8 ms·

Lars Rasmussen: Why I quit Google to join Facebook

161 points by mcbain 16y ago

pedanticfreak 16y ago
One could say Wave failed because of a lack of users. Especially users meaningfully connected to each other. Really it doesn't matter if the software is shit. Millions of people flock to crappy PHP forums all over the world. Facebook has those users with reasons to talk to each other. Whether that makes Facebook more important than Google I don't think is what's really going on here.
pama 16y ago
I found it interesting to hear that the size of the company (2.5K employees) would feel very different to that of google (25K employees). Does this size difference simply mean that google has one extra layer of management (many centers) compared to facebook, or is there some other difference? The author speculates about the compensation, including stock options, but is there anything else?
- staktrace 16y ago
  I don't think there is much intrisincally different between Facebook and Google. That is, when Google had only 2.5K employees it was attracting people like Lars from other companies like MS and Yahoo, and for the same reasons. The problem is scale. It's much easier to find 2.5K smart people than it is to find 25K smart people, and so when you're at 25K the average intelligence of your population is much lower. I don't think it's so much the extra management than the reduced signal-to-noise ratio that Lars is referring to. If you've worked at companies of different sizes (I have) the difference is tangible.
  - idoh 16y ago
    In your opinion, is there anything a company can do to keep or improve the average level of employees as the company grows, or is it just inevitable?
    - staktrace 16y ago
      Interesting question. I think it's possible to maintain and even improve the average level of intelligence of employees, but past a certain size it's so ridiculously difficult as to be infeasible, practically speaking. Also, I'm not convinced that it's in the company's best interests, but I guess that depends on what the goal of the company is. If, like most companies, it is to make money, then having too many smart people could be a liability; after a certain point you want to hire people for reliability and teamwork rather than individual intelligence. Even if the company has some other goal, I would say it's probably easier to try to keep the company small and automate as much work as possible than it is to keep hiring really smart people.
    - numbchuckskills 16y ago
      Google employs the Lake Wobegon strategy: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/03/hiring-lake-wobegon-strategy.html http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/03/hiring-lake-wobeg... "only hire candidates who are above the mean of your current employees"
  - nostrademons 16y ago
    I don't think the average intelligence at Google has declined very much. The people I work with are still all very, very smart - Lars said much the same thing in his article. There've been quite a few very intelligent latecomers recently - Alex Russell and Joshua Schacter both joined in 2009, even if Schacter did leave eventually. And I've heard a bunch of old-timer friends - people hired in 2005, or even in 2002 - say that there are recent, fairly inexperienced hires doing amazing things. I think the problem is that the intelligence of a group is defined by the minimal intelligence of its members, not by the average. If you have even one member who just doesn't get it, then everyone else needs to dumb down their ambitions so that he doesn't get left behind. That's why the "no false positives" rule is so important in startup hiring, and why the public school system sucks so much. I think it's a fairly good bet that with 25k employees, the dumbest person at Google is dumber than the dumbest person in FaceBook. And with Google's shared infrastructure, it's fairly likely that you'll run across some design decision made by him.
    - staktrace 16y ago
      I agree that the minimal intelligence is going to be lower, but I also don't think it matters as much as you think. Consider the extreme: say Google has 24,999 really smart people and one dumb person, do you really think that one person is going to have that much of an impact? there are recent, fairly inexperienced hires doing amazing things Maybe, but is that true of the average new hire? I'm sure Google is still hiring a fair number of smart people who will do amazing things; my argument is that the average has dropped. You can cite individual examples of smart people but those aren't a counter-argument unless you have a statistically significant number of them. Remember, if you're going to use free food and candy stations as hiring tools, don't be surprised when the type of people you hire are more interested in eating free food and candy than building something awesome.
  - dasil003 16y ago
