of validating Mark's duplicitousness by pouring literally billions of dollars into his company, and then billions more into startups seeking to emulate it. Some of their investments created out of thin air industries that contribute absolutely nothing to, and in many cases even detract from, society. . . . Most mind-boggling of all, it's been clear for a long time that Mark's "social" business model doesn't work anyway: venture capital returns are down, and not just a little bit. Meanwhile, the opportunity cost to society is enormous: with engineers and capital allocated to virtual-sheep-throwing, worthless advertising and sharing ad nasuem, almost a decade's worth of real innovations got the short end of the stick, including but not limited to mine.
There needs to be a label placed on the idea of feeling the need to bow to the wishes of critics who try to limit the idea of valid entrepreneurship to activities deemed "beneficial to society." I propose Founder's Guilt Complex.
Why on earth - when life is so big and beautiful and complex - should I feel guilty if I make money from an activity that does nothing more than give people a diversion from life's burdens and problems? College football may be a joke to pointy-head types but then reading Latin (my own peculiar idea of fun) is equally a joke to the cheering fans who join in inter-collegiate rivalries. Likewise for playing video games or hiking in the woods or listening to rock-and-roll or producing reality-TV shows or most any other activity you can name whose main goal is relaxation, entertainment, escape from life's burdens, or just plain self-indulgence. And social networking is no exception. I may not do much on Facebook (I don't) but so what? Others can and do like to share things with people of varying degrees of relationship to them and more power to them for liking to do this. It is their choice. It is a free country. It is not for me to be a scold who upbraids them for doing so. Nor should I be crabbed or pinched about what founders choose to do to create and market products and services designed to satisfy such proclivities or to make money from them.
Yes, I can set about in life to conquer diseases or to abolish poverty or to alleviate people's suffering and all such things are ennobling. I can do such things via a profit-making venture or I can make my money on other things and then use it to advance higher goals through giving. Or I can devote time and energy to helping others in my personal life. All of that is great but it hardly defines the boundaries of worthwhile human activity. Life has enough problems without having someone of a judgmental spirit continually taking us to task for wanting to have some fun as well or for trying to promote fun things for others. In a free society, there is room for fun things as well and for those who see it as worthwhile to take risk in building companies that seek to market less-than-weighty things to the public.
Life certainly can be perverse. In 17th century England, as modern western society was taking shape, you had, on the one side, royalists who despised political freedom, who valued rule by a church hierarchy, and yet who were much given to licentious habits in their lifestyles while, on the other, you had those who agitated for political freedom, who fought oppressive forms of centralized rule, who ultimately broke away to form what became America, and yet who in their personal lives bore the grim face of the puritan that sought at every turn to chain, quarter, and shame everyone all about who thought it might be fun to dance or to have a little fun in life. It seems that in our modern society we have ported over the spirit of the puritan in castigating others even as we have won the freedoms that allow us under law to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Well, if the pursuit of happiness was deemed a worthy goal of a society's founding documents, far be it from me to stand grim-faced telling others that they should feel guilty in not conforming to my narrow view of acceptable life activities - and that includes how I choose to make my living or start my business.
I don't think this is a mere technical issue either. I believe that no guilt or stigma should attach to ventures doing legal things just because they don't set out to solve World Problems. The poor have always been with us. So too have wars, rapes, and murders. Ditto for disease and death. I am the first to say "bravo" to those who do not sit resigned to accept all these destructive elements in life but who instead spur themselves to do something to help make things better not just for themselves but for the broader society too. That said, such activities cannot be the only things that define our goals in life, nor should they be. There is value in having enjoyment and fun in life and this is a transcending value that betters society. In the entrepreneurial world, there is no room for a spirit of self-righteousness. Therefore, I say away with Founder's Guilt Complex. If you want to do a venture, do it honestly and with integrity, drive, boldness, and energy. Just don't let others tell you that you should feel guilty about offending their scruples. Enjoy and make it work without guilt. You can deal with Weighty Issues too if you are so led. Just don't listen to those who say that what you are doing is not worthwhile unless it is narrowly confined to them.
So if the VC industry chose to pour all kinds of money into creating something called social networking, and if all kinds of talented engineers have flocked to that industry in pursuit of money or other personal goals, that is by definition a great benefit to society because it has given many, many people the chance to do things that were scarcely thought possible just a decade ago - and to derive simple pleasures from the diversions or other benefits afforded to them through such networking. Whatever the flaws associated with individual people or companies in such an industry, there is nothing whatever wrong with those who devoted their money and their efforts to making all this possible.
Jeez, did you have to write all that? Anyway, although I think you are focusing on the weakest part of Greenspan's argument - the point where he comes closest to bitterness - I was wondering if you'd like to invest $20,000 in my new venture. I'd like to sell crack heroin to junkies in Detroit. I'm sure as a fellow champion of guilt-free founder consciences, you will support my endeavour as I give gangbangers the chance to flock to this exciting new industry and do something they scarcely thought possible - to help give people a diversion from life's burdens and problems.
And don't worry, I'll do it with plenty of integrity, drive, boldness, and energy. Just like Zynga : )
Do it and I'll donate $1000 that I promise I was not going to donate anyways to Partners In Health.
There's an idea common to forums that I don't frequent that I recently learned of called an "ideological Turing test". The idea is to take a group of people divided along a controversy, and to get each side to anonymously write a coherent argument that capture's the other side's perspective. Then everyone tries to tell, "which is the real argument, and which is the cunning fake?".
In that spirit: if you think you understand what 'grellas is trying to say so well, go ahead and take a whack at saying it better, and demonstrate that you actually grok his perspective.
People should stop trying to make entrepreneurs feel guilty for not living up to their personal ethical standards. One of the advantages of our free society is that people can choose to work on weighty issues or fluffy diversions. As long as you abide by the law, you should not be criticised for the style of business you decide to pursue. If a lot of people can make money from social networking then that is definitionally a good thing (i.e. a good thing is a thing which makes some people money.)
"What I choose to call 'Founder's Guilt Complex' is a false sense of guilt imposed on founders who are told that the only worthwhile venture is one aimed at shaking up the world - I say, relax and use your talents to build the business you want. Keep it legal and do aspire to more in life than that. But forget about the censors. Like the Puritans of old, they would put you in a straightjacket for no good reason. And for this reason too, though there may be bad actors, there is not a thing wrong with social networking as a worthwhile business endeavor."
Does this short version achieve the same goals as the original? Yes and no. Context matters a lot in writing (see, e.g., my thoughts on legal writing: http://grellas.com/articles.html). The original here is flawed in that it is in the nature of a first draft (which is the case with all my posts at HN) and could be streamlined. But when one seeks to advance an idea that is bound to meet resistance among readers who are not used to hearing it, it is important to develop it and not simply state a summary of it. If this is misplaced for the forum (my posts do seem to generate a lot of meta-discussion about "walls of text"), then that is one thing. But there is no doubt that a merely summary version of such an argument will not have the same impact as one that is illustrated and developed.
By the way, I am not thin-skinned. I have appreciated your comments in this thread as well as those of others who have taken me to task on this or that point. We can disagree and still appreciate each other.
"it is important to develop it and not simply state a summary of it."
One suggestion I do have to help with readability (and with someone deciding whether they want to read the entire comment) is to place a summary (longer than a sentence) at the beginning of what you are writing if it is long and detailed.
I've found that this practice is helpful not only when writing to customers, but when writing to "important people" who most likely aren't going to want to take the time to read an entire detailed CYA type email with my opinion on something they have asked me about. That way if they want, they can dig further. And if anything happens it's on them if they did not read the fine print and only followed the summary to make a decision.
I think that when you condense your original comment, you lose a lot of it simply due to politeness. A point that you can make softly and persuasively, for instance by allusion to the social value of reading Latin, would necessarily read a bit more cuttingly if sharpened down to its essence.
Well done. Now let's see if tptacek puts his money where his mouth is. :-)
And for fairness sake I'll try to summarize your argument, Gumbo:
Endeavors that either add relatively nothing or have negative consequences, such as negative productivity, simply for pure financial gain, are not noble endeavors.
To paraphrase Gérard de Nerval, our industry is a hovel and a place of ill-repute. I'm ashamed that God should see me here.
How many great engineers are working on sites that allow people to share pictures of their cats? How many of our most talented minds don't even know who Ivan Sutherland is? How many are trying to tackle hard problems, and how many are trying to get rich putting what we know in a new dress? It's a rhetorical question but answer it to yourself anyway, because it's so sad.
As you can see, not only did you miss his point, you injected two points that he didn't make. It is also very hard to rationalize how your version is "better" than his; in particular, it does an extremely poor job of making its point. "As long as you abide by the law, you should not be criticized"? Approximately 0% of all HN readers agree with that, including George Grellas, who has written persuasively on HN against things like patent trolls.
PIH is a great charity. A great, great charity. Do you want to try again? I think if you ask around, you'll find at least a few people on HN who will tell you that I am not completely full of shit about this. But you have to actually do the thing I challenged you to do.
All I want is a good faith attempt. I don't want a judge. I just don't want to feel like a chump for not spelling out in detail exactly what the terms are.
If you want to be the judge (I know you didn't ask) --- there you go. Poof! You're the judge. If he makes a real good faith attempt at articulating the points Grellas tried to make and you judge it as such, I'm good for the money. :)
Okay sure, I'll try again. I see what you're saying - I thought you meant a quick distillation of the key argument, but you were asking for a restatement in an equally convincing, albeit clearer, voice.
