
PG about to speak at Facebook, partnership announcement to follow - mrduncan
http://twitter.com/Harjeet/status/22222030645
======
spolsky
I 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.

~~~
SandB0x
I was going to vote you up, but under the circumstances the only thing to say
is: <http://i.imgur.com/NoDzP.png>

~~~
novum
Zucker News? Facecombinator? HN Connect?

(Disclaimer: I loathe facebook)

~~~
dkersten
Facecombinator is an awesome name

~~~
mkramlich
Wow, somebody here moves fast:

    
    
      ]> host Facecombinator.com
    
      Facecombinator.com has address 69.163.237.51

~~~
uxp
Whoever owns that better keep an eye out behind them. I wouldn't touch a
startup or project that had any hint of a social media platform and included
the name face and/or book until that whole TeachBook thing gets sorted out.

[http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/08/upstart-attacks-
fac...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/08/upstart-attacks-facebook/)

Maybe I'm just a wuss.

~~~
jacquesm
That teachbook thing is almost a foregone conclusion unless they have a very
large amount of money in the bank or get a big sponsor.

If I were them - and I'm not a wuss - I'd change names pronto. You pick your
battles, and in a case like this the downside is considerable for very little
upside, already 'teachbook.com' has had a bunch of free publicity, more than
they could hope to get otherwise.

If a steamroller the size of FB aims for you and you're not 100% in the clear
(and I really don't see how they could make the case that they came up with
the name independently and were not aware of the facebook brand and website)
then you fold.

The person behind facecombinator.com is a wuss too, because they registered
the name through an anonymizer, that speaks of 'bad faith' to me. If you've
got nothing to hide and you're above board, don't hide.

------
rpledge
Meh, 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.

~~~
ojbyrne
I guess an obvious exception is that there is an entire industry (SEO) built
on google's platform.

~~~
InclinedPlane
A lot of practical (i.e. not just gaming the system) SEO tactics are valid for
almost any search engine, not just Google's.

~~~
staunch
Even so, almost every business built on SEO would go under if they lost their
Google traffic.

~~~
InclinedPlane
If you're not providing services to others and _all_ you do is SEO then by
definition I think you are gaming the system. So yes, that's almost certain to
be very closely coupled to Google specifically.

------
Mystalic
Announced: <http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/405>

------
nopassrecover
Doesn't this fly in the face of "don't deal with jerks"? (I'm not being
deliberately inflammatory, this is a genuine query)

~~~
pg
If you mean Mark, I don't think he is.

~~~
nopassrecover
That'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.

~~~
pg
To the extent any of this is true, it's probably no more eggs than most people
would break in the making of a 500 million person omelette.

------
DanielRibeiro
Some 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
I'm curious. Does that mean that the angels don't expect to get a decent
return if FB buys their investment?

~~~
DanielRibeiro
If 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>

~~~
staunch
I'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
If 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>

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...](http://paulgrahamsidebar.heroku.com/guidetoinvestors.html#gm_topic_6))

But my question was not regarding YC, but more about angels.

------
myprasanna
A 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.

------
sliverstorm
This is highly ironic, IMHO, given the anti-FB attitude that's been flagrantly
displayed on HN for the past several months.

~~~
pchristensen
There'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.

~~~
sliverstorm
This 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.

------
jacquesm
Well, I guess that answers this question:

<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.

------
dman
Is 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
In 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
1) 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
Nevertheless, 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.

------
Keyframe
This 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!".

------
msy
I 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.

------
rwhitman
I 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...

------
greenlblue
Is this real?

------
scrame
Yuck.

------
rokhayakebe
Some year PG will be "This year's most influential person in tech"