    Scale may have something to do with it, but I don't think it's intelligence. People at Google are not sitting around complaining about the idiots they have to work with. That happens almost anywhere except Google, but Google has had pick of the litter for years now selecting heavily for intelligence. As an early-stage startup guy and hired gun, my outside perspective is of course biased towards the smaller company, so take this with a grain of salt: I think the main thing is that Facebook has a unified product and vision, with really strong UI, and a lot of hardcore infrastructure all centered around a global experience. Meanwhile Google has one strong business, and is repeatedly throwing spaghetti at the wall to find new areas to expand to. Sure there's a lot of great products there, but nothing with the potential Facebook has.
    - Mpdreamz 16y ago
      I might eat this words but nothing facebook offers to the masses has had the same impact google search and maps has. Google might have a terrible track record with sideproject but its core ventures still have immense potential.
      - dasil003 16y ago
        Well I'm actually took the other side of this argument in a comment 4 hours ago, in what I thought was a pretty solid argument, however I'm getting reamed in voting, so maybe I'm wrong... On the other hand, hackers (myself included) value raw utility highly and maybe on average we just prefer google search and google maps as tools due to the vapidity of Facebook. I certainly feel that way. However, comparing the impact on the larger world, I really really think Facebook has made way more impact than we care to admit. They got the whole world on a single social network. They created the newsfeed, some thing which is ubiquitous across all sites now. The Facebook platform, though buggy and heinous was completely revolutionary when they launched it. They created a single sign on that is used by a staggering number of people across the web. Personally, Facebook's innovation over MySpace is every bit as impressive as Google over Altavista or MapQuest. We may not value the ends, but 500,000,000 users with orders of magnitude more engagement than Google is undeniable impact.
- alexgartrell 16y ago
  There are less than a thousand engineers (I think about 4 or 5 hundred).
- duffbeer703 16y ago
  It sounds like he's a direct report to Zuckerberg. Direct line to the honcho makes a difference in any job.
- alain94040 16y ago
  The problem is not even that with more people, you eventually have some "not so bright" employees. When everyone is super smart, it's great but it's also a curse. It's hard to get anything done because there is always someone very smart to find one possible reason why it should be done differently. Think of it as the curse of perfection. I witnessed this firsthand in a previous life. It's amazingly frustrating, because it's so counter-intuitive.
amichail 16y ago
"I've got a job description of 'come hang out with us for a while and we'll see what happens', which is a pretty exciting thing." He took a job without having any idea what he will be doing? And why would that be an exciting thing?
- seiji 16y ago
  Some people do amazing things no matter where they are or what problems they face.
- staktrace 16y ago
  Some people need structure to get things done. Other people find structure limits their ability to do things. The latter usually happens because their imagination exceeds the imagination of those who create the structure.
  - amichail 16y ago
    But why is he so confident that he would be working on something of particular interest to him?
    - msbarnett 16y ago
      Because they are explicitly inviting him to come hang out and work on anything that is of interest to him?
    - dreaming 16y ago
      Because they've probably discussed the possibilities beforehand...
    - 16s 16y ago
      It's like two CS guys who both have an interest in solving big problems efficiently. They have ideas. They talk to each other about their ideas. They really love working on their ideas. One of them gets a ton of research money so he asks the other to come work with him in the new lab allowing him to work on his ideas as he wants.
credo 16y ago
After 6 years and after the stressful situation he describes with Google Wave, it is reasonable for anyone to make a clean break and try out something new Among the things I find interesting - the guy was the co-founder of what is now Google Maps (after Google's acquisition). However, now, he has chosen to join Facebook instead of setting out on his own new venture. Perhaps he could have a bigger impact if he founded a new company.
- staktrace 16y ago
  Perhaps he could have a bigger impact if he founded a new company. If you have a brand new or revolutionary idea, that may be true. But if you have an idea that fits into what somebody else has done, then joining that company and using it as a lever to magnify the reach of your work might be more effective. Another way to look at it is that in a startup you usually have to worry about a lot of things that are not core to the idea, such as marketing and productization. If you have other people to do that for you (as I'm sure Facebook does) then you are more free to focus on implementing your ideas to the best of your ability.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  You mean bigger impact than working together with the #1 website in the past and the #2 of the moment ? I fail to see how he could possibly hope to achieve that.
