
I was once a Facebook fool - numair
http://public.numair.com/2011_fbfool.html
======
numair
Wow, well, this got way more attention than I wanted.

First, to be clear -- I have nothing against the guy who took Dave Morin's job
(who wasn't supposed to be named -- Amazon CloudFront didn't bother to
invalidate its cache when I uploaded the final edit of that paper). He played
his cards right, came out hundreds of millions of dollars ahead, and then he
_got out_. He's not in this to control your social life or anything, he just
played the Silicon Valley game and got his.

The issue is really about the people who _are_ trying to control your social
life, and who are trying to convince the sort of people who read Hacker News
to use them as a stable, reliable piece of infrastructure for your projects
and businesses. My story is just one datapoint of so many -- most of which are
private, but easily discoverable by quietly asking around the Valley -- that
should help you realize that Facebook is definitely _not_ the company you want
operating the world's social infrastructure. The code might work, the pages
might render, but on a deep social and ethical level, Facebook and its
platform are _not_ web-scale.

Also, the "sharecropper" and "beware of your platform" arguments don't apply
here. Social infrastructure isn't like being a developer for the Playstation
-- this is very basic and very global stuff, similar to water or power, and
you shouldn't have to question its integrity. I shouldn't get dirty water, or
my power shut off, because the CEO of the utility company allows his/her VPs
to play God. There's a reason these guys don't call themselves a "social
utility" anymore... But anyway, that's a whole 'nother subject, and I'd rather
be coding (or socializing!) than writing.

And to all of the people who question why I would even publish something like
this -- chill out bro, I'm just obeying Zuckerberg's Law! /disconnect

~~~
sidcool
I didn't get what you mean by 'not web-scale'

~~~
utunga
i guess his point was that the reason the web works at all, or tcp/ip, or
email, or any of the really successful platforms - is because of certain
contracts of openness and (essentially) fair play that are built into the very
structure of how they are built.

this openness allows them to scale to that level and without it you can't get
to truly global scale.

------
mosburger
I once worked for a startup that got screwed trying to build a Facebook music
platform - promised the world, then the rug was pulled out from under us (by
both the labels and FB, and our two major investors were the labels
themselves... it was quite ridiculous). I think we were probably just a pawn
used as leverage for their negotiations with other players.

Anyway, yeah, I have little doubt that this story is legit.

~~~
properez
Heres a link that may help to debate your doubts:
[http://www.allfacebook.com/talking-with-facebooks-music-
mast...](http://www.allfacebook.com/talking-with-facebooks-music-
master-2007-07)

------
zerostar07
As a facebook app developer i am aware of what shaky ground it is. I must
attest the best days of the platform was when Morin was in charge, people were
actually flocking to make apps and the platform was adding features. Ever
since he left, feature pruning started, policies were not enforced, facebook
changed their designs every month and the platform team inexplicably started
reinventing the wheel. Then at some point facebook banned our AdSense revenue
stream, and soon after they required 30% cut of our virtual goods.

We have now switched to an external website using facebook connect and are
happy with it. I am thrilled that Google+ is building a competing platform.

~~~
danmaz74
This could be an important differentiator for Google. Let's hope that the
competition will heat up on this.

~~~
csarva
If you're looking to Google for a solution then I think you're looking in the
wrong direction. Just look at the latest crop of anti-competitive complaints
against them -- like Yelp for one.

~~~
danmaz74
Well, at least for now they are the underdog, so it would be in their interest
to be more open in the "social" space.

The Yelp case, whatever you may think about it, is in a completely different
realm.

------
timr
It's not especially interesting that Facebook made a deal for a music app (and
subsequently supported that deal over a competitor). This is business, not
charity.

What's interesting to me is that iLike -- the success story of early platform
days -- was being promoted heavily from within Facebook itself. If you read
the press at that time, you'd have been excused for thinking that the Partovi
brothers were the victims of a random lightning strike -- just two guys who
got lucky with a tiny little app. I know that in Seattle, everyone was buzzing
about how iLike was caught so "unaware" by their traction that they were
borrowing servers from local companies just to keep up. Now it turns out that
the "overnight success" was at least somewhat pre-ordained.

