

The Big Game, Zuckerberg and Overplaying your Hand - inmygarage
http://calacanis.com/2010/05/12/the-big-game-zuckerberg-and-overplaying-your-hand/

======
jaaron
Quote of the day: "Zuckerberg is clearly the worst thing that’s happened to
our industry since, well, spam"

Couldn't agree more.

~~~
jorgeortiz85
Ironic, coming from the CEO of Mahalo.

~~~
brandnewlow
Mahalo's not a business I can get excited about, but this Calcanis guy
consistently writes extremely interesting stuff, has done huge things for
entrepreneurs, and is prolific in ways that deeply impress me. Can't take that
away from him.

~~~
kixxauth
Calcanis is the ringleader in a racket. He talks more than he actually does
anything. He writes posts like this to get traffic. He's like the Sarah Palin
of the valley. Amusing to watch, but otherwise worthless.

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JacobAldridge
I prefer 'Zuckerpunched' over 'Zucked" - implies a level of underhandedness.

And I think the various items on the list represent different things.
Duplicating Four Square and Twitter features is hardly the same level of
Zuckerpunching as constantly changing privacy features.

~~~
megablast
Exactly. You are not stealing anything from Foursquare, or twitter, unless the
whole industry is stealing from everybody all the time.

Personally, as much as I fear facebook taking too much control, I don't see
either of these as being big issues. I don't put important stuff on my fb
account, and most people I know do not care that all this information is
available.

These are the same people who see absolutely nothing wrong with supermarkets
loyalty cards, and their details being sold off to other companies. This is
the majority now, who think more CCTV cameras are a good idea and make the
world safer, who agree with more stringent airline boarding procedures, and
support the government taking away out rights if they want to.

This is the world we live in, privacy has been slowely eroded away for a
number of years now, and there are much more important stuff to worry about on
the entertainment news shows.

------
codexon
No 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
I'm not ready to cut and run from Facebook yet, but of all the important tech
CEOs I can think of, Zukerberg is easily the one I least trust and respect.
He's young, has no other industry success, and is way too eager to try to
dominate the Internet. It just doesn't feel right.

~~~
jteo
It is difficult to distinguish between talent and people who are lucky.

~~~
megablast
Yes, 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.

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rms
This criticism of Zuckerberg is insular and reactionary. He's due for a minor
user backlash, but there is no way the most recent Facebook changes could
trigger a backlash at the level of Beacon 1.0. I think this hope that
Zuckerberg crashes and burns is a combination of jealousy and wishful
thinking.

~~~
pg
Yes, I agree with you. This thread is full of one sentence comments with large
numbers of points. Not exactly HN at its best.

~~~
indigoviolet
I work for Facebook and am naturally biased, but even in my cap as a longtime
HN reader, I was disappointed at the difference between the reception to
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1339248> versus the other Facebook-
related posts here.

~~~
puredemo
Fair enough. I'm a user who isn't even all that concerned about privacy, but
it's still not a pleasant feeling to have Facebook continually rearrange what
they have decided to do with _my_ information at their every whim.

It's sort of like dating someone who all the sudden decides to start calling
you at work throughout the day. Just a bit unnerving.

Facebook ends up feeling dictatorial and paternal. And that's aside from
whether the privacy concerns are valid (which at least some appear to be.)

------
frossie
_Last year, when I realized that Zuckerberg was an amoral, Asperger’s-like
entrepreneur_

Bad sentence. It implies that Asperger's is a derogatory term.

~~~
staunch
If 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.

~~~
hristov
Asperger's has nothing to do with being amoral or immoral. Asperger's people
have trouble following certain more subtle social norms but that has little to
do with morality.

Some of the biggest amoral criminals in the world have been very adept
socially (think Goebbels or Bernie Madoff), while some people whose morality
was always lauded were known to be socially awkward (e.g. Einstein).

So while Aspergers is a disorder it is completely wrong to equate it with lack
of morality.

~~~
devinj
Actually, there is also some problem with Asperger's folks and empathy. They
don't have a lot of it. This is a fairly well-known characteristic, and there
are related things: only talking about things that interest you, that sort of
thing. From this perspective, AS folks could be called "less moral".

Of course it wouldn't really be a fair comment. And calling them "amoral" is
just being a dick.

------
fleaflicker
"Good Designers Copy, Great Designers Steal."

Saying that Twitter and FourSquare were "Zucked" is a bit much. Great
companies do this all the time.

~~~
redcap
I disagree, great designers innovate. You build on the shoulders of those who
came before, but if you're not doing something new and innovative, it's not
great.

The biggest example I have is Apple.

~~~
fleaflicker
Was 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.

------
emullet
I find Calacanis a bit annoying, but I think he's mostly right. Contrary to
what Calacanis thinks, adding new features that let you compete with other
apps isn't wrong. Its part of business. If they want to muddy the purpose of
their product by adding 101 bells and widgets to compete with everyone under
the sun, they sure can do it.

