
Dear Mark Zuckerberg - johns
http://daltoncaldwell.com/dear-mark-zuckerberg
======
tjic
I don't understand what you think Facebook did wrong.

They intend to enter this new space, using their technology and their people.

As a courtesy they offered to hire you / throw a lot of money at you.

What would you have had them do instead?

Not compete with you, because you're a precious snow flake?

Acquire you and treat you like a prima donna, giving you your own team and
allowing you to take your own technical direction?

Why should Facebook - or any competitor - do either of these things?

Seems to me like they acted pretty reasonably here.

Of all the things you said, this struck me as the weirdest:

> Strangely, your “platform developer relations” executive made no attempt to
> defend my position.

What do you think the purpose of the “platform developer relations” executive
is? To advocate AGAINST Facebook and for random outside developers?

I'm not a fan of the Facebook app (not a member) or the company...but in this
case, the firm seems to be acting 100% reasonably.

~~~
jedberg
I think his issue was that the meeting was in bad faith. He was under the
impression that he would be demoing his technology so it could get visibility
within Facebook, not walking into a negotiation.

If they had been upfront about their intentions with the meeting, he probably
would have never gone.

    
    
      What do you think the purpose of the “platform developer relations” executive is?
      To advocate AGAINST Facebook and for random outside developers?
    

Actually, yes. Usually that is what someone in that position does. They are
the advocate for the customer, to help the company see things from the
customer's point of view.

~~~
notJim
> If they had been upfront about their intentions with the meeting, he
> probably would have never gone.

I don't understand why this is a big issue. What was the cost to him in going
to this meeting? It would hardly have changed the outcome (outcome: he
declines their offer and they build a service which clobbers his.)

~~~
jedberg
His time is presumably valuable to him. The cost was his time. Time he could
have spent building his product.

~~~
jakebellacera
Time, sure, but also I think that instead of the exec-level support he wanted
he instead got the impending doom that either:

a) Facebook will knock on his door again at a later date asking to "acqu-
hire".

b) Facebook will eventually release something in-house that will compete with
his app (and most likely win due to Facebook's large momentum).

With the impending doom stuff aside, I still don't think that he should've
expected getting exec-level support for his product walking in to the meeting.
Facebook doesn't _need_ to give him anything. So yeah, he wasted his time, but
that's _his_ problem, not Facebook's.

------
dalton
Rather than get involved with all of these threads, I'd like to clarify
something.

I build a product that pre-dated App Center by several months. Facebook dev
relations people tested it and actively encouraged me to build it. I was
assured that it was considered "good" and "helpful" as an example of using
Open Graph. At an earlier point I was offered marketing help from Facebook for
my launch.

I am not clear why some folks don't see the issue with building something that
is _encouraged_ by employees of a company, and then, in the matter of months,
being told "never mind". That is not good for an ecosystem.

~~~
ljd
I agree with many of the comments in this thread about how an acquisition
offer isn't a bad alternative to just getting ran over by the platform.

However, I can see your point. They should not have encouraged you to build it
on your own if they were going to build it themselves. This seems like a lose-
lose for both parties.

I've heard a lot of talk on how teams within facebook can work without much
centralized oversight and this might be one of the drawbacks. Whoever you
spoke to months ago might not have known that another team was working on it.

Then when they prep'ed for your meeting they found out someone had been
working on it, felt guilty about leading you on months ago and offered a buy
out.

It seems like a communication problem more than anything else.

disclosure: if it is not absolutely clear from my post, I'm speculating on
events, I have no ability to gauge what really happened at facebook.

~~~
dalton
You are right, it could be a communications problem. There are a few details I
left out of this post that would suggest it probably isn't.

I would _never_ have spent months and capital building this without constant
support and encouragement from Facebook.

~~~
ryanmerket
You should have used your Marc Andreessen connection to talk to the VP of
Product instead of a Level 2 or 3 dev relations employee.

------
ajross
I don't get it. FB took an opportunity to make an acquisition offer (or at
least open the dialog) and used some hard tactics (in this case the threat of
direct competition) to improve their negotiating position.

What's the problem here? This is just business. Facebook has every right to
develop that app, just like Dalton Caldwell did. If it makes sense for them to
do it themselves, then they will. If it makes sense for them to buy an
existing player, ditto. And if so, clearly they'd want to acquire that player
at a good price, right?

I just don't see the ethical problem here. They didn't lie, and they offered a
check (that it happens the OP didn't want).