It's just another bit of practical evidence about the origins of business
success in the Valley. Your rolodex matters a lot.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
If everyone had known from the start that Facebook would make that kind of
deal and kick all other apps of the same kind out, it would have been OK. But
running a platform that is supposedly governed by rules and then using
underhand tactics like these to kill apps arbitrarily is not OK.

It puts a big question mark on Facebook as a platform and I think the author
of the article is right that everyone should think very carefully before
building on top of that sort of "platform".

~~~
nickswan
You run this risk when you build on or using any type of platform. If you
build something that is hugely successful you might get acquired by the
platform provider, or if it's cheaper they might build it themselves.

~~~
DougBTX
You can generalise even further: when going into a business partnership,
weight up the risks that the other party will become competitors in the
future. That seems to be what is happening between Apple and Samsung at the
moment.

------
TomOfTTB
I’m not saying the author is wrong here but I think he’s unfair in attacking
just Facebook.

The one thing I learned from my time in the valley is that EVERYONE is looking
out for themselves. That isn’t meant as negatively as it sounds. People go
there to prove themselves. Either by making money or making their mark on the
world (which is why people like Sean Parker stick around even after they’ve
made money). But whatever the case they’re in it to win at all costs.

That’s why people work 18 hours a day and pour every cent they have into their
startup.

But that’s the relevant point. If people are going to give up everything in
their lives to win you can’t assume they’ll then hinder their chances by
looking out for your needs. In this story the author is upset because Facebook
decided they had a better chance of winning by partnering with iLike. But
could you really expect any company in the valley to act differently?

There are plenty of places in the world where the environment isn’t as
competitive and if that appeals to you then you should go there. But if you
decide to start a company in the heart of the startup world you should expect
everyone to be working towards their own goals and plan accordingly. That
means NEVER relying on ANYBODY more than you have to and ALWAYS having a
backup plan.

~~~
nirvana
You can look out for yourself without lying, cheating, or backstabbing others.
You can operate as a moral, ethical person, and not have to mislead people, or
break your promises.

Looking out for yourself is not the problem, dishonesty is.

This becomes a bigger problem when dishonesty becomes part of the culture.

~~~
dxbydt
> without lying, cheating, or backstabbing...not have to mislead people, or
> break your promises.

From my time in the valley, I'd say dishonesty, misleading clients, breaking
promises, not delivering on time, all of that is very much a part of the sv
culture.

At Sun, we'd tell all our clients that Microsoft was evil, out to crush us.
Our CEO Scott McNealy sent around a famous email about the sizes of MS & non-
MS file formats. "Sun will win" had 12 chars * 1byte/char = 12 bytes as a
textfile, 24 bytes as an Openoffice file, and 100,000 bytes as an MS
powerpoint slide! While entirely factual, it was quite a dubious example,
considering that internally within Sun, we happily used Wintel machines, used
powerpoint for presentations, emailed Word files around instead of PDFs, and
dissed openoffice as a piece of junk :)

When Java was in its infancy ( 1997-2000 period ), a lot of promises were made
& fell by the wayside. Sun was building up its consulting arm, so we'd go out
to customer sites and say Yes Java can do this, that and the other. Then we'd
come back & Javasoft would tell us, look this feature is simply not part of
the forthcoming API. Sometimes they'd get an old wise Unix/C hacker to write C
code to do whatever was necessary beneath the covers, and then write a JNI
wrapper atop that and thus claim Hey Java can actually do telnet & ftp
natively ( Ha!).

I had to deal with a lot of graphics code that was routinely promised &
arrived DOA. One of the primary requirements for most financial sevices firms
was a table widget to display spreadsheets. AWT didn't have one. Someday there
was suposed to be something called Swing, and it would have a powerful table
API that would rival the MFC widgets in its power. That's what Sun told us,
and that's what we as Sun consultants sold to all our Wall Street clients. But
the damn thing took so long to build, every firm had their own proprietary
table APIs.

