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The Big Game, Zuckerberg and Overplaying your Hand
- jaaron 16y agoQuote of the day: "Zuckerberg is clearly the worst thing that’s happened to our industry since, well, spam" Couldn't agree more.
- jorgeortiz85 16y agoIronic, coming from the CEO of Mahalo.
- butterfi 16y agoblowhard on blowhard crime?
- pyre 16y ago"It takes one to know one" ?
- waterlesscloud 16y agoThis blog entry is the Perfect Dilemma for the HN crowd.
- jacquesm 16y agoIt's like when your evil mother in law drives your car over a cliff. Mixed feelings. To upvote or not to upvote, that's the question.
- brandonkm 16y agoI enjoyed his very direct analysis of the situation (however opinionated) and the list of links chronicling Facebook's recent changes were appreciated as well. Upvoted.
- jasonmcalacanis 16y agoThat actually made me laugh!
- jacquesm 16y agoI've said it before, with your business acumen you could literally move the world, it pains me to see you waste your time with shit like mahalo.
- najirama 16y agoYou have indeed said it before - but with all due respect ww.com is perhaps one of the shittiest websites I have ever had the displeasure to visit. From the horrific UI, to the icky spywarish ambiance, your website exudes an aura of danger. I am no fan of Mahalo, but before you run around telling people that they are wasting their time on shit, how about you make sure you aren't excreting any yourself.
- jacquesm 16y agoI'm as identifiable as can be, and I have not hidden in any way what I've been up to in the past. I speak to JC as myself, with my name and reputation in full view, not as some anonymous entity (like you are). But, you're absolutely right that ww.com is nothing to be proud of (and believe me, I'm not), other than that it has managed to stay alive for 12 years and counting against pretty strong competiton. The horrific UI is there because I suck as a designer and because for the longest time I simply wished for it to die so I could get on with my life. That's a long story, maybe one day I'll write it up, the word 'depression' should probably figure in it somewhere and I countered that by building windmills on a very sparsely populated island in Northern Ontario, Canada. The content is a matter beyond my control, I've been upset about it since day one and I've tried very hard to keep it in check but there seems to be no way of stopping the influx of jerks. The current balance is just about as good as I can get it. As for the the difference between mahalo and ww.com, the second that I find a way to diversify I'm out of the webcam business, I've made that more than clear in other posts, but at least it does not pollute another resource that is useful, such as search results. The last four years have been an endless succession of trial balloons, none of which had enough air in them to go very far. And I don't have the illusion that I have the business acumen of JC either, even though I've been around the block, I attribute most of the success to simply blind luck. I'm grateful for the chance it gave me to learn though, and it has allowed me to materially improve the lives of a fair number of people in ways that would have otherwise been absolutely impossible, and it introduced me to a large number of very nice people. Ww.com has caused people to find each other and get married, and has caused people to get divorced. People were born on the webcam (and Elephants too!) and died there, after long bouts with disease. It's an indelible part of the early history of the internet, and it was at times lots of fun to be part of it. And at other times an enormous headache. Thanks for the feedback by the way, I'll definitely try to improve things. Think of ww.com as the millstone around my neck that somehow keeps me alive. Feel free to tell me how to turn this around for the better, I'm open to any and all suggestions, I've been struggling with this for longer than I care to remember.
- jaaron 16y agoIf it's my current car, then she's done me a favor. The cars likely worth less than blue book value. Seriously, I call it my first "disposable car" because we only needed a car for a few months and I wasn't willing to pay much. Luckily I have a rather marvelous mother-in-law, so I just need to find some other villain to borrow my junker.
- puredemo 16y agoWhat the fuck is up with the downvote mob on HN lately? Feel free to downvote posts that are malicious or flat out wrong but why vote down genuine conversation and responses? Sheesh.
- brandnewlow 16y agoMahalo's not a business I can get excited about, but this Calcanis guy consistently writes extremely interesting stuff, has done huge things for entrepreneurs, and is prolific in ways that deeply impress me. Can't take that away from him.