"What right does Greenspan have to condemn Facebook on the grounds of social value? Just because Greenspan finds Facebook distasteful, does that mean Mark Zuckerberg and those who work at Facebook are wrong to do so, or wrong to find pleasure and satisfaction in their work - or that those who use and enjoy the site and its services are fools? Facebook breaks no laws, and the terms of our society clearly stipulate that, provided we recognise the law, we are free to choose what we value and the paths we follow. We all have our own definitions of value, and clearly many people find Facebook both useful and a source of pleasure in their lives. Who is Greenspan to say that they are wrong?
Indeed, what right do sideline critics in general have to spurn the work of entrepreneurs simply because they "fail" to meet their personal defintion of social value? I propose a label for such efforts to enforce one's own moral standards through guilt: Founder's Guilt Complex. I think this is hokum. Sure, some entrepreneurs may choose to tackle the "big" problems - poverty and disease, for instance (and bravo for them) - but there is plenty of space in our society for ostensibly less "high-minded" ventures. I am all for noble endeavour, but I believe the boundaries of what we consider worthwhile are and must be wider. After all, much that is good has come from unexpected sources.
Life is complex, and we all have our own ideas about value. You may think that something I enjoy (such as reading Latin) is frivolous, and vice versa, but our mutual opinions do not negate the fact of our mutual pleasure. So, unless there is active harm, please leave your judgement and criticism at the door."
As the appointed special master, I agree and liked Corporal's better at 30% of the words. (If grellas didn't have the 2nd and 3rd to the last paragraphs I might have called it a tie possibly.)
Well you didn't get the point of his argument at all. The point really isn't against 'Pursuit of happiness'. It really is a very general term. And let me tell you criminals are pursuing their happiness too.
The point is photo sharing, status sharing, killing pigs with birds turned out to be made such a valuable thing that people felt it worth investing billions into it. That's fair too, because you are diverting investments towards where the demand is. But the core of the problem was that the 'actual innovations' got the short end of the stick.
When I look at Elon Musk, I see a person with a mission. As much as it may sound unpractical at times, the person worked on things that have solved genuine problems. Problems like making payments online easy, building electric cars, building cheap vehicles for luggage delivery into space. When I see Bill Gates, I see somebody who radically changed the desktop industry. Who is now investing time and energy fighting diseases, hunger an poverty around the world. All these great men, built business that genuinely changed things around us. Though I use Facebook, I feel no such respect for Zuckerberg. I am jealous of his money. But if I have to be that rich someday, I want to be doing work for a better cause.
I understand that games and stuff like that have their own value. But when they are glorified so much to make genuine work utter useless, unrewarding activity. Things begin to look bad.
We have the freedom to build what we see fit - without the need to to justify the act by saying it improves humanity.
If it doesn't improve humanity like a cure for cancer, but ends up creating happiness in the lives of its users, is that wrong?
I tried to get the spirit of the words. How did I do?
Quibbles: I thought several issues were conflated in the original post by grellas, so honestly I don't think I could possibly do justice to all the unstated assumptions.
The challenge was not directed at me, but I'll take a brief stab at it :
"It is morally acceptable for some of the brighter minds of a generation to invest their time, effort and energy into developing social products - including but not limited to Facebook. These are fully legitimate free market business ventures, and we need to stop collectively pontificating about what may or may not constitute a socially worthy business goal."
This is, I believe, a more concise summary of the parent's perspective. It meets a different need, and I don't view it as being "better" per se.
Sorry, I am being dense: and, given the two possible results of the Turing test (population correctly/incorrectly guesses which is real/fake for each side), what are the implications for the argument, if any?
One implication is that people making arguments do not necessarily have to believe in them. And that anyone with adequate rhetorical skills can make any argument, even one that is not consistent with what they truly believe.
Example: Readers might believe some rambling gibberish about there being no need for any startup founder to have a conscience, and they might attribute it to the poster's own beliefs (it's ok not to have a conscience), when truthfully the poster might believe otherwise (he does not really believe in screwing people over, to the point of having no friends or a lifelong reputation as a con artist) and might just be advancing an idea that would benefit his business: the more social networking startups and the more money flowing into them, the better for those who take a cut.
The other implication is that you have to first understand a position in order to argue it effectively. The claim here is that one commenter does not actually comprehend the other commenter's position. And an easy way to show this is to ask each commenter to argue for the other's position, instead of against it.
In a free society, he is free to write as much as he likes and you are free to neither read nor reply to it.
The base of his argument is offending a persons preferences is not sufficient to self censor ones own actions - and I agree.
I also agree where he said any legal start up is fine and free of guilt - but don't worry I would be behind any start up or government initiative that gave away heroin to Junkies. The so called British System worked very well for many years, until the Puritan guilt pressure ended it in spite of empirical evidence that harm reduction did in fact reduce harm
so convert your start up to social entrpreneur status, and go make something to be proud of
the only reason to feel guilty is to have talent to create and not do so.
"I also agree where he said any legal start up is fine and free of guilt"
Really? The law, for very good reason, lags behind societal developments and shifts in social norms. Conflating "legal" with "ethical" shows a pretty profound misunderstanding of the two concepts.
This is I think the crux of the problem. Most of us live in the large intersection of legal and ethical.
Some exist, like Greenpeace perhaps, in the ethical if not always legal. i suggest the British System sits there too.
But we argue here not over what is legal but what is ethical. Many things are agreed upon worldwide as unethical, rape murder etc. But a whole raft of other issues are ethical preferences - selling mortgages to high risk payers with two year low rates. It's legal. It may be ethical. Do you agree?
Btw I used legal there as the usual, large intersection meaning, as I think most of us do in daily lives
"I also agree where he said any legal start up is fine and free of guilt - but don't worry I would be behind any start up or government initiative that gave away heroin to Junkies"
And if the government does make it legal to give away heroin? While that is seemingly improbable I think it can get dangerous to assume that laws are representative of ethics or humane behavior.
Err - the British system was a compromise where it wa legal for doctors to prescribe herion to patients under their care - ie junkies, so they stopped petty crime to feed their habit and started getting some strucutres back in their lives
so I was in favour of that system, and think it ethical to look to harm reduction as opposed to all out prohibition. Which I think means we agree - but maybe not. I am not too sure
I think the point that his rousing hand-waving passes conveniently (and at great length) over is that the internet is a novel medium and legal ideas about what is and is not ethical business practice are very poorly defined if they are defined at all.
For instance at what point can we argue that the rights of Facebook users and the "stickyness" of the service should limit the autonomy of Facebook as an independent company?
E.g. perhaps at some point, if Facebook becomes nigh-on-ineradicable from the fabric of our lives, should we nationalise (globalise) it? The argument would be that it's not just "another service" and it's too important to leave in the hands of private individuals interested primarily in profit, and thus the rihts of its many users outweigh the prerogatives of its "owners".
I am a big proponant of nationalising the services that should be - see the total farce over UK rail networks for example.
I strongly suspect most countries will put in place some forms of regulation or nationalisation over IP connectivity
to the house - but once connected the very DNA of the Internet means that such monopolies are as trivially bypassable as any service provider has ever been.
Myspace is probably the best counter example to this threat there can be. And it also cost Rupert Murdoch 1/2 billion so there was a silver lining.
Careful, you'll bring the HN grellas lovers down on you. While I always despair at his inability to say something succinctly, he generally always makes an excellent point.
Facebook provides an excellent service to most people in the world and it does so at a level that your $20,000 cannot buy. While we as a more discerning social customer may see it as extremely low value, the production values are actually extremely high. I always think of my national rag the Sun in these instances, it's utter trash, but they really worked hard on making it extremely good trash.
Alas for the article, to be honest the whole thing reads of bitterness, not unjustified if we are looking at 'justice'. But Zuck is a complete $&!t, and an extremely lucky one at that, but in business that's just the way it works. Moaning about it is futile. The only way to end up playing at that level is probably ending up being a complete $&!t as well. There are few big founders who haven't done very dodgy things in their time.
I just don't understand why HN readers are so eager to paint Greenspan as a whiner and Zuckerberg as a rightful victor, as if that's the only thing worth saying about this whole commotion. It seems like a very dim view of human potential to me - winning is all that counts, if being a shit means you win, good on ya, and anyone that challenges that is just a whiner.
After all, Greenspan doesn't say that M -shouldn't- have been successful - he does not argue with moral absolutes (or maybe he does and I need to re-read the piece). He argues that eventually that sort of shitty behaviour will catch up with you, no matter what, even if you are the CEO of Facebook. Like I've said in other comments, it sounds like a warning.
Plus shouldn't HN readers be interested in more than just raw victory? If you view the modern tech world as a zero-sum arena, I feel bad for you son. Modern tech is about collaboration, synergy, and finding an approach that authentically makes sense for you in relation to what others are doing. This bloodthirsty power stuff is just a juvenile phase.
(NB: not to take away from all of that Zuck has clearly accomplished at Facebook; its had a huge and rightful impact on the world and our lives.)
We are eager because I think the only things I have ever heard from Greenspan on this site are posts which are still whining about how he got screwed out of lots of fame and fortune in Facebook, or how everyone else is spamming and breaking the law over at AirBnB.
Want me to not paint him as a whiner? How about a Show HN post of a cool new tech company he just started that actually will be useful. Failing that all I hear is someone who is mad he too doesn't have a billion in the bank.
Again, I just don't think this issue is as simple as you portray it. There is a place for critics and criticism in society, a society with them is healthier I think than a situation (as you seem to, forgive me if I misread you, be promoting) where the only thing worthwhile is creating a startup, and if you have not or are not actively creating a startup and achieving the current consensus definition of success, then your opinion is worthless.