At GS I worked on something called GSTable ( God those horrible memories make
them go away! ) So this godawful GSTable was a homecooked solution to display
tabular data. I started with something stupid - create an array of Label ( AWT
labels ) and put them in a Panel. This created m x n + 1 components per table
- too heavy & memory intensive. Then when Swing came out & didn't have a
table, we made m x n JLabel's and put them into a JPanel. Over the summer, a
Princeton computer graphics intern coded up a canvas ( just 1 custom Component
) that overrode paint() and drew all the cell contents. That worked so well,
GS made the teen a six figure offer while he was still in his junior year. All
he'd have to do is maintain that table widget! He wisely turned them down &
went on to become a computer graphics heavyweight. Meanwhile, I worked on that
GSTable as it went through various iterations, until it was actually capable
of displaying rows and columns with different sizes, which was apparently a
very common requirement in finance. Then finally the Swing JTable arrived! I
was like Hallejulah end of all my misery! But alas, Sun's promises & its
deliverable were so far apart. That JTable couldn't display multiwidth rows,
the paint code was riddled with scaling bugs, it was a bloody mess. There were
actual fuck this and fuck that blocks of code in the repaint...the frustrated
Javasoft developer wrestling with repaint math! So we stuck with the GSTable.
Then IBM came out with their SWT, you had Marimba with their desktop
widgets...but everytime we decided to adopt something as the standard, that
company would just vanish into thin air...Marimba decided it wanted to get out
of AWT widgets business and stick to push technology so that was that...so
many broken promises and toy widgets, certainly none of them worth the
hundreds of thousands of dollars in license fees.

Everybody likes to paint wall st as a paragon of evil while the poor honest
tech genius slogs away in the valley working on the cutting edge of
technology. In reality, greed is rampant on both sides, money flows from main
st to wall st & from there on to the valley. Everybody's got his fingers in
the cookie jar.

~~~
abstractwater
Who was that "Princeton computer graphics intern" and what did he build
afterwards?

~~~
dxbydt
Dude...its all such a blur..I'd have to rent a time machine and hit the
computer graphics depts at all the ivies. But I did find some JTable code from
way back then, in the bugfix archive [http://www.mail-archive.com/classpath-
patches@gnu.org/msg018...](http://www.mail-archive.com/classpath-
patches@gnu.org/msg01839.html)

public void setRowHeight(int rh, int row) { setRowHeight(rh); // FIXME: not
implemented }

So that was actual code that Sun shipped. A method setRowHeight(rh,row) that
allowed you to change the height of row number 'row' to 'rh', instead changed
the height of ALL rows to 'rh' because the alternative was too hard and
therefore not implemented! So much for multi-height rows.

------
raganwald
Sharecropper woes:

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

<http://raganwald.posterous.com/the-freedom-to-eat-pizza>

[http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in-
orchard...](http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in-orchard.html)

~~~
randomdata
Sharecropping is kind of a weird analogy to use here.

In farming, sharecropping is the low risk way to grow your business. It is the
landlord that takes on much of the burden if the crop fails. But with small
risk comes small reward.

In technology, "sharecropping" is the high risk venture. The landlord here
assumes no risk at all if your application fails. The burden falls squarely on
you. However, with the high risk, if you hit it big, the payoff potential is
huge.

So while there are some parallels, from a business point of view, working with
someone else's platform is nothing at all like sharecropping.

~~~
Duff
Huh?

Sharecropping exists when landowners have limited access to capital, but
extensive land holdings and abundant access to indigent labor. It was a
technique devised to keep the tenant around until after harvest time.

Poor farmers have lots of children, and the large resulting labor force gives
the landlord an incentive to evict the tenant or jack up the rent immediately
after harvest. It was popular in places like Scotland, Ireland and the
Reconstruction South, so you can be sure the system is/was more beneficial to
the land owner.

~~~
randomdata
Sharecropping is an arrangement with a land owner who rents out their land to
a farmer for the payment of a percentage of the crop instead of cash.

It reduces the risk for the farmer because they only have to pay based on what
they are able to grow instead of a fixed amount as seen in most cash-rent
arrangements. The landowner stands to lose if the crop is a failure, but can
make more if the crop is a success.

The term may also come with some historical meaning, but that is what
sharecropping has come to mean today.

Edit: Down vote me if you wish, but that is what sharecropping is in the rural
community. Speaking as a farmer, sharecropping is a great way to access land
in a low-risk way. I don't know why sharecropping land is seen as a negative.