  - greglockwood 16y ago
    Isn't that line of thinking antithetical to the startup business as a whole?
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      Not at his level. He'll have all the tools and the manpower at his disposal to realize his dreams. It's not as though having worked at google or sold 'maps' is any guarantee for future projects to be either successful or funded. See 'Cuil'.
apu 16y ago
Something I notice in common about many of these stories is how much people cite Zuckerberg in particular as a reason for joining/liking Facebook. I don't see anything like it for Larry or Sergey at Google. My guess is that Zuckerberg has his own "Reality Distortion Field", albeit of a very different style than the original (Steven Jobs'), and this is a major factor in the recent migratory wave.
- aresant 16y ago
  The incredible potential for growth in stock value can't hurt either . . . Many folks inside and out think that FB still hasn't found its "adsense" - when and if they do even late comers to the party will live out their days like sultans.
  - timr 16y ago
    Call me a cynic, but I think that Zynga has found Facebook's AdSense.
    - patio11 16y ago
      I think you're absolutely right, and given the amounts they invest in customer acquisition for every new title plus the 30% Facebook Credits rake, that's all Facebook really needs.
      - timr 16y ago
        If Facebook is going to become the next Google off of Zynga's crumbs, then screw Facebook: I want to be invested in Zynga.
    - robryan 16y ago
      I think in the long run it might be more about places, allowing physical businesses to use Facebook as a much more effective marketing channel.
  - omouse 16y ago
    What stock value? They aren't a publically traded company yet, are they?
TylerBrock 16y ago
"I think if you were to ask me two or three years ago if Facebook was going to be this big, I wouldn't have picked it." Hahahaha, (let me catch my breath) bwhaahhaahaha... You really didn't see that one coming?
sfphotoarts 16y ago
From the article Lars says that facebook has changed the world. I don't see this being the case. So a lot of people like to see what their friends are doing and play games that challenge the average sheep's IQ, but what does facebook do that is world changing? Aside from keeping an enormous number people 'busy' for hours a day that might otherwise have been spent studying, working or actually doing things? I am skeptical about facebook's benefit to the world as anything more that entertainment du jour. Maybe Lars was just interested in giving wave another try under the facebook brand instead. It certainly might make more sense in a social connectivity company. I'm not arguing that facebook isn't very popular, just with point that it's world changing. Regardless, I wish him all the best in his new job.
- nikster 16y ago
  Yeah I would have said the same thing before Facebook had 500m users and before people spent more time on FB than on any other place on the internet. Something is going on here, and IMO what is happening is most difficult to understand for bleeding edge techies like the people on this forum. Actually - The Social Network may be mostly fiction but it does capture an idea about facebook that I never realized before - the idea that it's important who you know. Which is the essence of places like Harvard. And the essence of Facebook. Like many others I thought facebook was just a slightly less annoying version of MySpace or friendster, but, as it turns out, it's not, and you have got to give credit to Mark Zuckerberg to understand this from the very start. Apart from all that, facebook is now the new Google in terms of desirability to work there. No wonder, as it's pre-IPO so you stand to make very good money once they do their IPO. Especially as an exec. You can be a me-too rich person like the Googleionnaires who didn't do anything special except get hired by Google before the IPO. I get the appeal.
- gilbertl 16y ago
  Without Facebook, I would have quite a bit of trouble connecting with my friends and families around the world.
  - sfphotoarts 16y ago
    This may be the case, although, I'd argue that Facebook really doesn't do anything that makes it any easier for you to connect with your friends and family than email does. However, let's say it does, that still doesn't mean Facebook is world changing, it just means its a better mousetrap.
raheemm 16y ago
The cynical side of me imagines all these people are joining FB for its inevitable blockbuster IPO. But then another part of me wonders if FB is coming out with something completely revolutionary. Something so amazing that all these smart folks cant wait to work on it.