Perhaps Greenspan is, as you say, just a whiner. But he does seem to have a lot of experience in tech, have come up with a lot of different ventures, and, very importantly, he was there in the early days of Facebook, he saw Mark and experienced Mark's behaviour first-hand way back in 2004. Say what you will, I think that experience is important. Facebook is a massive force in current history, and Mark by-and-large defines Facebook's culture. So yeah, I think this stuff matters. Are you saying that we should discount Greenspan's opinions automatically, because what, he's too bitter, or has complained too much already, or hasn't created something nice and shiny and new recently?
> Are you saying that we should discount Greenspan's opinions automatically, because what, he's too bitter, or has complained too much already, or hasn't created something nice and shiny and new recently?
Yes. Rehashing the same sob story about how he isn't a part of Facebook and isn't a billionaire is old news. Another round of complaining how evil Mark is is not going to make Mark or the public feel sad for him and slip him a cool billion.
Given this sentiment, I'm not sure why you even bothered to click on this thread and engage in the comments.
I hadn't ever heard this story before, and only faintly knew Greenspan's name, so I thought it was a somewhat interesting story. It's seems like he should definitely move on at this point.
Careful, you'll bring the HN grellas lovers down on you.
grellas is the most selfless and erudite among us. Attempting to argue, rebut, or piddlepaddle one of his comments reflects more on the commenter than on the point they are trying to make.
The only proper response to a grellas comment is "Thank you."
While grellas is indeed learned and I do appreciate his sharing with us, I disagree that trying to argue or rebut his arguments necessarily has to be wrong.
Were I to disagree with one of grellas' comments, I would actually go something like "Thank you for posting. However (rebuttal) ... :) "
Also, lawyers / advocates are much better trained than us to write arguments :) , it's their job ! but that doesn't necessarily make them automatically right.
That said, I do tend to side with grellas' point of view.
Also, just to make sure I'm understanding you: are you saying that there is a group of people on HN who will vigorously downvote me or anyone else simply for satirically rebutting a laughably verbose comment from a popular user?
Hmm, and I thought I was finished with primary school.
There are people on HN who will vigorously downvote you for unnecessary disparaging comments like "Jeez, did you have to write all that?", "laughably verbose" [0], or "I thought I was finished with primary school."
While those lines may not technically violate the letter of the guidelines [1], they violate the spirit of the section that says "please reply to the argument instead of calling names". Note that the next part of the guidelines gives an example of how one can and should remove an extraneous cheap shot from their argument.
Your comment history shows you are capable of producing a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than in the last few comments. Please hold yourself to a higher standard. Satirical rebuttals can be a joy to read when done right.
[0] because grellas has established himself as someone who makes lengthy, meaningful contributions, "tl;dr" type complaints will be considerably less well received than they might be in response to a genuinely too-long post from one with a less valuable contribution history. Particularly yours, because it was phrased so... thoughtlessly.
You're right. I just read that first Matroshka sentence ("There needs to be a label placed on the idea of feeling the need to bow to the wishes of critics who try to limit the idea of valid entrepreneurship to activities deemed "beneficial to society."") and I couldn't help myself. I did "grok" his argument but I rushed and left some of my assumptions implicit. So yes, I could have set out my rebuttal more cogently.
Before investing in his crack heroin distribution scheme, you should get documentation detailing his supply chain, his on-hand inventory, his distribution intents, and so forth. Written documentation, pictures if possible, with names and addresses for all of his business associates.
There is a label already, "ethical". Argue all you want over the ethics of facebook, or if entrepreneurs have any duty to act ethically, not unethically, not illegally or just not get caught. You don't need a new label though.
You sure did write a lot complaining about people using their free speech to criticize businesses they feel are either harmful or a waste of resources because this is a "free country". I was under the impression that the philosophy behind a free country was that allowing the people to openly criticize and discuss things allowed a society to thrive without overly restrictive laws. I guess they didn't consider the hurt feelings of entrepreneurs. I propose a new amendment: Freedom from hurt feelings resulting from the people's reaction to one's actions!
I'm actually very content with having the chosen method for encouraging altruism to be social norms. I'm happy you are free to invent a new addictive and time wasting form of entertainment who's contribution to society is null or negative. Complaining that some internet words made you feel guilty about it or that there is too much social pressure to actually contribute to the society on who's back you built your business is ... well, it's fucking ridiculous frankly.
Only in places like Hacker News is there a consensus opinion that Facebook is "a new addictive and time wasting form of entertainment who's contribution society is null or negative". Facebook has increased the number of interactions I have with my extended family by roughly a factor of infinity --- and I'm one of those nerds who's run a mailing list for his family since the mid '90s.
A more concise way to say what 'grellas said is that these complaints about Facebook have nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with fashion. They are just a new way of proclaiming to the world that "I don't even own a television".
Concern for masses frittering away hours on meaningless entertainments is at least as old as the mechanical player piano. Despite the countervailing evidence of the Salk Vaccine, the ARPA IMP, Google, stem cell transplants, McGee's _On Food And Cooking_, and everything else society has managed to accomplished while beset by the horrors of entertainment, you are welcome to hold the view that you are better not only than the people who avail themselves of that entertainment, but also the people who manage to produce and maintain it using computer systems running at a scale unimaginable just a decade or two before.
Just do it with better writing, because the bar for articulating this particular concern is set very high; you might start with _Infinite Jest_.
It's not just Facebook that has an unusually bad reputation among the technology crowd -- companies like Facebook, Apple, Google, etc. are widely respected outside of the industry bubble. I remember hearing two ordinary guys talking about Wall Street bankers in Logan Airport, and contrasting their ill-gotten gains with Bill Gates and how he fairly earned his money by "building a better mousetrap."
(Also, your point about entertainment and its production is an interesting one -- the people who built and maintain Facebook can be, in this way, rightly compared to the Beatles, the Baroque composers, and Valmiki).
Only in places like Hacker News is there a consensus opinion that Facebook is "a new addictive and time wasting form of entertainment who's contribution society is null or negative"
You either know that statement is untrue but lie anyway, or you haven't been outside and seen a tree in real life for over a year. Many people of all walks of life think Facebook is an "addictive and time wasting form of entertainment who's contribution society is negative."
If you honestly believe otherwise, you need to push away from the computer desk and interact with normal human beings in the flesh STAT.
Writing style is important when trying to persuade. But for the discerning reader looking for facts, content is what counts.
The top post shifts the focus from a blogger's (Greenspan's) account of his dealings with Mark Zuckerberg to "founders guilt".
And this comment is now addressed to the relative merits of Facebook.
The discussion moved from discussing Greenspan's account to discussing founder's guilt and the merits of social networking. How does this happen?
Those topics are not the point of Greenspan's post.
It's a simple tale of how one founder treated someone else, from whom he took advice and ideas.
It's a tale that's familiar (perhaps painfully familiar to some), because we've heard others tell it before as it also happened to them.
Keep changing the subject. Or trying to justify how Zuckerberg treated people by looking at the end result (which no one denies was due in part to great luck).
By all means do what Zuckerberg did and build something big. But don't screw other people over the way he did, call users "dumb fucks" and disregard their privacy as a trivial matter because you think that's a prerequisite to success. It isn't.
I think what he's saying is if you go outside and look at a tree, then the truth will be revealed to you. No need to do this if you've seen a tree in the last year though. But perhaps I read his comment wrong.
Facebook has created a vast amount of wealth for a huge number of people. If you believe in capitalism, then Facebook has benefited society greatly, by definition.
I don't see where in capitalism illegal acts are included in its ambit.
It said let the markets decide, it didn't include freedoms to pursue crime.
At this point you could bring up the definition of criminal vs unethical.
Lets side step that by agreeing on the basic intuitions behind capitalism.
Capitalism is a system aimed at answering the question: what is the best way human beings can organize themselves to best distribute resources and maximize human well being while minimizing suffering.
There are certain acts and substances that can be shown to be immediately harmful to the well being of humanity and humans. Addiction causing drugs are one of them, and efforts to pursue it are marked as criminal, immoral and unethical.
Conflating Facebook with Drug cartels is conflating farmville with cocaine. It very clearly transcends all limitations on the immoral and unethical acts we would permit.
I happen to think that Zynga is a 21st century drug dealer. Their "games" are designed to turn people into clicking-addicted machines, slowly depleting their psychological until they start buying virtual gold. Plus, companies like Zynga target the most psychologically vulnerable members of society. Probably the worst is children.
Give it 15 years and Zynga-style behaviour will be subject to legal restrictions, I'd say.
Dude, you are cracking me up. And I know you're not joking either. Thanks for bringing some life to an emotionally bereft forum.
You are familiar with this term they have for the big spenders on Zynga? "Whales". What kind of person calls someone with an addiction a "whale"? Maybe some people are just too immature to be taking payments from users.
Oh, it's all good. We're making people happy.
No one is arguing for a "goody two shoes, save the world" standard that all web startups must meet. We're simply observing that certain "founders" obviously have no soul. And worshipping a sociopath like Zuckerberg is not a pleasant signal. We can do better.
Whales is a term thats been there from the Casino days of Las Vegas. You may know its other variant - High roller.
Its a historic term that has been re-purposed and used correctly for once.
It has nothing to do with maturity/immaturity OR addiction.
That out of the way, lets move on to addiction - Source.
Please show me where zynga gets most of its money from people who are addicted, and please also show me data on statistics on addiction in social games.