~~~
cube13
The problem is that it's a bad faith negotiation.

Dalton was under the impression that he was going to be making a pitch for
some higher level support from FB for his product. That does not automatically
translate to wanting Facebook to hire him(which apparently was FB's intent).

Facebook's execs effectively ambushed Dalton during the pitch with an aquihire
offer. That's where this turns into a bad faith negotiation, because he was
not prepared for it, and would not have had the meeting in the first place if
this was on the agenda.

~~~
ajross
That's an awfully liberal use of "bad faith". There wasn't any "negotiation"
yet at all, it's just a meeting. Meetings go off-agenda all the time.

It seems to me just like you say, the extent of the harm to Dalton is that he
"would not have had the meeting in the first place." So basically facebook
wasted his afternoon by forcing him to listen to some competition threats and
trying to hand him an offer letter.

Why should we care? I still don't see any ethics issues here at all. Hard
negotiation isn't "bad faith".

~~~
cube13
>That's an awfully liberal use of "bad faith". There wasn't any "negotiation"
yet at all, it's just a meeting. Meetings go off-agenda all the time.

>Why should we care? I still don't see any ethics issues here at all. Hard
negotiation isn't "bad faith".

You're absolutely correct that hard negotiation tactics are not bad faith.
However, like you point out, there wasn't supposed to be any negotiation about
an offer in the first place.

There was no negotiation. In fact, one party(Dalton) did not come to
negotiate. The other party clearly did.

This was not just a meeting going off agenda. This was a calculated strategy
to hire Dalton, and that's why this is a bad faith negotiation. Dalton did not
walk into it prepared to negotiate employment, nor was he pitching for his
product to be acquired by Facebook. But Facebook was clearly interested in it.

To be clear, the bad faith negotiation is really on Dalton's part, because he
was forced into the negotiations. The fault lies with Facebook, though.

~~~
azakai
> There was no negotiation. In fact, one party(Dalton) did not come to
> negotiate. The other party clearly did.

Is it that clear? We weren't there.

Perhaps the Facebook executives listened to a presentation about his product
for an hour, and realized during that time that the presented product was
basically identical to their own intended product, so the last part of the
meeting ended up revolving around "hey, looks we might compete with you - or,
we might hire you if that interests you".

Maybe it didn't go like that. Maybe they stopped him after 1 slide and told
him "your app competes with us. Let us buy you, or die."

Huge range in between those two. You and I (unless you are one of the people
that was in that meeting) can't know where things fell.

~~~
petegrif
I don't think you have been reading the source material closely. It wasn't the
case they suddenly realized. They knew about his product. They had encouraged
him to build it.

------
csmeder
A lot of people seem to be missing Dalton's point. Dalton isn't complaining
Mark's behavior is bad (in the short term). He knows why Mark did what he did,
it makes sense if you are thinking short term. It makes sense if you think
Facebook is worth 110 Billion.

This isn't a letter so much to convince Mark that he is heading down the wrong
path. I think Dalton is convinced FB as an organization has made too many
promises. It's too late for FB too change direction. They are headed for and
iceberg at 110 billion dollar speed and can't course correct in time.

Rather this is a letter to us. Dalton is pointing out the prediction that
Facebook won't be around in 10 years. So don't build your apps on it. If you
build your apps using Facebook you will be at its mercy. And as Facebook
starts to die, you will feel the pain it inflicts on its closest "partners" as
it scrambles to squeeze blood from turnips. It will use every nasty trick in
the book to keep a monopoly on its market and squeeze every last drop of money
and value (your personal info) it can from users.

Dalton has seen what people who run a company, with a dying business model,
are capable of before. The Record/Music companies... He knows what a company,
that is seeing its monopoly slip through its fingers, is willing to do to keep
that monopoly just a little longer.

Intimidation and dishonest negotiation tactics are just the start. Will we
soon see Facebook suing users? Lobbying congress for SOPA like laws to protect
its monopoly? Remember GoDaddy was a main supporter of SOPA. It saw SOPA as a
way to keep its URL retailing monopoly.