- staktrace 16y ago
  I think FB is coming out with something revolutionary. However, neither they nor anybody else know what it is yet. It will only be apparent after it has been released. That's why people are joining FB; they all want to help discover the new revolutionary idea.
barmstrong 16y ago
Surprised to hear him say he thought Wave just needed more time and Google wasn't patient enough. Wave was brilliant, but Google definitely made the right decision there.
- derefr 16y ago
  I think Wave needed more time in stealth, before the big announcement, beta client, invite-only service, etc. Wave should have gone to different companies (like Facebook) and made itself their new platform, such that, all at once, Google could flip a switch one day and you'd realize that all your activity on Facebook, MSN, Exchange, YouTube, etc, was all really going on in Wavelets all along.
jfb 16y ago
r.e. Wave, visionary != incomprehensible.
RK 16y ago
I'm always a little sad to see good talent go to Facebook, because I have no intention of using their products. I would rather see that talent working somewhere else.
- natep 16y ago
  Right, like Diaspora, or any of the many Facebook alternatives, for a start.
  - alokm 16y ago
    I am guessing he means social networking sites in general. (if not then its only my opinion :) ). IMO facebook et al are not that "productive" as compared to google. Sure it does add value to your social life but compare it to the technologies created by google . which really have changed our lives .
micah63 16y ago
Email had a metaphor, your mailbox. Wave has no metaphor, it is complete non-sense to my mother. Neat idea, totally useless in reality. What worked (real-time collaboration) should be (has been?) ported to gmail and google docs, period. I love Google products and I didn't shed any tears when they shut down wave...
- staktrace 16y ago
  Every new idea has to start somewhere. What is complete nonsense to your mother makes perfect sense to the next generation. Eventually somebody will re-invent Wave when the time is right, and then it will be the metaphor for future products.
michaelhart 16y ago
Apparently, Lars Rasmussen is NOT a pirate. he isn't even in the club. http://tcrn.ch/acPtMa http://tcrn.ch/acPtMa
NZ_Matt 16y ago
This is a great move for Lars. Look for him to integrate his Wave vision with FB chat. Wave wasn't bad it just never came close to critical mass and with Facebook he gets that instantly.
joshu 16y ago
I've done this myself: "I've got a job description of 'come hang out with us for a while and we'll see what happens'" It didn't really out. Best of luck to him.
- joshu 16y ago
  I meant "work out"
udzinari 16y ago
Facebook really changed the world, as far as new advertising platforms go.. as for communication, it is funny how many of us continue to use IRC just as effectively as 15 or so years ago.
digitailor 16y ago
My take on it is this: As someone else noted thoughtfully in this thread, Norvig once said "Go where the data is." [extreme paraphrase] Google's data isn't largely proprietary. The web is accessible for any to crawl. Google Maps is based on essentially public data, or easily obtained data. A savvy and well funded enough competitor could enter these markets. Facebook's data is proprietary and user-created. The users have built-in inertia for Facebook 'cause they sure as hell don't want to abandon the three years of content they've built on a whim. Add to that Google's recent missteps like net neutrality, and their insane and technocratic hiring policies, and I don't think I know a single truly bright person who would want to go to Google right now. Facebook, however, is looking pretty damn sexy... all that data that the users forked over... hmmm... Not to mention the fact that if you're a social person, Facebook is FUN.
- richardw 16y ago
  Interesting point, but Google has much, much more of my data than Facebook has. FB has a few likes of mine and around 200 friends, with a relatively small number of messages. Google has my multi-year mail history (content plus a pretty big social graph that means far more than a few old school friends), my searches (and therefore interests), what adverts I've clicked on, which pages get the most traffic on my websites. It has documents I've worked on with friends and associates. It has my calendar. I've got a bunch of sites sitting on Google servers. When I use my iPhone, Google provides the maps and knows where I'm going.
  - digitailor 16y ago
    This is a really good point, and highlights a major difference between information derived from users based on them asking for services and explicit data users have "declared". The derived information may actually be more valuable, as you say, but because the declared data is more direct and voluntary, it has higher PERCEIVED value (at least it did to me). This may be one of the reasons FB is more attractive then Google right now- and perception is everything when it comes to valuation. Great post, thanks.