Instead try doing a search on "video game player personality types" and go from there. IIRC the magic the gathering guys had a great simple break up.
Heck reams of data have been generated on how the freemium system works from the days when western MMOs started learning from the Asian/Korean systems.
From the top of my head - if you arent a subscriber you are the content. Its the free players who support friend networks who bring in a few players who are able or interested enough to dump in large amounts of cash before moving on.
Thats their largest source of income. The cross section of income sources with addiction is tenuous and tangential.
Some of the stuff you are saying here is incorrect/not borne out by data.
>"Whales is a term thats been there from the Casino days of Las Vegas. You may know its other variant - High roller."
"Whales" is also used in the financial world for a person with lots of money and no knowledge of what to do with it. In other words, a mark for the clever financial "advisor".
Though, I suppose that in reality there's not much difference between the two definitions.
Let's assume the term whale is the same one that is used in casinos.
Do you believe that gambling is not an addiction?
I will defer to your knowledge on the history of online gaming. I'm not a gamer.
However I'm not sure you are doing much to advance the idea that Zynga is not making its money from capitalizing on addictive behavior that rises to the level of being unhealthy. Is that what you are saying?
That seems to be what the other commenter is arguing: the business relies on cultivating an (unhealthy) addiction. It seems like a simple notion. Can you prove him wrong?
What I do know is Zynga is not the type of company I would want to work for nor invest in. And their stock price is reflective of my concerns.
You don't have to "assume", just do a search. It is still common knowledge and hasn't wafted into apocrypha so even asking people would be effective.
As I said earlier: source. I can also come up with argumentative gambits easily, but this is a subject that I actually focus on, so I'd like to see the source which gives you your confidence.
AFAIK your statements can only be supported by the most edge case and liberal interpretation of the data.
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"Zynga is.... capitalizing on addictive behavior". source? From what I know that is not how the freemium model works, so I am curious as to where you got this data. I am eagerly awaiting your response since it would be news to me.
Your comment where you seemed to put words in my mouth are disconcerting. Answering it would be giving it more grace than it deserves, since I never stated what you imply.
Your last statement is also strange. The stock price, If anything, shows that your assumptions are wrong, as the sin industry is always profitable, and zynga's stock is dropping.
Which as I said is because people got bored and moved on.
I was not trying to bait you into a trap by mentioning gambling. I only wish to point out that the choice to take a term from the gambling industry (one that profits from an addiction?) might be interesting. It might be suggestive. Or it might be pure coincidence. But it's an interesting choice.
You have mentioned "the data" a few times. May we have a source?
The stock price is an indication of Zynga's popularity with Wall Street. It has no bearing necessarily on what corporalagumbo is saying. And I never suggested it did. I mentioned it because it's one thing a casual observer (e.g. me) might follow, along with their disclosures to the SEC.
I just wish someone would please think of the children...
Seriously though, we restrict slot machines in pubs in New Zealand. And now we have slot machines on computers. Some of the slot machines look like slot machines and some look like Farmville. No difference really. The legislation will catch up.
I understand the sentiment, I am unable to traverse your distance.
Firstly - I'm not sure if this is part of the topic at hand.
Secondly a good response is going to be pretty detailed, since you've touched on a huge topic.
Technology has moved faster than legislation. Which is fine and expected. The technology brings up intricate questions which take time to answer, let alone decide on what/how/if something is to be legislated.
Thats the part which is relevant to the original discussion. Technology may leap ahead, it doesn't mean that legal understanding wont catch up and be good at it drawing the line.
--------------
A more detailed response on your assertion that Zynga is a 21st century drug dealer. While I think social games do raise some important and concerning issues, I think the responses will fall short of the distance you travel.
Zynga's games, and a large group of social games for example; are cute skinner boxes. I don't see how legislating against that aspect will be viable.
At most I can see rules laid down to ensure that the slot machine/random aspect of it, has some clear cut pay out schemes that must be enforced.
Nor do I see how I can make a case where ".. are designed to turn people into clicking-addicted machines." Its a skinner box. People have an ancient immunity to things like this, namely boredom.
Over time, people get bored and drift away. Witness the share price of Zynga and dropping engagement rates.
I've also played with, and worked alongside a lot of those psychologically vulnerable members of society - they've all pretty much gone on to kick the 'habit' or manage it like entertainment.
I've also been looking at data or articles that come out on internet addiction and gaming addiction; most people can barely agree that this is a condition. Only a few people are categorized as being victims, compared to the large number of people who play video games or use the net.
But I didn't conflate. I specifically said I was not comparing the two. It is simply an example that fits within his definition: it brings wealth to a large number of people.
You are bringing in other definitions of capitalism. I'm only commenting on his definition.
I'm not taking a jab at capitalism. I'm taking a jab at a sloppy definition.
Yes, I can confirm that from my own experience. Another fun language fact: after four bottles of beer, I start speaking with a posh British accent. After the fifth bottle, it changes into something resembling Australian with a hint of Russian, after the sixth into Irish, and then it goes downhill from there.
Hes referring to the opportunity cost. If our society is focused on rewarding those that make little trinkets to distract everyone, I guess so be it but I think the argument is that we'd rather invest those people in solving the things we are trying to distract ourselves from. To people that have been unfortunate enough to experience real poverty, medical problems, and other struggles, the equivalency of a company who makes people have some fun and distraction versus a company who contributes to the elimination of very distressing human conditions is nowhere close - although I will admit they do both produce value.
Is there really an opportunity cost? There are tons of companies, non-profits, and academic research being conducted in the medical and other more worthy spaces. It's not like the existence of Facebook changes that. Also, the tech talent wars are really only driving up the costs of Computer engineers who are interested in the social web. It's not like this impacts non-profits very much, they are still getting talented people, they just don't happen to be in the market for CS engineers.
On an unrelated note, I am curious, how can you write such long comments while working as lawyer ? Are you taking any Nootropics ? Please note that this is not a sarcasm, I am just trying to be as sharp as you are with the limited time that I have during the day :)
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 everything else we know: in one of the modern world's great ironies, a person with no respect for his fellow human beings is the de facto gatekeeper of "friendship" on the net.
Don't you think this is somewhat naive and limited? He was 19 years old when he made that comment. Other people with far more power over your life have done and said far worse things. Think about your bank accounts.
Agree 100%. Also take into account the context and intent. I jokingly make statements like this all the time and it has literally ZERO effect on my ability to do any job or manage anything in my life.
"They're f------g taking all the money back from you guys?" complains an Enron employee on the tapes. "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?"
"Yeah, grandma Millie, man"
"Yeah, now she wants her f------g money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her a------ for f------g $250 a megawatt hour."
Even that doesn't compare to the choke-hold (and the potential for indenture-ment) FB has over your current and continued life.
How much do you know about the CEO of Walmart? Do you trust him or her with all your personal shopping history? What about your apartment's building manager? Do you trust him or her to not have hidden cameras in your apartment? How much do you trust the head of state of your country? Do you trust him or her with the almost limitless amount of your personal information that may have been collected?
Walmart isn't a service. Walmart doesn't have access to your most intimate information like Facebook does.
Heck millions of Virgin Mobile accounts have been compromised. But the potential damage isn't even in the same order of magnitude of something (hypothetically) going foul at FB, either owing to deliberate policy or accidentally.
Same with JetBlue with passenger data some years ago. Not same order. Not same potential damage.
Walmart probably has more actionable data - from those purchases of condoms by a married man who did not last year, to the purchases of pregnancy tests of the woman who curiously appears just after him at the till register on lunchtimes.
Add in the bottles of wine and the alka seltzer the day after, the purchase of womans underwear in sizes too big for his wife but the same size as his boxers, and the bra that won't fit his girlfriend but will fit has 42" shirt size
there is a lot out there that is not parseable from photos even with gis data embedded
why do you think fb wants us to "share" our shopping data
You can purchase things at Walmart with cash. It's pretty much impossible to track purchases made with cash. You can't pay with an anonymous money source on the internet, and you can't obtain that much anonymity on Facebook.
You can choose to pay with cash.
You can choose to not surf with cookies or use Facebook.
You can choose not to buy, with cash or not, trackable devices like cameras, phones, video games
But people do not choose these things en mass
The issue lies in how we regulate - I believe any form of tracking or surveillance on or offline should be required to produce raw near real time feeds. There is no reasonable way we can regulate without knowing what is being collected - and becoming outraged by it's collection.
Either these should be restricted by identifiable people or published if unidentifiable.
If you can't wear some kind of mask a store could use face recognition for tracking customers. And I predict stores from the UK will start doing just that.
Yes you can pay with cash, but you have to be physically there to do that and until we'll be able to make anonymous payments on the Internet, nothing can guarantee that you are anonymous.
Uh, are you kidding me? If I'm ever buying anything questionable at Walmart, I just use cash. I usually buy condoms from Walmart, and I always use cash (and no, I'm not cheating on my girl). You're not thinking this through.
The point I was making was that with electronic transactions, discovering or infering information about a person from their purchases has just as much value as say working out someon is gay from their friends list or choice of netflix.
Use cash. But be aware it is slowly but surely becoming a ghetto.
> Use cash. But be aware it is slowly but surely becoming a ghetto.
How exactly is it becoming a "ghetto"? I have never seen any retail stores or restaurants refuse to take cash. In fact, the only place where I've encountered that issue is for buying gas. In big cities, like NYC, there are still restaurants where they only take cash.
I don't really know what distinction you're trying to make here.