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- kixxauth 16y agoCalcanis is the ringleader in a racket. He talks more than he actually does anything. He writes posts like this to get traffic. He's like the Sarah Palin of the valley. Amusing to watch, but otherwise worthless.
- ojbyrne 16y agoI could not get past the initial self-promotion. Talk about overplaying your hand.
- inmygarage 16y agodisagree. i think few people write as persuasively as Calacanis - his ability to make a case for something and to articulate it is, despite the tasteless self-promotion, admirable. "Didn't anyone read "Tom Sawyer"? We're whitewashing Zuckerberg's fence."
- lakeeffect 16y agoI think Apple was the first to get us to do this for them at 40% cut rather than 30%. Both remarkable takes for their subsequent effort.
- JacobAldridge 16y agoOf course, you're not paying them for their effort. You're paying them for creating a distribution channel you can access, and then the ongoing product development that maintains and grows that distribution base. Linking it to subsequent effort is like saying a programmer should only charge $1 for all bar the first copy of their program, given how easy it is to burn new dvds.
- robryan 16y agoActually reading this I wonder why facebook gave applications the ability to collect email addresses easily? Lowers platform lock in as someone like Zynga if they do move away from facebook can just use the email to keep the user base they have acquired.
- jwegan 16y agoThey had to give the FB app developers some alternative to newsfeed notifications to keep them from getting to enraged when their primary source of recruiting users was yanked out from under them.
- codexon 16y agoNo wonder he settled with ConnectU: Zuckerberg: Someone is already trying to make a dating site. But they made a mistake haha. They asked me to make it for them. So I'm like delaying it so it won't be ready until after the facebook thing comes out.
- risotto 16y agoI'm not ready to cut and run from Facebook yet, but of all the important tech CEOs I can think of, Zukerberg is easily the one I least trust and respect. He's young, has no other industry success, and is way too eager to try to dominate the Internet. It just doesn't feel right.
- jteo 16y agoIt is difficult to distinguish between talent and people who are lucky.
- megablast 16y agoYes, but it is so hard to tell the two apart, especially when you are talking about someone a lot of people have strong opinions about.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- aaronbrethorst 16y ago"I'm not ready to cut and run from Windows yet, but of all the important tech CEOs I can think of, Gates is easily the one I least trust and respect. He's young, has no other industry success, and is way too eager to try to dominate the PC. It just doesn't feel right." Meh.
- JacobAldridge 16y agoI prefer 'Zuckerpunched' over 'Zucked" - implies a level of underhandedness. And I think the various items on the list represent different things. Duplicating Four Square and Twitter features is hardly the same level of Zuckerpunching as constantly changing privacy features.
- megablast 16y agoExactly. You are not stealing anything from Foursquare, or twitter, unless the whole industry is stealing from everybody all the time. Personally, as much as I fear facebook taking too much control, I don't see either of these as being big issues. I don't put important stuff on my fb account, and most people I know do not care that all this information is available. These are the same people who see absolutely nothing wrong with supermarkets loyalty cards, and their details being sold off to other companies. This is the majority now, who think more CCTV cameras are a good idea and make the world safer, who agree with more stringent airline boarding procedures, and support the government taking away out rights if they want to. This is the world we live in, privacy has been slowely eroded away for a number of years now, and there are much more important stuff to worry about on the entertainment news shows.
- to_jon 16y agoHalf of his rant focuses on Zuck 'stealing' features from other websites and potential competitors. Since when did adding new features that someone else invented become a moral issue? In many industries, that's standard practice. Google didn't exactly invent email. There's no moral standard to apply here. His other assertions about Zuck screwing over past partners is more troubling.