I do agree with Jason that Zuckerberg seems to have a questionable history of
integrity...based on rumor. And I certainly agree that Facebook seems hell-
bent on harvesting the souls of their users. The latter is far more troubling
that any competitive feature additions.

~~~
Volscio
Calacanis should hang out with Mark Cuban. They're both getting less relevant.

------
mortenjorck
When this is all over, when Facebook has returned to Orkut status, its bold
dreams of the entire web wired up by Like buttons and Instant Personalization
into the Facebook mothership dashed upon the iceberg of the fickle social
market, what will we have learned?

~~~
jaaron
That only the truly open... oh wow, look at that shiny app. Rounded corners!!!

------
ojbyrne
I could not get past the initial self-promotion. Talk about overplaying your
hand.

~~~
inmygarage
disagree. i think few people write as persuasively as Calacanis - his ability
to make a case for something and to articulate it is, despite the tasteless
self-promotion, admirable.

"Didn't anyone read "Tom Sawyer"? We're whitewashing Zuckerberg's fence."

~~~
lakeeffect
I 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
Of course, you're not paying them for their effort. You're paying them for
creating a distribution channel you can access, and then the ongoing product
development that maintains and grows that distribution base.

Linking it to subsequent effort is like saying a programmer should only charge
$1 for all bar the first copy of their program, given how easy it is to burn
new dvds.

~~~
robryan
Actually reading this I wonder why facebook gave applications the ability to
collect email addresses easily? Lowers platform lock in as someone like Zynga
if they do move away from facebook can just use the email to keep the user
base they have acquired.

~~~
jwegan
They had to give the FB app developers some alternative to newsfeed
notifications to keep them from getting to enraged when their primary source
of recruiting users was yanked out from under them.

------
jackowayed
Grammar 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:

-

–

—

~~~
jswinghammer
Were you actually confused? Are you smart enough to know what an "em" dash is
and not smart enough to know that the hyphen in heads-up works differently
than Facebook-Zynga. The only way that would make sense is if they merged and
for some reason kept Zynga as part of their name. Given the context that's
obviously not happening.

An em dash is typically considered bad practice in formal writing. If he
wanted to be formal he would have used a semicolon I think. In informal
writing an em dash often replaces the work of other punctuation.

Note: I don't care. I was able to understand him just fine and that's all I
care about. If he was writing a scholarly paper I'd take the time to correct
it and send him some suggestions. I'd also only do this if I was asked to do
so.

~~~
jackowayed
Was I able to figure it out? Sure. But did I have to pause for a second to
figure out what he was saying? Yes.

Proper punctuation makes it much easier for readers to read and comprehend the
material quickly. If you don't believe me, try reading a paragraph with no
punctuation at all. You'll spend most of your time trying to figure out what
words are grouped together because there's no punctuation to clue you in.

------
whodareswins
Anyone who calls fb credits a "tax" knows nothing about payments. A ubiquitous
payment system where users are already authenticated could easily double
conversion rates once deployed at scale.

30% off of 2X is a great deal

~~~
benologist
Sure, but:

Social Gold - <http://www.jambool.com>

Live Gamer - <http://www.livegamer.com>

GamerSafe - <http://www.gamersafe.com>

MochiCoins - <http://www.mochimedia.com>

HeyZap - <http://www.heyzap.com>

and more...

And none charge 30%.

~~~
whodareswins
None of those are ubiquitous. I'm describing the network effect, making this
quite relevant. Also, I'm pretty sure some of those do charge 30% regardless.

Apple takes 30%. Needing to enter only a password to pay for something
(instead of a credit card) probably makes that worth it. Facebook doesn't even
require the password.

~~~
benologist
Pretty sure they don't charge 30% - I know the guys behind half the list.

Facebook are starting from scratch with credits, these companies and others
have millions of existing users who have existing money in their accounts.
Facebook on the other hand have hundreds of millions of _facebook_ users, not
people topping up their credits to buy stuff in games. Most of their users
don't even play games.

That doesn't make Facebook ubiquitous _and_ it will leave people wondering why
they can't use the balance of their other account in the games they play like
previously, _and_ it will leave developers eating a fee that is up to 22%
higher than it was through 3rd parties.

Although some will 'win' and make assloads of money overall it's not a 'win'
anymore than it would be if you could _only_ accept Visa.

~~~
whodareswins
Like I said... "once deployed at scale."

Their system is in closed beta.

------
jacquesm
Takes one to know one.

------
johnl
I like the comparison with poker. Doesn't mean that Facebook is out of the
game by a long shot, it does open the space up for some competition. Maybe the
companies that helped push FB along should get together and start their own?

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spking
Very persuasive. I finally pulled the trigger and deleted my account tonight.
I'm not sure that Diaspora is the answer either, but frankly privacy is only
half of my problem with Facebook. The other half is that it's simply a massive
timesuck. That hour a day I wasted being a voyeur of friends and family's
lives can now go back toward living my own life.

------
thijsschoemaker
It seems Leo Laporte was Zucked by Jason Calacanis.

------
malloreon
This is the only piece of Calacanis' work that I've liked thus far. He is 100%
correct.

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mchristoff
Wait, am I missing something or is Jason really labeling fb's clamp down on
crapville spam as a stab in the back? Not a zuck defender by any means, but
defending zynga... Come on.

Guess it takes a spammer to defend a spammer.

