
Y Combinator Saved Our Bacon - MaysonL
http://mattmaroon.com/2010/09/02/y-combinator-saved-our-bacon/
======
maxklein
This is chronically unfair. So now the people who have money and are already
part of an elite get better service and get their complaints resolved faster?
And normal people don't? What is being built here - some type of tech
aristocracy where the YC alumni get to be at the top of the pecking order?
Those people did not get in there by sheer ability, they got in there by
already belonging to some good schools and nicely middle class parents.

Technology should be fair to all.

Back before I even knew that facebook had guidelines I had a facebook app
disabled (and associated facebook account). It was not spamming or anything,
just inviting people in strongly worded language to download the app. I have
sent about 10 emails so far to their accounts, and I have NEVER received a
reply back. I've tried pleading, I've tried angry, nothing works.

I just gave up and made another account, that first account is still disabled.
I don't care about it anymore - but the lasting impression of this whole
situation is this: facebook does not care about developers.

Microsoft have always had frontline people interacting with the developers.
Every problem I had during my microsoft days was quickly resolved by some guy
working on the product. It never took long and it was never complicated.

Apple is different - because there senior executive take care of major
problems. I've sent an email to steve and had the manager of iTunesConnect
call me. Schiller has emailed me to solve problems. You can call and talk to a
reviewer. Apple cares about their developers and they care about quality, and
they will try their best to handle both.

But facebook - so far I've not found a way to break this wall of silence that
they have. I guess when we get big and famous, they will start to care - but
you know what? Microsoft cares about me even though I am not rich or famous or
anything. Same with Apple - even if they have a harder task, as they care a
lot about quality.

And no, I don't want the problem resolved anymore, I've moved on and am
content being an unimportant small player on the facebook platform. If there
is an issue I'll work it out myself or give up - I know there is no way to
talk to them.

~~~
patio11
Rather than lamenting the unfairness of it all, a more productive response
might be to hack the system. As I recall, you have a blog post or two about
convincing people to give you what you want. (Simplest way: convince them they
want to give you what you want.) This is closely related.

All hackers should know how to network, wear a suit (or not), ask for things,
make people from outside your socioeconomic background feel like they grew up
with you, etc. You will be _astonished_ how much those matter.

~~~
maxklein
I'm not sure why you feel socio-economic background is relevant here. And I'm
not sure what relevance a suit has here. I'm not trying to raise investment
from Zuckerberg or get invited to a dinner with Paul Graham. I'm not trying to
launch in career in silicon valley, or get the attention of a venture
capitalist.

I'm trying to recover my facebook password! That's all!

I should not need to make people from facebook "feel like I grew up with
them", just so they can re-enable my account.

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philwelch
It's nice that YC helped these guys, but getting this kind of consideration on
a platform is something everyone should be entitled to--you shouldn't need a
special "in" with YCombinator to get it. It's like if YC partnered with Apple
just to help YC startups get their apps approved.

This makes YC look good, but FB look bad.

~~~
carlsjogreen
Hey there, Carl Sjogreen from Facebook Platform here.

I'm glad we were able to help Matt out, but am embarrassed he got in this
situation to begin with. We're working on some new systems to handle abusive
applications (getting rid of which helps users and the entire platform
ecosystem) but clearly have some technical and communication issues to work
through still, and its totally unacceptable to be taking such harsh measures
with applications that aren't doing anything wrong -- let alone being so hard
to get in touch with.

The only silver lining of this otherwise unfortunate situation is that it will
help make sure it doesn't happen again.