- jackowayed 16y agoGrammar PSA: hyphen != dash! The hyphen is the key on your keyboard. It's what goes between some words when they're acting as one word, e.g. mother-in-law. The dash is longer--it's either a long ("em") dash character or 2 hyphens, as I used here--and it's the grammatical construct that acts somewhat like a comma. And I'm not just nit-picking. It's confusing to use a hyphen when you mean dash, especially when you also have hyphens in the vicinity. Here's the sentence that convinced me to post this: >I predict a complete heads-up match with Facebook–Zynga’s now been double-crossed not once but twice by Zuckerberg. The characters in "heads-up" and "double-crossed" are both hyphens, but the character between "Facebook" and "Zynga" should be a dash (or 2 hyphens). Edit: So he's using en dashes, which are shorter, but they are different from--and slightly longer than--hyphens. But it's much easier to tell an em dash from a hyphen than an en dash from a hyphen, and the em dash is proper. Here's a hyphen, followed by an en dash, followed by an em dash: - – —
- aptimpropriety 16y agoIn your copy paste, as far as I can see the [line] between "Facebook" and "Zynga's" is, indeed, an em-dash (or at least longer than the other dashes).
- jackowayed 16y agoHm, you're right. They look basically identical on his blog, but different here. And now that I look really closely, they appear to be slightly longer on his blog as well. Edit: Also, it's a lot easier to tell in Firefox 3 than Chromium. Ah, the web.
- celoyd 16y agoThey’re en dashes, which should have a space on either side when used that way, so he’s still doing it wrong.
- jswinghammer 16y agoWere you actually confused? Are you smart enough to know what an "em" dash is and not smart enough to know that the hyphen in heads-up works differently than Facebook-Zynga. The only way that would make sense is if they merged and for some reason kept Zynga as part of their name. Given the context that's obviously not happening. An em dash is typically considered bad practice in formal writing. If he wanted to be formal he would have used a semicolon I think. In informal writing an em dash often replaces the work of other punctuation. Note: I don't care. I was able to understand him just fine and that's all I care about. If he was writing a scholarly paper I'd take the time to correct it and send him some suggestions. I'd also only do this if I was asked to do so.
- johnl 16y agoI like the comparison with poker. Doesn't mean that Facebook is out of the game by a long shot, it does open the space up for some competition. Maybe the companies that helped push FB along should get together and start their own?
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- whodareswins 16y agoAnyone who calls fb credits a "tax" knows nothing about payments. A ubiquitous payment system where users are already authenticated could easily double conversion rates once deployed at scale. 30% off of 2X is a great deal
- tokenadult 16y agoYes, it is 1.4 times the deal people had, if and only if the conversion rate goes up that much. Whether the terms will change or not in the future is also something that a businessperson would consider. P.S. Yeah, I know the mathematics above isn't exact if there is already a fee for transactions, etc., etc.
- whodareswins 16y agoActually the numbers could be much, much better than 2X. But your last point about the risk of a changing playfor is very valid. In the case of payments, I'd bet for a conservative initial system that gets more flexible over time. The nature of anti-fraud almost mandates that approach.
- froo 16y ago>Actually the numbers could be much, much better than 2X. Or the numbers could be exactly the same, either way, he's muscling in on 30% of their revenue for providing pre-existing functionality and expecting them to like it or lump it. If it was a smaller cut, I imagine it would be a much easier pill to swallow, but 30% is just plain greed.
- benologist 16y agoSure, but: Social Gold - http://www.jambool.com http://www.jambool.com Live Gamer - http://www.livegamer.com http://www.livegamer.com GamerSafe - http://www.gamersafe.com http://www.gamersafe.com MochiCoins - http://www.mochimedia.com http://www.mochimedia.com HeyZap - http://www.heyzap.com http://www.heyzap.com and more... And none charge 30%.
- jacquesm 16y agoTakes one to know one.
- fleaflicker 16y ago"Good Designers Copy, Great Designers Steal." Saying that Twitter and FourSquare were "Zucked" is a bit much. Great companies do this all the time.
- code_duck 16y agoCompanies that I strongly dislike do that all the time. They sometimes end up great in terms of earning potential, but rarely are they the ones that I respect or admire.
- redcap 16y agoI disagree, great designers innovate. You build on the shoulders of those who came before, but if you're not doing something new and innovative, it's not great. The biggest example I have is Apple.
- fleaflicker 16y agoWas the original facebook an innovative myspace/friendster? We're reacting negatively to Facebook infringing on foursquare's turf because facebook is the bigger company. Like Microsoft was ten years ago. What about bing? Now that Microsoft is the underdog they're a lot more palatable.
