

Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo to leave the company - markbao
http://venturebeat.com/2008/05/11/facebook-cto-adam-dangelo-to-leave-or-at-least-take-an-extended-vacation/

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andreyf
This is only a first-hand account, but it seems to me that all of my friends
have "gotten over" facebook - the ones that haven't unactivated their accounts
as a social statement only check it every once in awhile for messages. Most
friend's profiles are out of date, and only a small fraction of people seem to
have found facebook apps continuously interesting (which they're sure to let
me know with invitations to join them).

The novelty of facebook seems to have long worn off. I don't know if this is
just me or a broader trend, but if I were in charge of fb, I'd look into it.

~~~
kyro
Well, the community here is definitely different. For every one person like
you saying people have gotten over Facebook, there are hundreds of
fraternity/sorority/college students that immerse themselves into Facebook day
in and day out, uploading tons of pictures and adding applications.

It's understandable why people here tend to not give a damn about Facebook.
You all have more important and productive things to do with your time.
However, there's a whole world of mindless young kids who join groups
aimlessly, post pictures of the almost daily college parties, and find joy in
spamming friends' walls.

I use Facebook, but only as a means to keep in contact with people whom I
wouldn't keep in my phonebook. It serves as a nice mediator.

~~~
tdavis
"I use Facebook, but only as a means to keep in contact with people whom I
wouldn't keep in my phonebook. It serves as a nice mediator."

I think this is a sentiment of many people either actively or passively; most
people have far more "friends" on Facebook than they would truly consider
friends. It's more of a place for acquaintances than a place for true friends
/ people you keep in contact with on a regular basis.

It is for this very reason that I maintain that the "killer app" (if there
is/can be one) for "web 2.0" is not going to be a social network like
Facebook, but something that enhances e-mail to include these popular social
network functions (or an app that uses who your correspond with via e-mail as
an indication of who your actual friends are and keep you updated on _their_
affairs). My reasoning for this is the fact that, for most people, the
relationships we really care about / keep up are still mostly maintained via
e-mail more than anything. Sure, we can write on our friends' FB accounts or
carry on twitter conversations or us IM, but how many friends do you have that
you don't e-mail?

E-mail was the killer app for the web to begin with and I don't think its on
the way out like many people seem to. Its still the most prolific and
convenient communication method for the web.

~~~
ph0rque
I would argue that my _really_ close friends are people who I don't email
much, but call instead. So your killer app would have to have access to my
cell phone call history in addition to email history, and build the social
network on a combination of calls and emails.

~~~
tdavis
Right, I recognize that and agree that the top of the top is still phone
calls, but as far as the web as a communication medium goes, e-mail is still
the most used and most important.

Plus I couldn't immediately think of a non-intrusive way to collect call
history from any phone so that idea was out ;-)

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daniel-cussen
"D’Angelo is well-liked at Facebook, though he has mostly stayed behind the
scenes. His departure is doubtless a blow to the organization — and also an
opportunity to bring in a seasoned replacement to handle the site’s continuing
expansion."

Is there evidence that the "seasoned replacement" is important? I've looked
over a few articles at the Harvard Business School library, but I found
nothing that conclusively showed "seasoned replacements," especially CEOs,
made a positive impact on a startup.

~~~
aston
I think there's probably a lot of precedent for "seasoned replacements" making
a positive impact when it comes to technical infrastructure. Not that I can
point you to any. But my sense is that most big sites on the web owe a good
chunk of their scalability to some experienced ops genius(es).

~~~
sah
That could be the case at Facebook. I had the opportunity to talk with Jeff
Rothschild, Facebook's VP of Technology, last year. He was very obviously both
experienced and smart.

~~~
jgrahamc
He was at Accel at the same time as me... he is definitely both experienced
and smart.

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smoody
If true, he's probably just burned out. If I were the CTO for a company that
required the coordination of software across 10,000 servers (and growing), I'd
need an extended vacation, too.

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mikecotton
Jeff Rothschild will likely take over a lot of his portfolio, which is good
for Facebook, because that guy is rockstar.

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Mistone
Congrats to Adam, he's done an amazing jobs scaling facebook to meet the
unbelievable growth demands.

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kul
facebook is good for single people

~~~
xirium
Hey! Don't downmod kul!

This topic was discussed at the TechCrunch UK meeting on Fri 9 May 2008 (
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=183305> ) which Harj and/or kul may have
attended. Apparently, some people use Facebook solely to get dates with their
friends of friends. Apparently, such activity can get intimate relatively
quickly and with relatively high probability.

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misterbwong
If this is true, what's next?