161 points by mcbain 16y ago

One could say Wave failed because of a lack of users. Especially users meaningfully connected to each other. Really it doesn't matter if the software is shit. Millions of people flock to crappy PHP forums all over the world. Facebook has those users with reasons to talk to each other. Whether that makes Facebook more important than Google I don't think is what's really going on here.

pama 16y ago

I found it interesting to hear that the size of the company (2.5K employees) would feel very different to that of google (25K employees). Does this size difference simply mean that google has one extra layer of management (many centers) compared to facebook, or is there some other difference? The author speculates about the compensation, including stock options, but is there anything else?

staktrace 16y ago
I don't think there is much intrisincally different between Facebook and Google. That is, when Google had only 2.5K employees it was attracting people like Lars from other companies like MS and Yahoo, and for the same reasons. The problem is scale. It's much easier to find 2.5K smart people than it is to find 25K smart people, and so when you're at 25K the average intelligence of your population is much lower. I don't think it's so much the extra management than the reduced signal-to-noise ratio that Lars is referring to. If you've worked at companies of different sizes (I have) the difference is tangible.
- idoh 16y ago
  In your opinion, is there anything a company can do to keep or improve the average level of employees as the company grows, or is it just inevitable?
  - staktrace 16y ago
    Interesting question. I think it's possible to maintain and even improve the average level of intelligence of employees, but past a certain size it's so ridiculously difficult as to be infeasible, practically speaking. Also, I'm not convinced that it's in the company's best interests, but I guess that depends on what the goal of the company is. If, like most companies, it is to make money, then having too many smart people could be a liability; after a certain point you want to hire people for reliability and teamwork rather than individual intelligence. Even if the company has some other goal, I would say it's probably easier to try to keep the company small and automate as much work as possible than it is to keep hiring really smart people.
  - numbchuckskills 16y ago
    Google employs the Lake Wobegon strategy: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/03/hiring-lake-wobegon-strategy.html http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/03/hiring-lake-wobeg... "only hire candidates who are above the mean of your current employees"
- nostrademons 16y ago
  I don't think the average intelligence at Google has declined very much. The people I work with are still all very, very smart - Lars said much the same thing in his article. There've been quite a few very intelligent latecomers recently - Alex Russell and Joshua Schacter both joined in 2009, even if Schacter did leave eventually. And I've heard a bunch of old-timer friends - people hired in 2005, or even in 2002 - say that there are recent, fairly inexperienced hires doing amazing things. I think the problem is that the intelligence of a group is defined by the minimal intelligence of its members, not by the average. If you have even one member who just doesn't get it, then everyone else needs to dumb down their ambitions so that he doesn't get left behind. That's why the "no false positives" rule is so important in startup hiring, and why the public school system sucks so much. I think it's a fairly good bet that with 25k employees, the dumbest person at Google is dumber than the dumbest person in FaceBook. And with Google's shared infrastructure, it's fairly likely that you'll run across some design decision made by him.
  - staktrace 16y ago
    I agree that the minimal intelligence is going to be lower, but I also don't think it matters as much as you think. Consider the extreme: say Google has 24,999 really smart people and one dumb person, do you really think that one person is going to have that much of an impact? there are recent, fairly inexperienced hires doing amazing things Maybe, but is that true of the average new hire? I'm sure Google is still hiring a fair number of smart people who will do amazing things; my argument is that the average has dropped. You can cite individual examples of smart people but those aren't a counter-argument unless you have a statistically significant number of them. Remember, if you're going to use free food and candy stations as hiring tools, don't be surprised when the type of people you hire are more interested in eating free food and candy than building something awesome.
- dasil003 16y ago
  Scale may have something to do with it, but I don't think it's intelligence. People at Google are not sitting around complaining about the idiots they have to work with. That happens almost anywhere except Google, but Google has had pick of the litter for years now selecting heavily for intelligence. As an early-stage startup guy and hired gun, my outside perspective is of course biased towards the smaller company, so take this with a grain of salt: I think the main thing is that Facebook has a unified product and vision, with really strong UI, and a lot of hardcore infrastructure all centered around a global experience. Meanwhile Google has one strong business, and is repeatedly throwing spaghetti at the wall to find new areas to expand to. Sure there's a lot of great products there, but nothing with the potential Facebook has.
  - Mpdreamz 16y ago
    I might eat this words but nothing facebook offers to the masses has had the same impact google search and maps has. Google might have a terrible track record with sideproject but its core ventures still have immense potential.
    - dasil003 16y ago
      Well I'm actually took the other side of this argument in a comment 4 hours ago, in what I thought was a pretty solid argument, however I'm getting reamed in voting, so maybe I'm wrong... On the other hand, hackers (myself included) value raw utility highly and maybe on average we just prefer google search and google maps as tools due to the vapidity of Facebook. I certainly feel that way. However, comparing the impact on the larger world, I really really think Facebook has made way more impact than we care to admit. They got the whole world on a single social network. They created the newsfeed, some thing which is ubiquitous across all sites now. The Facebook platform, though buggy and heinous was completely revolutionary when they launched it. They created a single sign on that is used by a staggering number of people across the web. Personally, Facebook's innovation over MySpace is every bit as impressive as Google over Altavista or MapQuest. We may not value the ends, but 500,000,000 users with orders of magnitude more engagement than Google is undeniable impact.
alexgartrell 16y ago
There are less than a thousand engineers (I think about 4 or 5 hundred).
duffbeer703 16y ago
It sounds like he's a direct report to Zuckerberg. Direct line to the honcho makes a difference in any job.
alain94040 16y ago
The problem is not even that with more people, you eventually have some "not so bright" employees. When everyone is super smart, it's great but it's also a curse. It's hard to get anything done because there is always someone very smart to find one possible reason why it should be done differently. Think of it as the curse of perfection. I witnessed this firsthand in a previous life. It's amazingly frustrating, because it's so counter-intuitive.