- frossie 16y agoLast year, when I realized that Zuckerberg was an amoral, Asperger’s-like entrepreneur Bad sentence. It implies that Asperger's is a derogatory term.
- joeyo 16y agoRegardless of whether or not it should, Asperger's (and related terms like "aspie" and "spectrum-y") can have derogatory connotations.
- frossie 16y agoDude, that was my polite way of saying "HINT: You don't want to be one of those people that use that word in the derogatory sense."
- staunch 16y agoIf he said "Zuckerberg is a cancer on the internet" would you have the same response? Asperger's is an illness. It is a bad thing.
- frossie 16y ago<sigh> It was linked with the word "amoral". Amoral is not an illness, it is a personal flaw. It's his blog. He is allowed to call the guy a retard if he wants. I, on the other hand, don't have to like it, and it seriously detracted from selling me his POV. Just saying.
- hristov 16y agoAsperger's has nothing to do with being amoral or immoral. Asperger's people have trouble following certain more subtle social norms but that has little to do with morality. Some of the biggest amoral criminals in the world have been very adept socially (think Goebbels or Bernie Madoff), while some people whose morality was always lauded were known to be socially awkward (e.g. Einstein). So while Aspergers is a disorder it is completely wrong to equate it with lack of morality.
- mortenjorck 16y agoWhen this is all over, when Facebook has returned to Orkut status, its bold dreams of the entire web wired up by Like buttons and Instant Personalization into the Facebook mothership dashed upon the iceberg of the fickle social market, what will we have learned?
- emullet 16y agoI find Calacanis a bit annoying, but I think he's mostly right. Contrary to what Calacanis thinks, adding new features that let you compete with other apps isn't wrong. Its part of business. If they want to muddy the purpose of their product by adding 101 bells and widgets to compete with everyone under the sun, they sure can do it. I do agree with Jason that Zuckerberg seems to have a questionable history of integrity...based on rumor. And I certainly agree that Facebook seems hell-bent on harvesting the souls of their users. The latter is far more troubling that any competitive feature additions.
- Volscio 16y agoCalacanis should hang out with Mark Cuban. They're both getting less relevant.
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- rms 16y agoThis criticism of Zuckerberg is insular and reactionary. He's due for a minor user backlash, but there is no way the most recent Facebook changes could trigger a backlash at the level of Beacon 1.0. I think this hope that Zuckerberg crashes and burns is a combination of jealousy and wishful thinking.
- pg 16y agoYes, I agree with you. This thread is full of one sentence comments with large numbers of points. Not exactly HN at its best.
- indigoviolet 16y agoI work for Facebook and am naturally biased, but even in my cap as a longtime HN reader, I was disappointed at the difference between the reception to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1339248 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1339248 versus the other Facebook-related posts here.
- puredemo 16y agoFair enough. I'm a user who isn't even all that concerned about privacy, but it's still not a pleasant feeling to have Facebook continually rearrange what they have decided to do with my information at their every whim. It's sort of like dating someone who all the sudden decides to start calling you at work throughout the day. Just a bit unnerving. Facebook ends up feeling dictatorial and paternal. And that's aside from whether the privacy concerns are valid (which at least some appear to be.)
- pyre 16y ago> I think this hope that Zuckerberg crashes and burns is a combination of jealousy and wishful thinking. Maybe jealousy from some, but I doubt the majority that dislike Zuckerberg/Facebook are jealous of him/it.
- spking 16y agoVery persuasive. I finally pulled the trigger and deleted my account tonight. I'm not sure that Diaspora is the answer either, but frankly privacy is only half of my problem with Facebook. The other half is that it's simply a massive timesuck. That hour a day I wasted being a voyeur of friends and family's lives can now go back toward living my own life.
- thijsschoemaker 16y agoIt seems Leo Laporte was Zucked by Jason Calacanis.
- mchristoff 16y agoWait, am I missing something or is Jason really labeling fb's clamp down on crapville spam as a stab in the back? Not a zuck defender by any means, but defending zynga... Come on. Guess it takes a spammer to defend a spammer.
- malloreon 16y agoThis is the only piece of Calacanis' work that I've liked thus far. He is 100% correct.