Dalton is warning you. Dalton cares about you. He has given up on saving Mark.
Mark wants to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Dalton wants to raise
the goose that lays the silver egg. And share those eggs with us. Well, that's
my interpretation of this open letter to Mark. I could be wrong, I often am.

~~~
lucisferre
This pretty much nails the sentiment I took from the story. He isn't so much
complaining or railing against Facebook, but kicking himself for being, in
hindsight, so naive. Not that anyone could blame him for it though. I mean, it
certainly made perfect sense at the time, in fact for most of us, it still
appears to make a lot of sense which is precisely why he is putting out these
words of caution.

The one line summary seems to be: Facebook and Twitter represent a closed
model of social networking, which rails against the very nature of web and
internet as a technology platform and it probably won't last.

Not saying if I agree or disagree with that statement and prediction, but I
definitely see the argument.

~~~
petegrif
Well said.

------
jgrahamc
This is one of the reasons why I hate open letters. They are almost always
annoying.

This person is complaining because he didn't want to be acquired by Facebook
but would like them to not compete with him. Oh well.

~~~
caleywoods
Wrong. He's angry because he didn't want to be acquired and didn't want to
have his business shut down by Facebook turning off his access.

~~~
natrius
Nothing in the post suggests that Facebook threatened to turn off access.

~~~
cbr
They threatened this in a phone call, but he didn't record it so he didn't
include it in the letter: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325593>

------
notJim
So you were building a service that competes with a service Facebook was
working on, they offered to buy you out, you declined, and you're _angry about
this_? I'm sorry, but that's absurd. Most companies would not have even
thought about steamrolling you, forget about offering a check. Did you expect
them to just decide not to pursue their App Store offering because ol' Dalton
Caldwell wouldn't like it? That's fucking ridiculous.

It sucks that you were naïve about this, but that's hardly Facebook's fault.

~~~
ryanmerket
This. Business is business. It's not the Dev Relations team that decides if an
app on the platform is competitive. Just because they told him to it was
'cool' doesn't mean the execs think it's too competitive...

Moral: Make sure you're talking to the right people.

~~~
dalton
Um, yeah pretty sure I was talking to the right people. Marc Andreessen is on
my board.

~~~
airnomad
You wrote this post 40+ days after the meeting took place. That imply your
timing is chosen for reasons you didn't disclose in the blog post. Hence you
try to manipulate public while pursuing hidden agenda.

~~~
dalton
-> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325762>

~~~
ryanmerket
Yea? So what? You just happen to post it right after your post about creating
an open feed platform -- right as the PR momentum behind it started dying.

------
shock3naw
Let's be clear, the only purpose of this post is to bring attention to
App.net. Calling Facebook 'rotten-to-the-core' isn't a great way to capture
the sympathy of its CEO.

~~~
notJim
I agree. This post comes across as very self-serving. He attacks Facebook for
not being something they never claimed to be, and then offers a competing
product that fulfills that need. Gross.

~~~
petegrif
That's not quite true tho is it? FB does offer something it represents as
being a platform. And bear in mind that he didn't just blindly build a product
assuming that he could trust the platform. He solicited and continually
received assurances that his product would be welcomed and valued on the
platform. It was only after he had invested time and money building it that
the rules changed. And it was that experience that resulted in his conviction
of the need for a competing product.

------
ivankirigin
To clarify for those confused comments here: app.net is in part a platform to
showcase your app. Facebook's AppCenter is similar. If they were building an
open platform, app.net could build into Facebook's AppCenter. Offering a
aquihire and refusing to make an open platform is what Dalton doesn't like.

His critique is tied to his project at <http://join.app.net> because the
reason the platform isn't open according to Dalton is because Facebook needs
the ad revenue to hit its performance numbers.

~~~
natrius
_"Offering a aquihire and refusing to make an open platform is what Dalton
doesn't like."_

Typically, when someone doesn't like an acquisition offer, they decline it. Is
it wrong for Facebook to build a platform that isn't open? I don't see why
Mark Zuckerberg (or the public, as the comments on this submission indicate)
would read this letter and decide that his employees acted improperly, which
the letter seems to expect.