amichail 16y ago

"I've got a job description of 'come hang out with us for a while and we'll see what happens', which is a pretty exciting thing." He took a job without having any idea what he will be doing? And why would that be an exciting thing?

seiji 16y ago
Some people do amazing things no matter where they are or what problems they face.
staktrace 16y ago
Some people need structure to get things done. Other people find structure limits their ability to do things. The latter usually happens because their imagination exceeds the imagination of those who create the structure.
- amichail 16y ago
  But why is he so confident that he would be working on something of particular interest to him?
  - msbarnett 16y ago
    Because they are explicitly inviting him to come hang out and work on anything that is of interest to him?
  - dreaming 16y ago
    Because they've probably discussed the possibilities beforehand...
  - 16s 16y ago
    It's like two CS guys who both have an interest in solving big problems efficiently. They have ideas. They talk to each other about their ideas. They really love working on their ideas. One of them gets a ton of research money so he asks the other to come work with him in the new lab allowing him to work on his ideas as he wants.

credo 16y ago

After 6 years and after the stressful situation he describes with Google Wave, it is reasonable for anyone to make a clean break and try out something new Among the things I find interesting - the guy was the co-founder of what is now Google Maps (after Google's acquisition). However, now, he has chosen to join Facebook instead of setting out on his own new venture. Perhaps he could have a bigger impact if he founded a new company.

staktrace 16y ago
Perhaps he could have a bigger impact if he founded a new company. If you have a brand new or revolutionary idea, that may be true. But if you have an idea that fits into what somebody else has done, then joining that company and using it as a lever to magnify the reach of your work might be more effective. Another way to look at it is that in a startup you usually have to worry about a lot of things that are not core to the idea, such as marketing and productization. If you have other people to do that for you (as I'm sure Facebook does) then you are more free to focus on implementing your ideas to the best of your ability.
jacquesm 16y ago
You mean bigger impact than working together with the #1 website in the past and the #2 of the moment ? I fail to see how he could possibly hope to achieve that.
- greglockwood 16y ago
  Isn't that line of thinking antithetical to the startup business as a whole?
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Not at his level. He'll have all the tools and the manpower at his disposal to realize his dreams. It's not as though having worked at google or sold 'maps' is any guarantee for future projects to be either successful or funded. See 'Cuil'.