~~~
raganwald
I accept that in response to abuses, the practice may have evolved over time.
However, that does not in any way diminish the value of the metaphor, because
the _vast majority_ of people who encounter the word “sharecropper” think of
the kind of farmer who can be evicted after harvest and often were.

Further to that, I _strongly suspect_ that most of those who are aware that
the practice has evolved since those draconian times read the metaphor and
immediately grasp that the metaphor refers to the historical meaning of the
word and can go on to extract value from it without belabouring a pedantic
point.

I will go further and challenge you: When you read the above posts, were you
unaware of the historical behaviour of landlords and sharecroppers? Is it news
to you that this practice was so abused that the word has pejorative overtones
even though the practice may have evolved in modern times?

Or is it simply that you wish to share with us the interesting news that times
have changed for farming sharecroppers even if they haven’t for developers on
proprietary platforms?

~~~
randomdata
The term computer used to mean a person who sat at a desk doing mathematical
calculations. When someone talks about their Amazon computing cluster, I don't
picture a huge office building full of people putting pen to paper, crunching
numbers all day long, even though that is exactly what computing cluster would
have meant at one point in time.

When the term sharecropper is used, one will naturally turn to the meaning of
sharecropping today, not hundreds of years ago. I am familiar of the stories
of "sharecroppers" of the past, but sharecropping does not refer to those
people anymore. Words are evolving all the time and present day usage is what
is important when communicating with others.

~~~
noahc
The term sharecropper has two meanings.

The first one is the modern day practice. "He's a sharecropper because he uses
share cropping in his business" refers to the modern day agricultural
practice. Whatever economic system they use is irrelevant.

In almost all other cases, particularly in regards to Technology, it refers to
the old school practice of share cropping and is using it as such.

Present day usage has nothing to do with it. It is all about context. If 80%
of HN agree that sharecropper means X, then it means X. Sharecropper in this
sense has become a piece of jargon among business and technology folks.

~~~
kragen
The old-school practice is the same as the modern-day practice: the landlord
rented his land to tenant farmers in exchange for a share of their crop.
randomdata's statement:

> In farming, sharecropping is the low risk way to grow your business. It is
> the landlord that takes on much of the burden if the crop fails. But with
> small risk comes small reward.

is just as true of sharecropping in 1911 as of sharecropping in 2011.

The difference he draws between sharecropping on a farm and sharecropping on a
web site doesn't make sense, though.

------
bravura
'Chamath had been previously known to me from my friends at Winamp as "the guy
who fucked Winamp," (after Winamp had been sold to AOL) and seemed like a
pretty lame dude.'

Does anyone know more about this back story?

~~~
antihero
I too would like to know more. The more I learn about them the more I see AOL
as a fucking disease.

------
brown9-2
_While Dave Morin worked quietly and bravely to defend me against the moves of
iLike and Facebook executives to shut down Audio, he eventually found himself
as a casualty in a greater power play quietly orchestrated by Sean Parker and
Mark Zuckerberg, in which he was demoted and replaced by Chamath
Palihapitiya._

Do the two guys that run the company really need to "orchestrate" a "power
play" to promote one person over another? I think this sounds far more
Machiavellian than it likely was.

~~~
hello_moto
Growth company, big money over the horizon, you don't want to see another
lawsuit coming from your employees.

------
elliottcarlson
"If you are entrusting your life data to Facebook, or if you are depending on
Facebook and its platform for your livelihood, beware."

I think you should always be careful when you are entrusting any third party
with your livelihood. You can only plan so much, but when your business plan
requires that one crucial system and you have no way to even have a
contingency plan, then you have to realize that it could easily be a make or
break deal at any point in time.

~~~
zerostar07
On the other hand that doesn't mean you can avoid them altogether. In the
ideal case, you have the option to choose among competing platforms. The
problem with facebook is that since the end of myspace, it's still the largest
web app platform.

~~~
rch
For how long? I casually mentioned deactivating my facebook account over
dinner in Mexico last weekend. Two strangers from elsewhere in the world
perked right up as they had just done the same thing. None of us had any
specific reasons; we just 'felt' like turning it off.

So, it doesn't matter if Facebook is evil or not - I simply don't like it, and
it seems that others share that sentiment. I had seen notable figures for a
recent up-tick in deactivations, but I was very interested to find other
people flipping the switch with a shrug.

How much time should I invest in anything exhibiting that kind of trend?