~~~
natep
Typically, when someone knows they will not accept any acquisition offers,
they do not waste their time by going to meetings whose sole purpose is to
discuss an acquisition. FB misled him into thinking it was a demo meeting.

~~~
natrius
That's not what this letter is about. Writing an open letter because someone
wasted your time would seem a bit silly to me. This is about Facebook
threatening to revoke API access, which the letter didn't mention, but his
comments here have.

------
mindcrime
_Your team doesn’t seem to understand that being “good negotiators” vs
implying that you will destroy someone’s business built on your “open
platform” are not the same thing._

That's probably a true statement, but who the heck actually considers Facebook
to be any sort of "open platform" in the first place? Honestly, how many times
have we seen this lesson re-iterated here on HN in the past few months: It is
_very_ dangerous to build a product that depends on a platform that someone
else controls.

And this isn't a new lesson either... remember "DOS ain't done until Lotus
won't run?" (And it doesn't _really_ matter if Microsoft were actually
breaking Lotus on purpose or not... the risk was - and still is - there, and
has to be accounted for).

------
lubujackson
Don't build a house on a river and then blame the water.

There has never been a company-controlled ecosystem that has EVER thrived for
long without the company swooping in to get that easy money.

In fact, now that Facebook is public, its their fiduciary duty to do just
that. They could get sued if they DIDN'T try to cheaply build out their own
versions of successful products.

The only surprise is that anyone is surprised by this, or thinks that Facebook
has "lost their way", or had any other intentions when they started their
platform. This is standard business practice - make a little ecosystem, let
people futz around in it for a while. If it fails, shut it down; if it
succeeds, go pick the low-hanging fruit.

~~~
slantyyz
I agree. It's risky to bet a company on someone else's platform, whether it be
Facebook, Craigslist or someone else. You are at that company's mercy.

Even the most stable company can decide to pivot their strategy, change
management (i.e., your cheerleader/sponsor retires, gets fired or worse), and
at that point, you're just collateral damage.

------
kevinalexbrown
Why wait 1.5 months to make an open letter after a "June 13th, 2012 at 4:30pm"
meeting? Did you try communicating directly with Facebook for 45 days, then
let it go? What makes now the best time to incite public wrath against
Facebook (I'm assuming that was the intent in resolving never to write another
line of code for a "rotten to the core" company) in an open letter that was
anything but conciliatory?

It sounds like Facebook used some hard-handed tactics, but I'm more curious as
to your choice of timing.

Edit: not trying to be snarky, genuinely curious.

~~~
dalton
I have been waiting because I have been afraid.

I have been blogging extensively about platform-risk issues for the past
month, but have never come out and said this part:
<http://daltoncaldwell.com/>

~~~
petegrif
Very understandable.

------
marcusf
One thing I don't get, and I've started to feel really stupid for it, is this
whole Social as Infrastructure meme that has started going around and that the
author touches on. I'd love for someone to explain to me exactly what it would
entail, why any company would move to become a commodity, and where the user
value would be?

I'm not saying there aren't any really good answers to these questions, I'm
just too thick to see it.

~~~
alttab
Imagine a world where everyone used a protocol to communicate. Lets call that
protocol "English". Now, imagine "English" is owned by one company, who
changes "English" and compromises your conversations consistently, and then
tries to monetize your conversations in increasingly subtle and annoying ways.

Now in reality no one owns English. Its an open form of communication that
anyone can use, anywhere. You can even create variants of it and use it with
your friends as long as they understand your dialect.

"Social Infrastructure" would require a common social protocol as a
specification. This would open up an entire ecosystem of smaller players to
contribute to it, providing delicious synergy and innovation along the way.
Kind of like modding Minecraft, etc.

Not every company wants to become a billion dollar start up. There are many IT
service providers and MSPs that are perfectly comfortable servicing 30 clients
and making a lifestyle business for everyone involved. If its a commodity, it
opens up locality and niche markets easier than a monolithic implementation.

Nothing but good would come from a true technological social protocol. Right
now online social behavior is dictated through the mind of one man, which
isn't really social at all.

The user value is in that the users have all the power. If social service
providers are a commodity, if they misbehave or provide a bad user experience
they could simply take their social graph somewhere else. This empowers the
user. This is also why Facebook does everything in its power to retain
hegemony.

~~~
marcusf
To counterpoint, haven't we been down that road before? XMPP, OpenSocial, etc.
To be fair, it's market powers and network stickiness rather than abstract
social or technical merit that have kept Facebook the incumbent.

And for someone to dethrone FB, an interoperable social bus would probably be
a good idea. Of course, that would not what would bring users to it (digital
empowerment seems too much an abstract idea to explain to my mom, for
example), but rather a killer app or a series of them -- like Instagram.