apu 16y ago

Something I notice in common about many of these stories is how much people cite Zuckerberg in particular as a reason for joining/liking Facebook. I don't see anything like it for Larry or Sergey at Google. My guess is that Zuckerberg has his own "Reality Distortion Field", albeit of a very different style than the original (Steven Jobs'), and this is a major factor in the recent migratory wave.

aresant 16y ago
The incredible potential for growth in stock value can't hurt either . . . Many folks inside and out think that FB still hasn't found its "adsense" - when and if they do even late comers to the party will live out their days like sultans.
- timr 16y ago
  Call me a cynic, but I think that Zynga has found Facebook's AdSense.
  - patio11 16y ago
    I think you're absolutely right, and given the amounts they invest in customer acquisition for every new title plus the 30% Facebook Credits rake, that's all Facebook really needs.
    - timr 16y ago
      If Facebook is going to become the next Google off of Zynga's crumbs, then screw Facebook: I want to be invested in Zynga.
  - robryan 16y ago
    I think in the long run it might be more about places, allowing physical businesses to use Facebook as a much more effective marketing channel.
- omouse 16y ago
  What stock value? They aren't a publically traded company yet, are they?

TylerBrock 16y ago

"I think if you were to ask me two or three years ago if Facebook was going to be this big, I wouldn't have picked it." Hahahaha, (let me catch my breath) bwhaahhaahaha... You really didn't see that one coming?

sfphotoarts 16y ago

From the article Lars says that facebook has changed the world. I don't see this being the case. So a lot of people like to see what their friends are doing and play games that challenge the average sheep's IQ, but what does facebook do that is world changing? Aside from keeping an enormous number people 'busy' for hours a day that might otherwise have been spent studying, working or actually doing things? I am skeptical about facebook's benefit to the world as anything more that entertainment du jour. Maybe Lars was just interested in giving wave another try under the facebook brand instead. It certainly might make more sense in a social connectivity company. I'm not arguing that facebook isn't very popular, just with point that it's world changing. Regardless, I wish him all the best in his new job.

nikster 16y ago
Yeah I would have said the same thing before Facebook had 500m users and before people spent more time on FB than on any other place on the internet. Something is going on here, and IMO what is happening is most difficult to understand for bleeding edge techies like the people on this forum. Actually - The Social Network may be mostly fiction but it does capture an idea about facebook that I never realized before - the idea that it's important who you know. Which is the essence of places like Harvard. And the essence of Facebook. Like many others I thought facebook was just a slightly less annoying version of MySpace or friendster, but, as it turns out, it's not, and you have got to give credit to Mark Zuckerberg to understand this from the very start. Apart from all that, facebook is now the new Google in terms of desirability to work there. No wonder, as it's pre-IPO so you stand to make very good money once they do their IPO. Especially as an exec. You can be a me-too rich person like the Googleionnaires who didn't do anything special except get hired by Google before the IPO. I get the appeal.
gilbertl 16y ago
Without Facebook, I would have quite a bit of trouble connecting with my friends and families around the world.
- sfphotoarts 16y ago
  This may be the case, although, I'd argue that Facebook really doesn't do anything that makes it any easier for you to connect with your friends and family than email does. However, let's say it does, that still doesn't mean Facebook is world changing, it just means its a better mousetrap.

raheemm 16y ago

The cynical side of me imagines all these people are joining FB for its inevitable blockbuster IPO. But then another part of me wonders if FB is coming out with something completely revolutionary. Something so amazing that all these smart folks cant wait to work on it.

staktrace 16y ago
I think FB is coming out with something revolutionary. However, neither they nor anybody else know what it is yet. It will only be apparent after it has been released. That's why people are joining FB; they all want to help discover the new revolutionary idea.