~~~
tomjen3
Actually stuff like this just reminds people why one shouldn't deal with
monopoly suppliers who are big enough to ignore you without getting hurt in
the process.

~~~
whyme
I don't think the being a monopoly is as much a factor here as being _really_
big is. And of course being big is why you do business with them, they bring
many clients/$ too.

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mlinsey
PG was asked a question at the YC event that essentially boiled down to: "What
are the best startups that will make use of Instant Personalization?"

His answer was that it was impossible to predict but whatever it was, it would
be something that at first seemed wrong, ie something that wasn't how Facebook
intended the API to be used, and something that they wouldn't be sure they
should even allow.

This isn't that sort of case: a previous version of Matt's app that used the
API in the exact same way was thoroughly reviewed and approved.

Nevertheless, one can easily imagine that the truly _disruptive_ Facebook
Instant Personalization Apps may only even have a chance of surviving the FB
approval axe with the support of an organization like YC. _This_ , in my
opinion, is among the biggest reasons why the YC/Facebook deal will be so
beneficial for YC companies, and why Jason Calacanis' criticism was mis-
placed: the real risk is not that Facebook will steal your disruptive idea
that is obviously good, the risk is that Facebook will just shut off your
weird idea which isn't obviously good at all and only later turns out to be
quite disruptive.

------
barclay
While I think it's awesome to have friends in high places, and I wish these
guys the best, it reminds me just how miserable it was to work on the FB
platform.

Their milquetoast, ever-changing policy that's occasionally enforced and
frequent API updates and breakage was maddening at best. IMHO FB makes apple's
app store policies seem "not so bad".

I understand that zynga and the lot have made a lot of money, and the level of
traffic FB can provide is intoxicating... but I'll be damned if i'd do that
again. This tale is a good reminder of why.

~~~
mattmaroon
Their platform is maintained pretty well from a technical standpoint.
Breakages do occur, but their bug tracking system usually results in the big
ones getting resolved rather quickly. Work on the MySpace platform a bit and
you'll REALLY appreciate Facebook. They break crucial things all of the time
and then just don't fix them for weeks if at all.

Our experience with Apple so far has been ok. Lots of waiting, which is
frustrating. We can update our Facebook app multiple times per day. With Apple
if you ship a game with a bug that crashes it on some devices (oddly, despite
having an iPad app, with all iPads being the same in every relavant way, our
first app crashed on only some due to memory issues) you're screwed. You're
racking up negative reviews for a week.

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stakent
Good story.

Lessons learned:

1\. Business is not 'fair'.

2\. Its unrealistic to expect playing field to be level.

3\. Its about who you know.

Big thanks to all parties involved for the reminder.

------
pg
Best of all, without knowing we did, because that type of help scales.

For the same reason I'm always especially pleased when I hear about one YC-
funded startup having helped another without us even routing the request.

~~~
mattmaroon
Actually Harjeet helped me there by giving me the contact info. Gotta say I'm
a big fan of Harj.

~~~
pg
Oops. Thanks Harj! (Me too.)

------
nl
Did Facebook fix whatever caused that app to be flagged, or is this a case of
them just unflagging it and leaving it at that?

If this app is erroneously flagged then there's a good chance that many other
apps are in the same situation, but aren't lucky enough to be able to get the
magic email address.

------
Tichy
So is it end days for the app economy? I quit developing mobile apps (J2ME)
when it became clear that to make money you had to be endorsed by operators.
And operators wouldn't even talk to you if you weren't a multi-million Euro
company. Maybe it is inevitable that any market turns into that after a while.

So good-bye to the idea of the indie app developer...

~~~
nl
You might be excited to hear about this new platform from a small computer
company called Apple. They have now released a mobile phone, and let you write
applications for it without carrier approval.

What is more, they only take 30% of the purchase price (unlike the carrier fee
of 70%), and the approval process - while slower and more annoying than many
would like - doesn't require you to setup meetings with carriers business
development group.

There is also a web based platform called Facebook where you can deploy apps.
The approval process for that is usually so straight forward that a guy did a
blog post when he had to rely on personal connections in order to get his
application enabled!

;)

~~~
tomjen3
Or better yet, you could create an app for this totally free system called the
web, you wouldn't need anybodys approval and every level of supplier you would
need (from domain registration to hosting to software to run your servers) are
a commodity market or open source and so are actually beholden to their
customers more so than Apple and facebook are.

Even better there is nobody who can tell you what kind of technology stuff you
have to work with, nor is anybody going to demand 30% of your income (except
the taxman - set of an offshore account before you start to make money).

------
gigafemtonano
I had a similarly frustrating experience with Feedburner in early 2008. I was
running something slightly controversial and they basically reverted to an
older version of my RSS and wouldn't let me do anything to change it,
including redirecting the traffic away from Feedburner. I emailed the Google
rep I had dealt with in addition to trying all their listed means of contact
with absolutely no luck. The EFF told me that their terms of service probably
(and did) have a clause that they could discontinue service to me for any and
no reason (which is how it seemed). Since this was for a podcast I decided on
a whim to try emailing Steve Jobs too. I had full control of my account not an
hour later, and I've been happily on Amazon's S3 ever since.