------
unreal37
We are moving into an era of the walled garden. Apple has it's iTunes Store
and Mac Store, Microsoft will have a Windows store when Windows 8 launches, FB
has its platform and apps that run on its platform, Twitter, on and on... All
companies are looking to build walls and moats around their "platforms"
because walls mean profits.

Now you need to blessing of the landlord, and not be competing against them in
any way.

~~~
jarek
Web 3.0 bubble expected around 2019 once the walled gardens fail yet again

------
surferbayarea
The issue is that facebook and twitter have derailed from their earlier stated
mission of connecting people and facilitating communication. Their goal as
public businesses is making money from advertising, anything else is just
feeding into that. This kind of misalignment of goals results in end users
experience suffering. A thing like a social network is part of the fundamental
fabric of the internet As a result the organization running this
infrastructure should have very clear goals. It doesn't have to be a non-
profit, but the goal should not be to generate 30% growth and billions in
profits. The goal should be to make it easier for people to communicate. Given
the decrease in the cost of computing, there is no reason that it should cost
billions of $ to run an infrastructure like facebook. What we need is a linux
for the internet. Fundamental infrastructures like social network and search
engine being run by entities with no hidden agendas! It will happen!

~~~
mtrn
I too think it will happen. This post illustrates that

a) the web is not really a welcoming place for large walled gardens,

b) if you want to build on someone else's infrastructure, pay them, so you
become their _customer_ , so _their goal_ is to _make your life easier_.

------
slurgfest
This is a recurring theme.. if you don't want to be in this position, then
don't build on top of someone else's closed platform. When you do that, expect
to see this situation because that is what such platforms are designed for!

------
Moseman23
Mega-meh. I find this "open" letter to be as totally self-serving as "Open"
Graph will ever be. You got a meeting with a lot of FB poo-bahs. Whatever you
thought it was going to be about, if you were unprepared for the crushing
embrace of the Big Face, it's on you. Of course they want to intimidate you
into an "aqui-hire." It's called hardball.

Their "platform" is what it is. A highly flawed way to instantly reach
astounding numbers of people for potentially deep or shallow exchanges of
questionable value. Many your age have made millions for a half-year's work on
this "joke" platform, as you call it. This is known, and blaming their tanking
stock price for their behavior seems like a cheap shot at execs you don't even
name.

I would advise you to get ready in case Apple calls. Unlike FB, they won't
apologize after they gutpunch you.

------
deveac
Step 1) Code features for a large platform that is actively iterating and
implementing new features at an incredibly rapid pace.

Step 2) Complain when there is eventual feature overlap.

------
lewisflude
Mark will probably see this, but will anything change? Probably not.

The simple fact is that as a company, FB have to meet their targets and
Dalton's app is a bit of a conflict of interest. So, no surprises there.

However, I agree with his point about big "media company" social networks
being eventually replaced by a much larger number of specific micro-networks.
One network for photo sharing, music sharing (Soundcloud?), messaging etc.

Even once you have all these niches, I'm sure there's space for two or three
due to the fact that people have different priorities and visual tastes.

As a company, Facebook aren't on course to die but I'm sure we're going to
continue to see decisions like this being made that surprise us as the tech
community due to the fact that they don't align with the vision we thought the
company once had.

------
petegrif
Having a bunch of software is one thing.

Representing yourself as a platform is something very different.

A platform a representation that you are providing a set of services on which
others can safely build. It is a form of contract. And this representation has
to be trusted because who in their right minds would otherwise invest on a
'platform' that turns out to be a flag of convenience? If a company loses this
trust they ultimately lose the right to be called a platform. They lose
developers and are ultimately left with a bunch of unused APIs.

Incidents like these described by DC are extremely important and should be
publicly voiced because they bear directly upon the decision making of others
who may be in the process of weighing their options. Should they or shouldn't
they trust this alleged 'platform.' It is a huge strategic decision that can
make or break a company. So people like DC who are prepare to go public with
his experience are doing us all a favor because they are providing more
perfect information, without which the market cannot operate accurately.

People can choose to criticize this or that dimension of the way various
people played their parts, but that really isn't the key point, is it? Surely
the key point is, can you trust the 'platformness' of FB? Did they imply one
thing - that he was building a valuable product that they would be supporting
- THEN choose to compete and wipe him out? That's the key point. The manners,
the exact detail of how the wipeout was conducted aren't the point. If the
story is accurate it is surely the breach of faith the is important. Some may
argue that to expect otherwise is naive. But without some such faith there is
no platform. You can't have your cake and eat it.