> Walmart doesn't have access to your most intimate information like Facebook does
This probably varies from person to person. Walmart potentially has medical prescription data, which is inherently sensitive, but also a ton of data on nearly every product you buy and your shopping habits (obviously, only for people who buy nearly everything from Walmart, which is a lot of people), and of course credit card numbers. And some people (like myself) don't have a huge amount on Facebook. All I've got is my name, high school, college, current employer, a few movies, books, and musicians I "liked" ages ago when I first signed up, plus a tiny amount of private but nonsensitive chat history and a handful of unflattering photographs.
Regarding Virgin Mobile and JetBlue customer information: I find it hard to imagine that either of these wouldn't have way more sensitive information than Facebook for the average user/customer of each organization.
Walmart, even when it's potential for misuse of customer data is taken to it's negative extreme, is just a vendor. Not a repository of your most private data.
Walmart cannot deduce from your pictures printed at their photo kiosk if you are having an extra-marital affair. It doesn't have that kind of "putting together two and two" power.
Plus it doesn't share that with your other family members or suggest to them that they get to know your extra-marital partner better.
Where am I going with this...scratch this reply.
If you can't see the potential for abuse at FB (or any other similarly massive soc-net) and somehow are trying to draw parallels to some big box vendor with no social tentacles, my explanation will not advance your understanding of it either.
No current corporation, conglomerate or organization - Disney, Visa, Experian, Equifax, Transunion, ExxonMobil, Monsanto - has that kind of established and potential scope for intrusion into your life.
> Walmart cannot deduce ... if you are having an extra-marital affair.
Sure they can. Let's suppose my purchasing history fits the profile of a married couple, maybe even with telltale signs like feminine hygiene products. The purchases are made on weekends, at whatever time married couples go shopping for groceries and other household essentials.
But suddenly there's a new pattern--at previously unexpected times, I buy incriminating products like condoms, cologne, unusual jewelry, stuff that doesn't fit the profile. I'm pretty sure Walmart can get a pretty decent probability that I'm having an extramarital affair. Why not? Target can already tell when you're pregnant, for instance.
> No current corporation, conglomerate or organization - Disney, Visa, Experian, Equifax, Transunion, ExxonMobil, Monsanto - has that kind of established and potential scope for intrusion into your life.
I think that is a preposterous claim. Airlines know every vacation and business trip you've ever taken. Credit reporting agencies probably know more about your financial well-being than even you do. Heck, credit card companies know every financial transaction you perform.
I don't really buy the argument you started to form about how other companies can't "put two and two together." What makes you think that? Amazon certainly uses their data to make recommendations to me. Walmart can't personally target you in the store, but I'm sure they do with online purchases. There is nothing stopping Walmart from looking at your photos and deducing things, other than company policy and laws (so, the exact situation Facebook is in).
Yeah but airlines don't know if you are flying with your mistress or your sister.
And credit reporting agencies don't have your IMs, or know that you mailed hotchick2012 43 times this week, and started doing so 5 months before you changed your profile status from its complicated to single.
Walmart doesn't have facial recognition cameras up in every store tracking you. So you can just go to another store and make your purchase, keeping all your patterns intact.
The issue with putting 2 and 2 together is an issue which reared its head only post the camibrian era like IT explosion.
The old big box retailers do not have the same level of connection to your thoughts and personal information the same way online companies do.
They could do that, but only after they drastically upgraded themselves to specifically start profiling and tracking each individual - essentially by becoming more like facebook/social networks.
Your argument soars and falls depending on how connected to your personal information/social network a retailer is.
The only likely exception to that is your pharmacist - their domain of knowledge gave them pretty deep insights into your life even before the advent of the net.
> Walmart doesn't have access to your most intimate information like Facebook does.
Really? All Facebook knows is what I tell it; a mixture of truth and lies. Walmart knows what I buy from Walmart, which is potentially everything. They know when I'm getting fatter or when I'm losing weight; they know when I'm buying condoms and when I'm not; they know what I eat, what I read, whether I have pets, what kind of pets I have, and they can data mine me a hundred ways to figure out everything else. Facebook doesn't actually know anything I care much about keeping private. Walmart knows a lot more.
I don't think age matters. We all do/say dumb things, period. I suspect very few people would be happy to be represented by a worst sentences they've ever typed or uttered. If you really want to make a case that Facebook shouldn't be trusted with privacy issues, base an argument on their previous privacy failures rather than something the CEO said years ago.
It's really hard to change a person's character as they get older. In general I think that by the age of 18-21 most of our ideas of right/wrong and how to behave and treat other people are pretty much established.
tl;dr It's hard to stop being an arrogant asshole. I feel bad for the guy.
"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 any of the other startups that got big. Nobody is accusing Larry and Sergey of these sorts of shenanigans.
I'd say if anything, being a moral person is more blessing than curse when it comes to amassing wealth. It's obviously not a requirement though.
>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 any of the other startups that got big. Nobody is accusing Larry and Sergey of these sorts of shenanigans.
I think a lot of it is about the product you are making. Google was started by people who would find Google useful. Larry and Sergey were not laughing at people for wanting to search the web. Facebook is just another in a long line of marketing triumphs, similar to movie and record producers who create movies and bands they themselves would never watch or listen to. Facebook is not a tech company, they are the worst part of the entertainment industry, the nonartists.
Larry and Sergey are different from other star founders who've been accused of evil (Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg) in that they were older so maybe more mature and also relatively less entrepreneurial- their goal was academia, unlike all the young dropouts. Maybe many extremely entrepreneurial people don't respect the law. In Zuckerberg's case it does seem like he doesn't care about patents at all whereas Aaron is still mad about the IP and hates that Zuckerberg ignored the rules (re: patents, Facemash, dropping out, and everything else) and got rewarded for it.
Reading the logs I don't get the sense Zuckerberg is being dishonest or that he even considers Aaron to be a friend. The main conflict seems to be the accusation that Zuckerberg stole ideas, which is a big question for software in general: ideas want to spread so the concept of IP is arguably against the nature of ideas. At the same time, we want people to be able to get rich off a great idea even if they don't implement it successfully. This question re: IP and copyrights is something we're still resolving as a society. Until it gets resolved, if ever, lots of people are going to have lots of unfair things happen to them and it's understandable to be mad about that.
But that's what life is: unfair. Just like we can't go through life feeling guilty about how lucky we are to have survived infancy unlike some absurd percentage of humans in poor countries, we can't constantly hate on other people who are even luckier than we are re: how they don't deserve their success. No one deserves anything. Life is unfair.
1) I don't think Greenspan is mad, he seems more disappointed.
2) It is absolutely possible to treat your fellow human beings well and find richly-deserved success - Mark Zuckerberg however does not seem capable of this.
3) Even though our society might tolerate and even reward (in the short-term at least) this sort of behaviour, should we be happy that a master-exploiter of this unfairness is the guardian of social relationships on the internet?
I don't know Zuckerberg but want to play devil's advocate to give him the benefit of the doubt until he actually gets convicted of something.
> 2) It is absolutely possible to treat your fellow human beings well and find richly-deserved success - Mark Zuckerberg however does not seem capable of this.
From Aaron's account, it looks like Mark does not believe that these software ideas were original or IP. If you buy that perspective, he wasn't wrong to execute far better on the same ideas that have appeared repeatedly in the history of social networks- he was simply a sucky friend, which is unlikeable but not illegal.
He's made a bunch of people very rich with Facebook. Do you think D'Angelo, the Winklevosses, and Saverin would rather have never met Zuckerberg or would rather he never created Facebook?
>3) Even though our society might tolerate and even reward (in the short-term at least) this sort of behaviour, should we be happy that a master-exploiter of this unfairness is the guardian of social relationships on the internet?
The sin Mark's accused of is stealing people's ideas, assuming ideas are steal-able, and thereby breaching the trust of people who considered themselves his friends or coworkers. If he's guilty, I guess the question is whether someone who is immoral/amoral in one respect is able to be ethical in other areas.
Since the movie makes a good case that Zuckerberg betrayed some of his close friends, I don't trust him (or any random person) not to betray me, a random stranger / Facebook user. But I do trust Zuckerberg to want to do whatever is good for Facebook. Are people scared he's going to somehow blackmail them into staying on Facebook by threatening to release their private data to everyone? I'll be scared of that scenario if that ever seems like the best plan for Facebook.
Who else could run Facebook? Most people are less intelligent or less competent or less interested in Facebook's future. Almost anyone in Mark's situation would cash out and grow indifferent but Zuckerberg persuades me he's not doing it for the money. So I guess I'm happy he's running it because regardless of his moral judgment or human loyalty at least I feel like he cares about Facebook.
I think many problems with corporations arise from leaders' interests not being aligned with those of the company. Facebook is one of the few examples where I don't believe that's the case. It might seem psychopathic to care more about Facebook than your best friend and/or cofounder, but is that really a big problem? Maybe from the corporation's perspective (or from the user and shareholder perspective), it's actually a virtue.
I appreciate that building Facebook to the point it is at now, and maintaining focus on the future company despite buy-out offers, is not trivial. Mark is clearly a talented individual.
However what is good for Facebook =/= what is good for Facebook users. And one point that emerges from Greenspan's description of Mark is that the man may be a genius for cutting out friends and building an empire, but when it comes to human warmth, he's lacking. And the problem with that is that it may very well limit Mark's ability to imagine how something like Facebook could evolve and work, and thus limit his ability to better equate what is good for Facebook with what is good for users.