barmstrong 16y ago

Surprised to hear him say he thought Wave just needed more time and Google wasn't patient enough. Wave was brilliant, but Google definitely made the right decision there.

derefr 16y ago
I think Wave needed more time in stealth, before the big announcement, beta client, invite-only service, etc. Wave should have gone to different companies (like Facebook) and made itself their new platform, such that, all at once, Google could flip a switch one day and you'd realize that all your activity on Facebook, MSN, Exchange, YouTube, etc, was all really going on in Wavelets all along.

jfb 16y ago

r.e. Wave, visionary != incomprehensible.

RK 16y ago

I'm always a little sad to see good talent go to Facebook, because I have no intention of using their products. I would rather see that talent working somewhere else.

natep 16y ago
Right, like Diaspora, or any of the many Facebook alternatives, for a start.
- alokm 16y ago
  I am guessing he means social networking sites in general. (if not then its only my opinion :) ). IMO facebook et al are not that "productive" as compared to google. Sure it does add value to your social life but compare it to the technologies created by google . which really have changed our lives .

micah63 16y ago

Email had a metaphor, your mailbox. Wave has no metaphor, it is complete non-sense to my mother. Neat idea, totally useless in reality. What worked (real-time collaboration) should be (has been?) ported to gmail and google docs, period. I love Google products and I didn't shed any tears when they shut down wave...

staktrace 16y ago
Every new idea has to start somewhere. What is complete nonsense to your mother makes perfect sense to the next generation. Eventually somebody will re-invent Wave when the time is right, and then it will be the metaphor for future products.

michaelhart 16y ago

Apparently, Lars Rasmussen is NOT a pirate. he isn't even in the club. http://tcrn.ch/acPtMa http://tcrn.ch/acPtMa

NZ_Matt 16y ago

This is a great move for Lars. Look for him to integrate his Wave vision with FB chat. Wave wasn't bad it just never came close to critical mass and with Facebook he gets that instantly.

joshu 16y ago

I've done this myself: "I've got a job description of 'come hang out with us for a while and we'll see what happens'" It didn't really out. Best of luck to him.

joshu 16y ago
I meant "work out"

udzinari 16y ago

Facebook really changed the world, as far as new advertising platforms go.. as for communication, it is funny how many of us continue to use IRC just as effectively as 15 or so years ago.

digitailor 16y ago

My take on it is this: As someone else noted thoughtfully in this thread, Norvig once said "Go where the data is." [extreme paraphrase] Google's data isn't largely proprietary. The web is accessible for any to crawl. Google Maps is based on essentially public data, or easily obtained data. A savvy and well funded enough competitor could enter these markets. Facebook's data is proprietary and user-created. The users have built-in inertia for Facebook 'cause they sure as hell don't want to abandon the three years of content they've built on a whim. Add to that Google's recent missteps like net neutrality, and their insane and technocratic hiring policies, and I don't think I know a single truly bright person who would want to go to Google right now. Facebook, however, is looking pretty damn sexy... all that data that the users forked over... hmmm... Not to mention the fact that if you're a social person, Facebook is FUN.

richardw 16y ago
Interesting point, but Google has much, much more of my data than Facebook has. FB has a few likes of mine and around 200 friends, with a relatively small number of messages. Google has my multi-year mail history (content plus a pretty big social graph that means far more than a few old school friends), my searches (and therefore interests), what adverts I've clicked on, which pages get the most traffic on my websites. It has documents I've worked on with friends and associates. It has my calendar. I've got a bunch of sites sitting on Google servers. When I use my iPhone, Google provides the maps and knows where I'm going.
- digitailor 16y ago
  This is a really good point, and highlights a major difference between information derived from users based on them asking for services and explicit data users have "declared". The derived information may actually be more valuable, as you say, but because the declared data is more direct and voluntary, it has higher PERCEIVED value (at least it did to me). This may be one of the reasons FB is more attractive then Google right now- and perception is everything when it comes to valuation. Great post, thanks.