------
Kelliot
Getting bored of Hackernews being used as an internet slander machine. I think
the age old rule of 'Not your personal army' needs to be enacted here =(

------
EvanMiller
Dalton Caldwell sends email the hard way.

------
chollida1
I'm having trouble seeing why Dalton seems so put out by this

If you try to look at this from facebook's perspective the most likely out
come looks something like:

> Ok, we've decided to go this app route. Wow app.net is really going to be
> steam rolled by this. We already have a relation ship with them, what can we
> do to help them out?

> Well I guess we can offer to aquire them, they probably have some expertise
> we can use and it will generate a lot of good will for us from our own
> developer community. Yes, this seems like a win win.

> Well this is a pretty delicate conversation so bringing it up over the phone
> is pretty bushleague. Let's do teh right thing and tell him face to face. I
> see we've already got them scheduled for a meeting in a couple of weeks.

> This seems to be working out perfectly for both of us. How much do you think
> we'll need to offer them to acquire their company?

I'm really having trouble seeing how people don't see this as the most likely
way things happened.

------
jcdavis
Surely he must have signed some sort of NDA before going into said meeting,
which he is now breaching?

~~~
smalter
I'm pretty sure I signed an NDA at the front desk as the cost of walking into
Facebook.

------
snorkel
Tying your business fortunes to the goodwill of Facebook is like having the
fate a toothbrush bird that feeds from the mouth an alligator. The toothbrush
bird will never grow to be as big as the alligator and it eats only as much as
the alligator allows.

------
yuvadam
These are the types of stories that Silicon Valley generates that never cease
to amuse me. What we have here is a typical example of how agents act in a
competitive capitalist environment. In a system where profit is all that
matters, I find it amusing to hear people bitch about 'ethics' and 'bad
faith'.

We have long known Facebook's model, and the warning signs are everywhere.
Facebook is a surveillance conglomerate, and it is granting you certain
privileges - either as a so-called 'user' or as a developer - at its behest.
Get in bed with that thing, and you just might get the cooties.

------
AznHisoka
The purpose of a business is to make money for their shareholders. Repeat 10
times until this becomes obvious.