A subsidiary point is that, due to network effects, Facebook's vulnerability to a poor core philosophy is reduced, at least in the short term. Once a social network grows into our lives, it isn't easy to replace. So if Facebook is indeed "rotten at the core" (I'm not arguing it is necessarily... just saying) then it may be able to buy itself a lot of time, even if it acts in its "own" interests, not its users'. But as technology continues to develop and its environment destabilises it won't remain invulnerable forever. Unless you are interested in slavery and extortion, eventually, under our moderated democratic capitalist model, what is good for a company is being good for its users.
I think I agree with your points assuming Mark is evil.
I am not convinced Zuckerberg's lacking "human warmth." It didn't strike me that Mark thought he was actually friends with Aaron or thought he was betraying anything- that's Aaron's perspective, which was understandable but we can't be really nice to everyone who considers themselves our friends or disagrees with us on who owns an idea.
Facebook so far hasn't done anything I really disagree with. But my feelings on privacy etc aren't that strong yet, maybe a failure of my imagination because nothing bad has really happened to me yet (knocking on wood).
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.
I read the transcripts, all very fascinating. Aaron's focus is on building stuff whereas Mark's is human interaction- Aaron focuses on products and consulting whereas Mark was already thinking big picture about social. Aaron seems more ambitious than almost anyone and Mark seems 10x even more ambitious than that.
Even if Aaron is the superior engineer, Mark is the superior psychologist. Vision and navigation of systems constructed by humans turns out to be more important than building a lot of stuff no matter how cool or new it is.
Also seems like mark argues there aren't any ideas to steal and admits facebook's been done before- just this time he's going to execute it better.
And once again, in Greenspan's own transcripts, Zuckerberg comes off better -- more focused, more observant, more strategic, seeing opportunities rather than obsessing on risks, and even more generous with offers of collaboration -- than Greenspan himself.
Maybe I'm being too rosy and idealistic here, but I prefer integrity over those other traits you mentioned. Many people have a good balance, so why compromise?
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 income)"
or
"[Mark] didn't understand how to speak like a mature person his age."
Bits like those just scream "I'm a vicitim" and come off as whiny.
If Greenspan laid out the timeline and the documentation sans his editorializing it would be more powerful.
Carry these same points through any follow-up interviews, testimony, etc and I sense that Greenspan would be much happier with his outcome.
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.
Aaron is (understandably) still butthurt from failing to make his houseSYSTEM successful. And Mark clearly was not only deceiving him but also downright stealing his work. Ultimately though that lack of character doesn't really matter - Mark was obviously more driven and had a clearer vision. I think the only lesson we can learn here is that dedication always wins over talent. And besides: Stealing and building a students directory across universities is one thing, creating a profitable business and amassing 900 Million users is a completely different story (and a task to which zuckerberg had a comparatively small contribution).
Here is what I don't get about this whole thing:
Friendster - 2002
Myspace - 2003
LinkedIn - 2003
Not to mention the dozens of other social media clones around that time (I remember being members of countless social media sites in those days)
Its not like anyone at Harvard stumbled upon an amazing new idea that was going to change the game. They were building what they hoped would be better versions of things already out there. Mark registered thefacebook.com because "Face Book" is a very common phrase/object.
For better or worse, Zuckerberg won the social networking race. Congrats to him, everyone else at Harvard at that time trying to stake a claim needs to just get on with their lives.
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.
I can see how Greenspan's experience would not exactly be easy to move on from. At stake is not his own personal success, but his belief about how the world should work. Greenspan sounds like a pretty moral guy, the kind of guy who gets upset when things happen that he thinks are wrong. Basically, you're asking him to shrug and move on but for him, an antisocial bastard is in the spotlight smiling and waving and being showered with praise by the press. It sounds like, for someone like him, fixing this mistake is more important than any other typical SV-type venture he could throw himself into.
Or he could just be incompetent and bitter. Who knows.
Or... maybe he just needed some traffic to his website.
It seems everyone who had anything remotely to do with Facebook's origins has tried to cash in.
This bothers wantrapreneurs because it highlights just how much luck plays a role in a story like Facebook's. They want to believe that one founder or a few co-founders succeed based on some factor(s) under their control (hardwork, skill, etc.)
Greenspan is just another one of those people who was involved and is trying to cash in.
If anyone needs to "get over it", it's people who just can't accept that huge fads like Facebook are unpredictable and uncontrollable, and that when faced with the possibility of huge sums of "money for nothing" it brings out the worst in people all seeking a share of the bounty.
The web is a lottery.
Time to re-read the recent speech from Princeton's graduation ceremony by the author of Liar's Poker.
This is quite an overstatement. You don't simply move to Palo Alto and then have a 1/65,412 chance of starting the next Google.
Instead you have to have a great vision, great execution, and great luck. Now Zuckerberg may not have Jobsian vision and execution (or maybe he does, only time will tell), but you can't argue that he executed the hell outta Facebook and he definitely has a vision even if you find it morally bankrupt. This definitely did not just magically fall in his lap, and he certainly deserves most of the credit regardless of what individuals he screwed over at various stages.
(except I think it's quite possible for someone to do what's been done with Facebook without also being morally bankrupt)
But is the rest of the comment an overstatement?
Also, you forgot to mention great marketing. In the IM's I believe both of them at one point agree that great visionary ideas, no matter how well they are executed, (alas) do not market themselves.
Re: marketing, meh, I think Facebook pretty much went viral. Maybe there was more conscious effort there than I give it credit for, but it doesn't strike me as important for Facebook's rise.
I'm not saying it's easy to move on from. If he can't, I'm not judging him. But it's just a fact that an ongoing obsession like this will be more self-destructive than right any wrong.
I was thinking the same thing when reading the About page on his website. After the first few paragraphs I was like 'he's not even going to mention Facebook - how baller is that' and thought he had moved on in a very healthy way. But then I kept reading, and he devotes well over half of his about page to the saga. Sad. Really sad, that he is letting this define his life.
I don't understand why this person thinks Mark owed him all the information he complains about not being given. Am I obliged to inform my competitors of my intentions at every turn? Am I obliged to tell them when I change my mind about my plans? Am I indeed obliged not to deceive them? How do we know that Mark even viewed this guy as a friend, rather than perhaps as a friendly acquaintance? I can say for sure that I had many more and longer conversations on AIM with my real friends.
Maybe this guy has a reasonable beef, but it's far from clear to me.
I don't think Greenspan is complaining - I think this is meant as a warning. He's not saying that Mark acted unfairly and that he should have been nicer to Aaron (which would come across as petulant, and I think Greenspan seems quite realistic and calm about what happened), but that Mark has acted with only ruthless, narrowly-defined "self-interest", displaying no loyalty or kindness, and this bodes very poorly for the company, its investors and its users. Facebook is Mark's creation, and at the core of the company, beneath its social-open-sharing buzzwords there is no philosophy of human relationships, only Mark's shallow, self-centered heartlessness and lust for power and profit. We might think so what, but maybe we've been desensitised by the often shitty and kinda sociopathic (or socio-agnostic) behaviour of web entrepreneurs. Anyway point is the arbiter of "friendship" on the internet is a megalomaniac who seems to understand nothing about friendship - a strange situation perpetuated by a star-struck, gutless press too busy slathering him with praise to think critically. Greenspan is just pointing this out, fairly it seems.
You don't hear stories about Elon Musk shafting his friends and acquaintances, stringing them along and stealing their ideas.
Apparently Musk was a bit of a jerk when x.com merged with PayPal, and is supposedly difficult to work for even today (he works 100 hour weeks, probably demands the same high standards of his employees as he does of himself), but there's none of the skeletons in the closet with Musk as there is with Zuckerberg.
Plus there's the fact that Musk is tackling really difficult problems like online payments (fraud), mass-producing electric vehicles, making solar installations viable and aiming to make humans a multi-planetary species. Zuckerberg just created the latest social fad, IMO which is now in the process of self-destructing.
Neither Tesla nor SpaceX rely on millions of fickle web users handing over their personal information and regularly signing in to a website to look at photos and status updates. Nor can they be easily replicated by a competitor who is not a jackass.
I see. You get to baldly assert that SpaceX and Tesla are hard to copy, though few have yet tried, but when I point out that people have tried and failed to beat Facebook at their game, these things take time?
If you read all the IM's, carefully, and you know a bit of Facebook history, you should see that the targets Zuckerberg chose from which he stole the ideas he used for Facebook, like Greenspan, were the type of people who could easily be taken advantage of. He knew who he was dealing with. But there is no empathy.
In the IM's Zuckerberg goes so far as to tell Greenspan he considers him to be "like a friend" (see IM for exact wording). This is really sickening.
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.
It's a marketing failure to not capitalize on such an opportunity.
Geez, we're supposed to think less of the guy for not milking his controversial history with Zuckerburg for cash? If there's ever a right time to refrain from marketing yourself, it's when you're accusing someone else of being an opportunistic sociopath.
There's a reason there is no such link. FaceCash is currently prohibited from doing business in California by the Money Transmission Act. Aaron is trying to resolve this, but until he does his hands are kind of tied.
> FaceCash is currently prohibited from doing business in California by the Money Transmission Act.
Aaron Greenspan has a whole song and dance about how the state of California screwed him over, too. The guy comes across as nothing but a professional victim.
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)
Regardless of Greenspan's own character or his particular situation, he gives us a peek at the facts, which others are so quick to ignore.
I think there will be poetic justice in this story. Because the web is much bigger than Zuckerberg, or Facebook or even Google. The world is still getting online. It's early yet.
