

Zuckerberg's Bizarre Facebook Insignia Revealed, And What It Means  - bwaldorf
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/06/bizarre_facebook_insignia_reve.php

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Timothee
I agree with dinde: I don't see what the big deal is about. The comments about
a 'cult' and the Illuminati were clearly jokes during the interview. (see
[http://d8.allthingsd.com/20100602/whats-under-mark-
zuckbergs...](http://d8.allthingsd.com/20100602/whats-under-mark-zuckbergs-
hoodie/))

It's like asking if all the birds pictured in the Twitter office are a proof
that Twitter is in fact a bird-oriented cult and they're striving for world-
domination done by birds. Or saying that Google thinks their users are kids
because of the primary colors they put everywhere.

Mark Zuckerberg loves hoodies. He built a giant company. So, of course,
they'll make some company hoodies and sometimes they'll add something more
than the Facebook logo, something that represents what the company is about.

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CodeMage
Oh, _come on_! "Childish and creepy"? Complaining about privacy issues is one
thing, but finding stupid excuses to slam a person is something quite
different.

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loup-vaillant
I don't find this childish but "creepy" was actually the first word that came
to my mind when I saw that. Before I even read the article. Under the "open
and connected" disguise you clearly see the "one ring to rule them all". It
even has Facebook's name on it!

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I think this logo is quite accurate.

~~~
philwelch
At least it didn't have an Eye of Providence (qua The Great Seal of the United
States: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_Providence>).

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aristus
Good detective work, but man, there is a reason the summer is called "the
silly season" in the journalism trade. :D

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philwelch
As far as Facebook iconography goes, this isn't nearly as creepy as That Guy
from Facebook's old logo: [http://mashable.com/wp-
content/uploads/2007/04/facebookguy.P...](http://mashable.com/wp-
content/uploads/2007/04/facebookguy.PNG)

Frankly, it seems to be in the general category of vaguely strategy-conveying
graphics that a lot of companies employ. It's nowhere near as bizarre as, for
instance, the graphics underlying the rationale behind the Pepsi rebranding
last year, conveying such concepts as "Relativity of Space and Time",
"Gravitational Pull of Pepsi", "The Pepsi Ratio", the comparison of "The
Earth's Geodynamo" to "The Pepsi Globe" and "Magnetic Fields" to "Pepsi Energy
Fields", and the not-quite-orthagonal axes of "Convention to Innovation" and
"DNA to Future" projected through the old Pepsi logo to create the new one:
[http://www.fastcompany.com/files/PEPSI%20GRAVITATIONAL%20FIE...](http://www.fastcompany.com/files/PEPSI%20GRAVITATIONAL%20FIELD.pdf)

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dinde
Doesn't seem like a big deal to me. I think a lot of Zuckerberg's bad press
comes from his age: i.e., people are jealous of his success.

~~~
ComputerGuru
I totally disagree. Age means less and less with each passing day.
Zuckerberg's bad press comes from the fact that he has a huge and highly-vocal
userbase and he implements features that they don't like, or at least, in a
way that they don't approve of even if the features themselves rock. That, and
he's a bit too eager to capitalize on his successful platform, willing to take
risks with user privacy and data "pushing the boundaries" so to speak in order
to find out what users are willing to put up with and what they're not.

When it seems like almost everyone you know has a facebook account, there are
bound to be complaints. It has nothing to do with age, it has everything to do
with centralized power.

~~~
philwelch
His bad press comes from the fact that he's been in the hype cycle long enough
to reach the backlash stage, and he made a bold enough move to trigger that
backlash.

Any successful startup will fall into this trap if it operates in startup mode
for long enough. Just mash up the concepts of "startups iterate quickly and
fearlessly", "people fear change", and the hype cycle. Or hell, just rely on
the hype cycle by itself.

Note that this is true whether or not changing Facebook's default privacy
settings and launching Instant Personalization was a good idea or not. It
doesn't matter whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, just that sufficient
numbers of people consider it a bad thing, for the thing to trigger the
backlash stage. And if you're innovating, you almost have to do something lots
of people consider a bad thing. You get a pass for this early on in the hype
cycle, of course, but even if you continue the same pattern of behavior, once
the hype cycle reaches backlash you will pay for it all in spades, and
internet comment trolls will call you a psychopath.

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cmelbye
Serious question: Where can I buy one of those hoodies?

