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PG about to speak at Facebook, partnership announcement to follow
- dman 16y agoIs HN soon going to act as the product development group of the big guns like google, facebook? Or maybe pg has convinced facebook to port over to arc ?
- mahmud 16y agoIn what universe does this drivel merit a single upvote, much less 9? 1) HN is not a product development group, it's a message-board. In the same way that the community bulletin-board at the grocery store is not a think-tank for the "Big Agro", "Mainstream Media", or the "Military Industrial Complex". 2) Port everything to Arc? Riiiight, because the raison d'être of YCombinator is to further PG's closet lambda cause and preach the merits of his pet Lisp dialect.
- mgummelt 16y ago1) I think he meant YC, in which case this new deal makes the metaphor exaggerated, but fairly appropriate. 2) That was a joke. Though I definitely would have rather coded in Arc than PHP when I was at Facebook.
- mahmud 16y agoNevertheless, I think big news like these deserve a little more thought, and facts, before jumping to jokes and snide remarks. There is a reason I am not at Slashdot.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- dman 16y ago1) I did mean YC. Sorry about the initial mistake. YC companies seem to do a great job of turning ideas into products. I guess it happens because there is no corporate redtape, infinite market sizing, or corporate apathy in a YC startup that exists in larger companies. I believe YC is much more efficient at turning ideas into products than large companies. Which is why I feel that YC can act as the fast throughway where the best and the brightest from google/ facebook etc depart temporarily for a year or two and return to the fold with a successful product. Large companies have a lot of policies meant to push the average employee up which end up holding their best employees back. Working in an autonomous setting within YC or another group would allow the best and the brightest from the larger companies to create products quickly. All this being said - my comment was definitely armchair analysis - I am not related to either the large companies or to YC. 2) Porting to Arc was meant to be a joke. PS: You need to chill out.
- Mystalic 16y agoAnnounced: http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/405 http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/405
- DanielRibeiro 16y agoSome investitors complained at Angelconf 2010, or maybe on a press coverage of it (don't really remember), about angels financing Facebook's expensive "selection program" (buying startups as a means of hiring people). Wonder how this will be seen those who made such claims...
- amirmc 16y agoI'm curious. Does that mean that the angels don't expect to get a decent return if FB buys their investment?
- DanielRibeiro 16y agoIf I recall correctly, they feel like startups sell too early to Facebook, foregoing the oportunity to get bigger. Pg said this is good, because the founders are instantly removing all risk for what is alredy a lot of money. Investitors are not so thrilled, because they are not getting that much money, and would be willing to take the risk. However, founders don't have 100 companies they are investing, so the risks are not felt the same by founders and angels. Angel conf presentations say a lot more: http://justin.tv/ycombinator http://justin.tv/ycombinator
- staunch 16y agoI'm pretty sure YC wants their companies to IPO more than almost anyone else. YC is in the same boat as angel investors. The difference is that YC is sympathetic to founders when they want to cash out vs shoot for the stars.
- DanielRibeiro 16y agoIf it is not explicitely said, (too many essays/videos/interviews about the subject), this is certainly the tone on Hiring is Obsolete: http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html Also, pg explicitely mentions founders not willing to take a safe exit now instead of an uncertain big exit in a possible future may not be such a good idea (http://paulgrahamsidebar.heroku.com/guidetoinvestors.html#gm_topic_6 http://paulgrahamsidebar.heroku.com/guidetoinvestors.html#gm...) But my question was not regarding YC, but more about angels.
- myprasanna 16y agoA quick question: Is instant personalization just removing a click that is otherwise required by an application to access all this data? Is there any new data that I can't access via the api, that is coming here. Maybe devs who work with FB connect more often can clarify.. Thanks in advance.
- rwhitman 16y agoI hope this means more improvements to the FB platform. Has anyone else tried to build a product exclusively on top of the new Graph API yet? Curious if anyone else has the same opinions that I do - not mature enough to trust just yet...
- rokhayakebe 16y agoSome year PG will be "This year's most influential person in tech"
- sliverstorm 16y agoThis is highly ironic, IMHO, given the anti-FB attitude that's been flagrantly displayed on HN for the past several months.
- pchristensen 16y agoThere's a big difference between HN and YC. HN is people who like startups, YC is a mentor/investor. The HN community might not like what Facebook has been up to, but YC knows that being friends with FB is good business.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- sliverstorm 16y agoThis is true. I feel it's still ironic though, as people on HN I feel typically look up to YC and pg, and many would like to fly under YC's wing.