~~~
dave1619
This isn't necessarily true. Jony Ive on Apple, "Our goal absolutely at Apple
is not to make money. This may sound a little flippant, but it’s the truth.
Our goal and what gets us excited is to try to make great products. We trust
that if we are successful people will like them, and if we are operationally
competent we will make revenue, but we are very clear about our goal."

~~~
jarek
Of course Ive is going to say that. He's a designer. You think Oppenheimer
gets on investor calls and says "Sorry guys, we don't actually care about your
money, we're just here to make what we think are great products" and they
believe him?

------
mbesto
> _As I understood at the time, the purpose of the meeting was for me to
> present/demonstrate a new iOS app & service I have been building on the
> Facebook Platform. Previously, I had been reassured by Facebook dev-
> relations employees that the service I was building was an interesting/
> valuable use of Open Graph & Facebook Platform._

What evidence does the author have to support this? Is there communication
from such VPs saying "We would like you to come in to meet us to measure the
value of your service"?

> _I was hoping the outcome of this meeting would be executive-level support
> for my impending product launch._

Again, who set the authors expectations here? And what exactly does
"executive-level" support mean? Would they feature the app, simply because it
was valuable for them?

Note - Expecation setting is one of the hardest things to do in business. And
can also be used for negotiation tactics.

I'm sorry, but all I read from this is just (another) example of how a company
with different corporate interests (read-> shareholder value) no longer puts
time into something that doesn't drive bottom line. Is it a great example of
what an IPO does to a company's interest? Absolutely. But I don't necessarily
feel bad for the author nor do I feel like any unjust has been done. He's
proved his point, seems extremely smart and will move on to the next cool and
interesting project.

------
joering2
So Facebook is more or less like a Casino: its fun to play, you are welcome to
come and bring your friends along, have fun, win some, lose some and then go
home. And don't forget to come back. But if you are bringing your genius
gambling skills, plan on making money here, and you keep on winning one after
another, you will be kindly asked to leave, or removed with force.

At the end of the day, its nothing new. Its a bit of a ponzi scheme where a
company offers something (in case of Facebook or Twitter: an access to their
dataset) under a false promise of achieving fame and/or fortune if you built
something fun and cool and attract large audience. So you are welcome to try
while we keep on building our company on this "don't be evil, connect people"
promise. But rest assured if somehow someway you come close to making it a
reality and bump on our radar, we will gladly shut you down this or another
way.

And I'm having hard time blaming Facebook here. Perhaps that would be weird
before IPO and an audience of stockholders watching their every move, but
especially now where there is a crack in the boat and it runs 40% underwater,
all eyes are on captain's hands. He needs to be as fierce and violent in his
moves as possible and if someone even remotely comes close to eating up even
little bit of his advertising cheddar, he/she will be torpedoed down.

------
zmmmmm
I honestly think many people have lost the real idea of what a "platform" is
these days. In my mind, in it's truest sense, a platform is something stable -
a rock solid base on which to build. That's why you build on it - because you
can trust it, even if you turn enemies with it, the key parts you rely on
aren't going to change.

So to me, Facebook never was a "platform", nor was Twitter, nor iOS. All these
things are just gambles, business bets on the future based on things you hope
are true. They may be good ones, profitable ones, but you were never
guaranteed anything and you should be prepared to lose it all the minute your
interests and your landlord's no longer coincide.

What do I consider "true" platforms? The closest are Android, Windows (not
counting future versions), OSX (up until ML), in some sense the JVM and the
browser. I don't know if the new versions of OSX and Windows will qualify as
true platforms ... it remains to be seen how the effect of tightening controls
on them plays out.

tldr; I wish we could stop calling playing in somebody else's ever changing
walled garden with no guarantee of anything a "platform".

------
hxf148
I've dealt with people at App.net during my own development projects
(Infostripe) and they seem one of the few who were good at communicating back.
They even featured IS at one point.

Which might go to explain how they are apparently excellent at putting
themselves in the news as an heir to Twitter and a major Facebook competitor.
Yet aren't actually either of those things. At least so far.. fascinating.

------
codezy
I find building a product using a 3rd party API can be totally awesome or a
complete disaster. In my case I had two experiences that stood out: RDIO:
These guys are awesome. Their API is awesome, their support of devs who build
on it is awesome. Their product is awesome. Kudos to Ian who works on it. We
built Anthm on this and it has worked out great!

FreshBooks: These guys made me furious. We found that there were no good OSX
based timers for this product so we built one. In the end they refused to put
us up on their site, each time with a different excuse (we have promised
exclusivity to this other app, or we are changing our app system). The
developer relations guy was just a total jerk. In the end they asked us to
change our name because they did not like it and even after immediately doing
that, no love from them.

In short - it is getting tough to base a business on any of these third party
API's that can change under your feet - yet there are still some out there
that are tremendous.

------
Aaronontheweb
If Facebook's plan B was to lock out Dalton using a TOS change, then it seems
awfully stupid to have held this meeting in the first place.

I get the talent acquisition as a defensive play to keep a potential threat
out of the market, but if Dalton's story is true then Facebook's execution
around this entire engagement seems stupid and ham-fisted through and through.

------
sdqali
Could you care to elaborate on what the app/service you were demoing to FB?

~~~
quartus
The service we were building (I work at app.net) was a social app discovery
service. It integrated with Facebook to show you what apps your friends were
using and downloading, and display stories about the apps you use.

~~~
ryanmerket
So you were extending Facebook's core features and you didn't expect Facebook
to think that was being too competitive?

I'm pretty sure I've seen this somewhere else... at least a dozen times.

~~~
quartus
We used Facebook's APIs and Open Graph in our app discovery service. It was
built and released before Facebook's App Center was announced, and Facebook
dev-relations employees had previously been supportive of our endeavor.

------
arquebus
I dont know much about how a venture capitalist estimates the value of a
startup that has not yet marketed their product. But we all see how big name
tech companies are stuck paying huge amounts to buy up competition: ie MS
paying $9B for Skype, Facebook buys Instagram for $1B. Clearly Daltan wants to
create value for his company that it does not yet have. The only way he can do
this is by promoting himself on social media under the guise of a "this could
happen to you" story.

------
hendrik-xdest
It worked: [http://allthingsd.com/20120801/facebook-platform-exec-
ethan-...](http://allthingsd.com/20120801/facebook-platform-exec-ethan-beard-
departs/)

------
TheCondor
I don't know about airing the laundry like this, it seems more and more common
and there is always a lot of missing context. And you can't really undo it,
but to each his own.