But what Zuckerberg has done, how he has carried himself in the presence of enormous luck, he cannot erase. He will live with this reputation as a con his entire life. Building a website, millions of people signing up, enormous hype, making millions from display ads might seem impressive today. It won't remain that way in years to come. We're just getting started. Technology will be taken for granted. There will be more attention to the things Zuckerberg carelessly disregarded.
"Dumb fucks" indeed.
Thank you Mr. Greenspan for telling your side of the story.
Who cares? More to the point, who will care? Facebook will fall eventually. In the 10 or 20 years from now that you talk about, Facebook will be a distant memory.
Does anyone care about what may or may not have gone on at IBM 30 years ago? At MySpace? Facebook is not a bank and it's not a government. It's a social media site. Nobody will care.
It's jib - as in the the front sail of a sailboat ahead of the mast. The saying is 'I like the cut of your jib' in that the way the sails are set determines both direction and style of sailing.
As smart as Greenspan is he has no clue whatsoever what it takes to create a widely used service. He is constantly stuck on legal matters and splitting hairs that no one else cares about. He would be so much better off spending his considerable intellect and productivity on more valuable activities.
I'm not going to publicly speculate on either party's moral character. But I did skim the transcripts, and I noticed one curious fact:
Zuckerberg starts and ends most of the conversations.
To clarify: I'm not sure precisely why I find it interesting, it was just one of those phenomena that raised an eyebrow, and passed my "don't publicly engage in debates about people's character whom I haven't personally met"-test. (To be fair I do make practical judgments based on moral reputation when deciding whether or not to enter relationships with others.)
It's not if it's once, but if it's always the case? Seems kind of transactional - I need to talk to this person for this, so I do; I completed that, so we're done.
Most, I guess. But even though I wasn't really paying attention to that I did make note of the fact that the conversation about how much Z was paying people was started by ThinkComp.
I think this lacks a bit of compassion. It's one thing to have some idea, not work on it, and then later see someone who made it happen. It is another thing entirely to work on an idea for years, bring someone into the group that is working with you on it (or at least advising) and then have them roll off with it and become one of the richest people in the country. Sure a zen master might take some comfort in validation of your ideas, but man it has to really hurt to not be a billionaire. That can really screw over your psyche in a bad way.
I know I would be pretty bitter in a similar situation.
I'm never going to be a billionaire. I would prefer that billionaires not get themselves elected President to cut the top tax rates, but that's about as far as it goes. We are sailing on an ocean of executable ideas, and we've got some of the best winds we've had in 10-15 years. Who has time to write 3000 words on someone else's "unjustified" success?
Tally up how many words you type into HN each day. Is it close to 3000?
I think he said at one point in the IM's to Zuckerberg Greenspan said that he writes stuff to vent. And Zuckerberg said he could understood the need for that, but kept such thoughts to himself. (See e.g. Greenspan's White Paper enronforkids.pdf)
Generally I agree with this philosophy except that in this case Aaron had been executing on this idea, and had a lot of it up and running. If the narrative is accurate he has cause to be bitter. Had he not done anything with this great idea he felt he had I would be more sympathetic to the 'ideas are worth nothing' theme.
It's one thing to study others' work and take ideas from it. Everyone does that.
It's another thing to actively engage others, talk to them as if you are friends or enter into agreements to work together, and then take ideas from their work. It's the betrayal of people's trust that's gotten him the reputation for being a con and a thief.
In one of the most telling IMs of their entire correspondence (see page 62 of The Complete Timeline), Zuckerberg stated: "i kind of view you as a friend." This came up when Zuckerberg was annoyed that Greenspan made a security hole public. Greenspan handled the situation with immense professionalism, while Zuckerberg simply could not accept responsibility. Mark's friends are only entitled to the appellation when it's convenient for Mark.
Glad to see someone else caught that. But by the same token we have to consider that Greenspan may have hand-picked these IM conversations. It does not appear he's giving us a data dump. More like another one of his White Papers where he is venting.
None of this should be even remotely interesting until you consider hundreds of millions of people have sent their personal information to the manipulative kid in the IM's. Crazy.
I agree that we're only getting limited information. I'd love to see his personal IMs, because I think those would shed even more light on his character. It's curiously ironic how the man who has access to the secrets of millions of people has revealed so little about himself.
Well put. While he may be simply "telling his side of the story", Aaron Greenspan comes off in his own writing as a sanctimonious, sour-grapes-y, whinger.
I disagree. For someone at the very least arguably cheated out of a lot of wealth and at worst simply deceived and mistreated in a very nasty way by another human being, I think Greenspan writes with a tremendous amount of calm and balance, and also I don't think he is writing simply to vent bitterness or jealousy.
I believe the greatest con of all was likely in reference to this line:
He may, in fact, be the greatest con of all time, having effectively convinced an entire nation, including the President of the United States, to believe in his extremist philosophy of radical openness.
It isn't clear if getting someone to believe in your 'extremist philosophy of radical openness' is necessarily a con, unless of course you yourself don't believe in it and/or are doing so only in furtherance of some other interest which you are obscuring.
"It isn't clear if getting someone to believe in your 'extremist philosophy of radical openness' is necessarily a con, unless of course you yourself don't believe in it and/or are doing so only in furtherance of some other interest which you are obscuring."
I do believe this is what Greenspan was getting at.
I thought the same thing. As you see him listing the logs of every Zuckerberg login to houseSYSTEM in the pdf you think "Geez, this is a bit much." And then you consider that sort of snooping is Facebook's core business. They love this sort of information and their engineers have zero conscience about working with it. In fact their logs are probably much more detailed (device, geolocation, etc.) The irony is incredible.
This poor soul has been grinding this axe for years. He's simply blaming others for his own failures. The prose is magnified by his clearly high intellect but it's easy to see through it. You need only take a look at the mess that was housesystem (his attempt at a campus social network among other things) to get an idea of why it didn't take off like facebook. Or if that's not enough, how about his payments startup facecash. No evil Zuckerberg character to blame there.. It was just a very poorly designed and executed project. Facebook won because it was better and Mark was right not to hire this guy. The sad thing is he (Greenspan) is clearly hyper intelligent, and if he'd only focus that intellect on figuring out where his work could improve instead of laying his problems at his more successful classmate's feet...
Have a look at the last IM exchange between Greenspan and Zuckerberg on the idea of protecting the privacy of students' home adresses from being accessible to any student at any university using Facebook. It is toward the end of the timeline.pdf document. The problem: Thanks to some sloppy php, anyone at any univeristy could download a .csv file of all of someone contacts including their home addresses and other private information, if that person had ever requested to export her data to csv format. Greenspan wanted this security hole fixed promptly. Zuckerberg didn't care; he just fired off an email to someone else (same guy who wrote the sloppy php?) and put it out of his mind. Then when Greenspan made others aware of the problem, Zuckerberg was upset because [un]"savvy" users might learn of security holes in Facebook. What a terrible thing that would be. We see that same sort of denigrating view of users and concealment attitude continuing at Facebook to this day.
Say what you will about Greenspan but at least the guy is responsible. We can't say the same for Zuckerberg. The kid is reckless and unremorseful.
To me, it's like Aaron lost the game with Zuckerberg because Zucks wasn't fighting fair and Aaron expected him to. The expectations were clearly different on each side. Zucks wanted to win the game and take all the marbles any way he could, and didn't care at the who's expense it came, including his friends. I think Aaron expected more fairness and is hurt, but not surprised Zuckerberg hasn't changed.
> "...and the directors and officers of any person that controls the applicant are of good character and sound financial standing." Here, the "good character" requirement would clearly preclude Mark, whose character has now been called into question more times than most of us can count.
I'm not aware of a common definition for "good character," but merely having your character "called into question," especially as a high-profile CEO (and celebrity, at that), should not be the sole grounds for being denied a license to transact money. I'm not saying there couldn't have been more to it in the case of Facebook/Zuckerberg, but in general, public defamation should not be, in itself, enough to prevent someone from building a legal business.
Wowzers, why are people so keen to be negative? Facebook are doing awesome in their mission to make the world more open and connected. And regardless of fluctuations, Facebook's value still sits around, what, $48 billion? This is far too personal - Mark was 19 and in a private chat with a friend (and he's remarkably more motivated, mature and respectful than many guys I went to uni with at that age lol). We all grow and learn a heap from college days, so to link the success of a company today to factors from almost a decade ago is a low shot. Go forth and direct your energy into creating your own empires!
Agree with all of you who say it is all about execution and timing. Zuckerberg had the right vision for what he wanted of Facebook though: a casual place to procrastinate. That is something that nobody else saw as clearly as him...and that's why his product won.
This article actually demonstrates Zuckerbergs savvy in being the one who took the social network to market. Mark played everyone extremely well and deserves credit for implementing an idea that everyone had. THis story isn't about coming up with new ideas, it's about shipping something people want.
I don't think you are using that correctly, you seem to be using it as a synonym for jealous/hater. I don't get the impression Aaron is disparaging fame or success; he is making the claim that Mark Zuckerberg has a questionable moral compass. That really doesn't relate in any way to the Aesop's Fable you reference. The fox didn't claim to dislike the grapes because they were ethically dubious; he disliked them as a way to feel better about not being able to acquire them.
I know it's a movie and not necessarily based on actual events, but people like this always make me think of the line in the social network: "If you had invented Facebook. You would've invented Facebook."
I don't know the right phrase for the opposite of 'preaching to the choir', but that's what I think this post here on HN is: the opposite of preaching to the choir.
Perhaps this is one of the places where legal action is justified? Maybe he should've got a patent like all those monsters out there today. At least his would actually have a product behind it.