- spolsky 16y agoI know! I know! Step 1. They'll announce that Facebook is going to invest in any Y Combinator companies that want to make their products work well with Facebook. Step 2. They'll announce that Facebook will pre-acquire any Y Combinator companies without going through the trouble of demo day, angel investment, etc. Step 3. Getting accepted to Y Combinator will mean automatically being acquired by Facebook. All Y Combinator founders will have guaranteed jobs at Facebook with 4 year vesting lockup. Step 4. Paul and Jessica realize that there's no glory in being Facebook's unpaid campus recruiters, but unfortunately, their own vesting deal will require them to hang around pretending to be friends with Mark Zuckerberg for another 13 months.
- nopassrecover 16y agoDoesn't this fly in the face of "don't deal with jerks"? (I'm not being deliberately inflammatory, this is a genuine query)
- noahth 16y agoso there's this thing called money...
- pg 16y agoIf you mean Mark, I don't think he is.
- david927 16y agoWhat remains to be seen is how many who would otherwise apply feel the same way. The sense I get in the community is that a lot of people think he is, and this may adversely affect the quality of applicants.
- nicholasjbs 16y agoThis doesn't make sense to me. Why would people not apply to YC just because they now have the option of gaining access to more Facebook APIs? FWIW, I spoke with Zuckerberg today. He certainly didn't set off my "jerk detector" in any way.
- nopassrecover 16y agoIt's good to hear he's a nice guy, but the "jerk" concern is about his (perhaps underserved) reputation for exploitation and dishonesty.
- nopassrecover 16y agoThat's actually good to hear and I meant Mark although obviously Mark != Facebook. When I say "not a jerk" I'm thinking a strong respect for liberty (individual rights / respect for the rights of others). However, and a lot of this is influenced by allegations, Mark has done the following wrong by my reckoning, enough to question whether he is safely "not a jerk": 1. Been trusted with source code and market insight from a group he worked with, told them it was useless and then used it to develop his own site. 2. Shown little respect for privacy or IP concerns of users until market pressure forced him. 3. Been dishonest with users by changing terms and using the data of users for Facebook business purposes without explicit permission (now largely rectified). 4. Copied the look, feel and features of early competitors while litigating those who attempt the same with Facebook. 5. Allegedly (unlikely perhaps) given away a share of the company as part of overdue project complications and not advised future investors. While a lot of this is probably untrue, it's enough for me to question the man's integrity, honesty and ability to be trusted.
- rpledge 16y agoMeh, personally I dislike the idea of building a business on top of someone else's platform. Facebook/Twitter/etc are good ways to reach out to people and spread your message, but it's too easy for them to block you or reimplement your idea.
- thisorthat 16y agoAgreed 100% and came here to say just this. Perfect recent example would be Tweetmeme. Plus you do not know how long these platforms are going to last there just here until someone comes up with something better. When they fold you fold unless you can adapt like those companies that made applications for Myspace and then moved on to Facebook.
- jambo 16y agoTweetmeme isn't a great example. They didn't get steamrolled—they now power the official Tweet Button, and they'll power (they are?) DataSift, which is going to give people crazy querying capability against real-time twitter data.
- thisorthat 16y agohmmm... I read either on mashable or techcrunch that tweetmeme was changing focus to analytics since twitter decided to do the retweet. Never saw anything about them working with Twitter. Found the link: http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/12/twitter-tweet-button/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/12/twitter-tweet-button/ I do see mentioning of an agreement with Twitter but it is my understanding that Twitter has a licensing agreement to use the tweetmeme technology not that tweetmeme will be powering everything.
- jambo 16y agohttp://blog.tweetmeme.com/tag/datasift/ http://blog.tweetmeme.com/tag/datasift/ Edit: You could be right about the Tweet Button. DataSift will be run on TweetMeme's servers drawing data from the firehose.
- greenlblue 16y agoIs this real?
- jacquesm 16y agoWell, I guess that answers this question: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1172025 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1172025 ;) Joking aside, this is an interesting development, it means that anybody looking to disrupt FB or something affiliated with FB is now going to avoid applying to YC unless they intend do be acquired.
- msy 16y agoI can't be the only one that finds this makes YC less attractive. I looked at YC as mentoring and a leg up for interesting ideas, not a sausage factory for Facebook Apps.
- Keyframe 16y agoThis sounds great for YC startups that are building anything married to facebook. Also, really great move by facebook, they get a pre-approved pool of third parties to expand their world of facebook. It sounds like a win-win. Unless facebook would like to put their fingers all over YC's, including those that aren't related to facebook in any way - e.g. "Pg says we MUST have facebook integration like this, we have this document we got from facebook on how and what to put into our product. Do it bro - he'll shoot us in the face. Here he comes, I can hear the lambda keychain. Just do it!".
- scrame 16y agoYuck.