Am I reading this correctly that the platform ad vp has $1billion number on
his head and he is a little nervous about some competition? It looks a lot
like fb is on tilt, from the bot clicks to different charge for friends to see
content stories it doesn't look like all is well.

------
johnbenwoo
These dynamics are part of what is referred to in corporate development as the
Golden Rule - he who has the gold, makes the rules

------
smber1
"I believe that future social platforms will behave more like infrastructure,
and less like media companies."

Great, line. Exactly what I was thinking as I was reading the letter.
Completely necessary to to create an eco-system that developers/consumers will
want to use. Monetizing the eco-system can come later, just as it did with
Google search.

------
alttab
Sounds like the author's righteousness has worn off and now he regrets not
negotiating with Facebook more. To make himself feel like he got something out
of it, he posts a blog about how Facebook is the enemy, and not-so-subtly
brags that his creation was wanted for acquisition by Facebook.

------
kkotak
Seriously? Are you so delusional? So, what's bothering this guy is that
Facebook wants to pay him to buy what he's built? AND he can walk away from
it? Spending an hour of his life in that meeting? That really gives raises the
bubble to a new level. The one that this guy and a lot of the valley lives in.

_K

------
mikeleeorg
I know it's been pointed out endlessly elsewhere, but it seems necessary to
highlight this excerpt of the OP's post:

 _As someone that wants to build quality social software, software that
doesn’t force users to re-create their friends list, or not use oAuth, etc., I
have to endure huge platform risk._

------
joeblau
I wonder if this style of negotiation tactic motivated companies like Spool,
Face.com, Karama, Glancee, and Lightbox to join? It seems like Dalton's strong
entrepreneurial spirit (or hard hardheadedness--however you see it) kept him
from falling into that category.

------
tjmc
A fish rots from the head down. Zuckerberg has well-known form screwing over
those he does business with. That you're surprised speaks more to your
business acumen than his I'm afraid. Your open letter comes across as entitled
and puerile - as they usually do.

------
zem
First Apple, then Twitter, and now Facebook ... the landscape right now seems
positively littered with people who have bet the farm on a sharecropping
strategy, gotten burnt and are now complaining about the landlord rather than
learning the underlying lesson.

------
DenisM
Dalton, thanks for having warned the rest of us. The opinions may differ on
whether this sort of bait and switch is a legitimate tactic, but I think we
can all agree we're better off knowing about this sort of things than not.
Good luck with your business.

------
RyanMcGreal
Building your business in an unexploited niche on another business's platform
is sharecropping, pure and simple.

[http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePla...](http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace)

------
jay_kyburz
Hrrm.. much of the discussion here is missing what I think is the important
point.

If you build on Facebooks platform, there is a good chance you will end up
competing with Facebook. Or Twitter.

We need a social platform that is distributed and that nobody "owns".

------
orangethirty
Though I still don't understand that well what Dalton's product really is, I
do respect him for the tough choice he made. It takes guts to turn down a lot
of money from some big player. Good luck, Dalton.

------
akandiah
Here's Vic Gundotra's take on this:
[https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/EstNjiL2...](https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/EstNjiL2uon)

------
vishaldpatel
Aw.. it's a love letter!

------
zobzu
All I know is that I'd be irritated if someone started each paragraph with my
first name, specially without knowing me personally. That's impolite,
authoritative and just annoying.

My 2cts :P

------
HistoryInAction
Interesting, are you arguing that Facebook and Twitter are going to be the
'electricity infrastructure' of the Internet in terms of their role as
platforms for development?

------
joe-mccann
These open letters to a CEO of a massive corporate conglomerate need to stop
please. No CEO gives two fucks about your blog post. Cry me a river, J Tim...

------
doonrothmani
holy cow, getting a meeting at Facebook and having them offer to acquire my
business $$$ would be a dream come true!!! This guy sounds like the guys who
complain that the super-models that come on to them are only looking for a
physical relationship. Get over yourself dude. btw, Facebook is evil, but
that's all beside the point

------
dgudkov
One more proof that no one knows how to monetize social networks correctly
(maybe besides LinkedIn).

------
freyr
Facebook built a developer platform, and developers trusted Facebook -- dumb f
__*s.

------
halis
Did you even talk price? It may have been worth your while...

------
arunoda
I just felt that this is a marketing tac-tic by dalton to promote his new
app.net

Just a random thought.