It's nice to here it from the horse's mouth instead of second-hand from a movie made to generate revenue though.
I've been reading Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power recently, and throughout this essay, I can't help but think just how all the "moves" Zuckerburg were accused (and infamous) of were exemplary of a number of these laws. Not trying to pass judgement on Zuckerburg's virtues or lack thereof (it's best to accept the inherent unfairness in life on the road to power), but he is a master of power plays:
Law 3: Never put too much trust in friends, learn how to use enemies.
If only Zuck's "friends" knew about the first part of the law. Zuck was, however, a master in exploiting and gaining information from his "enemies". Further, he used what his competitions to frame what his product should be.
Law 4: Conceal your intentions.
"Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions" -- apparent in both the Winklevoss and Greenspan's stories. Zuck misled and deceived until the right time.
Law 5: Always say less than necessary...classic Zuck, "There was a need for facebook, so I made it"
Law 6: Court attention at all cost.
His fight to receive coverage in the Crimson ensuring the early dominance of thefacebook.
Law 7: Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit.
If any of the stories about facebook is true, then Zuck's a textbook example of observing this law. According to Greene: using other people's work "not only will [...] save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed". Clearly it has worked to achieve his "genius" aura.
Law 9: Win through your actions, never through argument.
He never let the lawsuits detract him away from the work too much. Now that facebook is too big, what actually happened really doesn't matter anymore.
Law 11: Learn to keep people dependent on you.
Facebook is too big now...G_G
Law 12: Use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim.
The part about facebook's frequent change and backtracks of privacy must has something to do with this.
Law 13: When asking for help, appeal to people's self-interest, never to their mercy or gratitude.
Zuckerburg appealed to Greenspan's desire to help entrepreneurs when asking for advice. Also, his claim that Greenspan was one of those on his level can be seen more of a classic ego-stroking rather than admission of admiration.
Law 14: Pose as a friend, work as a spy.
"Knowing about your rival is critical. Play the spy yourself to gather valuable information that will keep you a step ahead. [...] There is no occasion that is not an opportunity for artful spying".
Yeah, Zuck's a master at this.
Law 15: Crush your enemey totally.
Check.
So out of the first 18 laws, the rise of facebook and Zuckerburg have observed 11, textbook style. His amoral approach to power and life is definitely key to his success.
>His amoral approach to power and life is definitely key to his success.
Bit of a hasty conclusion. Have you really analyzed the sum-total of his behaviors/moves and feel you can conclusively state that the above 11 "laws" are the cornerstone of his success? I doubt that. Also, the book you reference is really not useful for any human being that intends to be part of a actual society. It is a great primer for a sociopath, but I will assume that is not what you aspire to be. Some people see successful sociopaths and incorrectly conclude their sociopathy is what made them successful. That is like assuming Steve Jobs, who was somewhat notorious for being...blunt, was successful because he was an asshole, instead of in spite of that characteristic. It also willfully ignores a lot of non-sociopaths that are successful and disregards other factors that may be more causative.
I would take that book with a big grain of salt and not use it as a manual for life. Or you can, I just don’t predict great success. I would predict a long string of people telling other people what an ass you are and causing you to have countless doors closed to you without ever knowing it or knowing why; primarily because people don’t relish partnering with/working for/associating with sociopaths. For every "successful" sociopath you see that lives by those "laws" there are millions of others that also live by those "laws" that have nothing to show for it but a string of failed relationships and a complete and utter lack of friends. Beware of survivorship bias[1], it can teach you only the wrong things.
Thanks for the comment, you're right, my conclusion was definitely hasty and very much lacking reading it the second time. The 11 laws were illustrated through historical examples, showing how observance and transgression of each primarily resulted in the win/loss of power. I found it very interesting that Zuckerburg's rise illustrated many of these laws.
However, I don't think the laws outlined (or at least all of them) only apply to sociopaths.
Law 2: Never put too much trust in friends, learn how to use enemies. This is just as defensive as manipulative, we would like to think our friends will always be loyal, but that's simply not true.
Law 3: Conceal your intentions.
Law 4: Always say less than necessary.
Law 6: Court attention at all cost.
Marketing and public relations use these all the time.
Law 7: Get others to do the work, and you take credit.
Indeed, this one breaks hearts and how we wish that no one ever does this. You can chose to play the game, or learn how it can happen to better defend against credit-stealing. If only Tesla was aware...
Law 9: Win through actions rather than arguments.
I actually don't see anything sociopathic about this law at all.
Law 11: Learn to keep people dependent on you.
Gaining early traction is pretty important for a startup's success.
Law 12: Use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim.
This is mostly used in adversarial situations, more like a law of war rather than law of life. But again, "crush your enemy totally" is preached in Sun Tzu's Art of War, but the book is still a classic.
Law 13: When asking for help, appeal to people's self-interest, never to their mercy or gratitude.
This is one of the tenet in Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people", simply explains human nature.
Like every piece of knowledge, the laws outlined in the book really depend on your own interpretation and how you apply them. It's similar to learning about security so you can protect yourself against exploits and make robust products.
I do. My chat clients are set to automatically log, so that when I talk to someone a week later, I can look at the history. More importantly, a lot of questions get asked and answered over IM, so I can check it for answers to "why is X broken" or "How do I Y, again?", or "what was your mailing address?" without having to actually _ask_ the person again.
I've never looked back at archived IMs from years past, though, but they are still squirreled away on the removed hard drives from past machines.
feeding the tinfoil hats industry: the European Commission blocked this website and flagged it as illegal/scam :)
I apologise for not contributing, but I can't access the page so I have no idea what it says.. but by the amount of extensive comments here, I'm dying of curiosity
There needs to be a label placed on the idea of feeling the need to bow to the wishes of critics who try to limit the idea of valid entrepreneurship to activities deemed "beneficial to society." I propose Founder's Guilt Complex.
Why on earth - when life is so big and beautiful and complex - should I feel guilty if I make money from an activity that does nothing more than give people a diversion from life's burdens and problems? College football may be a joke to pointy-head types but then reading Latin (my own peculiar idea of fun) is equally a joke to the cheering fans who join in inter-collegiate rivalries. Likewise for playing video games or hiking in the woods or listening to rock-and-roll or producing reality-TV shows or most any other activity you can name whose main goal is relaxation, entertainment, escape from life's burdens, or just plain self-indulgence. And social networking is no exception. I may not do much on Facebook (I don't) but so what? Others can and do like to share things with people of varying degrees of relationship to them and more power to them for liking to do this. It is their choice. It is a free country. It is not for me to be a scold who upbraids them for doing so. Nor should I be crabbed or pinched about what founders choose to do to create and market products and services designed to satisfy such proclivities or to make money from them.
Yes, I can set about in life to conquer diseases or to abolish poverty or to alleviate people's suffering and all such things are ennobling. I can do such things via a profit-making venture or I can make my money on other things and then use it to advance higher goals through giving. Or I can devote time and energy to helping others in my personal life. All of that is great but it hardly defines the boundaries of worthwhile human activity. Life has enough problems without having someone of a judgmental spirit continually taking us to task for wanting to have some fun as well or for trying to promote fun things for others. In a free society, there is room for fun things as well and for those who see it as worthwhile to take risk in building companies that seek to market less-than-weighty things to the public.
Life certainly can be perverse. In 17th century England, as modern western society was taking shape, you had, on the one side, royalists who despised political freedom, who valued rule by a church hierarchy, and yet who were much given to licentious habits in their lifestyles while, on the other, you had those who agitated for political freedom, who fought oppressive forms of centralized rule, who ultimately broke away to form what became America, and yet who in their personal lives bore the grim face of the puritan that sought at every turn to chain, quarter, and shame everyone all about who thought it might be fun to dance or to have a little fun in life. It seems that in our modern society we have ported over the spirit of the puritan in castigating others even as we have won the freedoms that allow us under law to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Well, if the pursuit of happiness was deemed a worthy goal of a society's founding documents, far be it from me to stand grim-faced telling others that they should feel guilty in not conforming to my narrow view of acceptable life activities - and that includes how I choose to make my living or start my business.
I don't think this is a mere technical issue either. I believe that no guilt or stigma should attach to ventures doing legal things just because they don't set out to solve World Problems. The poor have always been with us. So too have wars, rapes, and murders. Ditto for disease and death. I am the first to say "bravo" to those who do not sit resigned to accept all these destructive elements in life but who instead spur themselves to do something to help make things better not just for themselves but for the broader society too. That said, such activities cannot be the only things that define our goals in life, nor should they be. There is value in having enjoyment and fun in life and this is a transcending value that betters society. In the entrepreneurial world, there is no room for a spirit of self-righteousness. Therefore, I say away with Founder's Guilt Complex. If you want to do a venture, do it honestly and with integrity, drive, boldness, and energy. Just don't let others tell you that you should feel guilty about offending their scruples. Enjoy and make it work without guilt. You can deal with Weighty Issues too if you are so led. Just don't listen to those who say that what you are doing is not worthwhile unless it is narrowly confined to them.
So if the VC industry chose to pour all kinds of money into creating something called social networking, and if all kinds of talented engineers have flocked to that industry in pursuit of money or other personal goals, that is by definition a great benefit to society because it has given many, many people the chance to do things that were scarcely thought possible just a decade ago - and to derive simple pleasures from the diversions or other benefits afforded to them through such networking. Whatever the flaws associated with individual people or companies in such an industry, there is nothing whatever wrong with those who devoted their money and their efforts to making all this possible.