~~~
hello_moto
Would be cool to have a website that list people who just turned off their
facebook account :).

The latest Facebook Timeline feature is creepy and I'm starting to think in
your direction as well. But having said that, I'd like to know what my friends
are up to once in a while and have casual sudden conversation with them.

------
maratd
This is not endemic to Facebook. It applies to any platform. Apple, eBay,
Amazon, etc.

When you build a business on their platform, you don't have a business. You
have a product on their platform and it is _their_ product. They are simply
taking a hands-off approach and reaping the benefits. They can shut you down
at any time and they will, when it suits their interests.

That is the key here. That conflict of interest. Most of the time, it isn't an
issue ... but when it comes to the surface, you will be thrown under the bus.

Also, the customers you think you have ... they're not your customers. If you
went to a different platform, those customers would _not_ come along. The
customers, they are _their_ customers, not yours.

~~~
jseliger
_This is not endemic to Facebook. It applies to any platform. Apple, eBay,
Amazon, etc._

I'm not sure this is really true. If you build a regular application for
Windows, Linux, or OS X, Microsoft, Red Hat, or Apple can't control whether I
install your application. No one "approves" Firefox for OS X. Curated, for
lack of a better term, applications only appear on particular platforms --
cell phones, sub-sections of websites, and so forth.

~~~
bstrand
The desktop is moving in this direction as well. Your example of OS X is shaky
in particular, given the App Store. Even if it's still _possible_ in the
future, acquiring apps outside the official channel will be exceptional, done
only by enthusiasts.

~~~
dhimes
I was going to say the same- I bet it would have been done long ago if, for
example, MS thought they could get away with it.

I'm curious as to how the law is going to interpret this in the future. The
closed ecosystem of ios may be a bad (in my mind) precedent.

~~~
thematt
The time has come when Microsoft _does_ think they can get away with it. All
Metro apps on Windows 8 will have to go through their app store approval
process.

~~~
dhimes
I really hate this trend. That's one thing good that Java brought to the
table. Everyone had Java installed, so getting my apps "installed" was just a
matter of getting them downloaded.

If only _this_ was the year of the Linux deskto... oh, nevermind.

------
kevingadd
Sobering to see a story in which the record labels are, in comparison, the
good guys.

~~~
mnutt
Definitely not the good guys. While I totally sympathize with Numair's story,
I can actually see scenarios where both Numair and Chamath would be telling
the truth.

We were sitting in the record label's offices with the biz dev guys (and even
the CEO!) telling us how great this partnership was going to be, and somewhere
else in the building the general counsel was issuing threatening statements.
The business side had very little control over the legal side.

------
jakemcgraw
See Gruber[1] on being a middle man. If your business is reselling someone
else's content on someone else's platform, you're going to get fucked right
quick.

[1]: <http://daringfireball.net/2011/03/dirty_percent>

------
sid6376
A google search about numair faraz turned up this article
[http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/26/motorola-insider-tells-
al...](http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/26/motorola-insider-tells-all-about-
the-fall-of-a-technology-icon/) . An interesting read mainly because it was
brave.

~~~
pge
or one could conclude that he has a history of publicly blaming higher-ups and
corporate management for failures in which he was involved. what's brave about
embarrassing your boss and your company publicly? or making unsubstantiated
claims about conspiracies against you?

~~~
raganwald

      what's brave about embarrassing your boss and your company publicly
    

Without saying anything about his character or motives, it is a given that
public criticism of your current or former boss and/or company will have
negative consequences for your career.

Knowingly doing so is brave and/or foolhardy regardless of whether your
motives are noble or crass.

------
kwamenum86
Interesting article and definitely a good read. But I find it interesting that
it has broken the top 20 most upvoted articles of all time on HN and is
threatening the top 10. This probably has to do with f8 and whatever amount of
"upvote inflation" that may be taking place as a result of more users being on
HN (6 of the top 10 all-time most upvoted links are from this year. Only one
in the top 20 comes before 2010). Timing is everything I guess.

1 1638 Steve Jobs Resigns as CEO of Apple [2011-08-24]

2 1324 Boot a linux kernel right inside your browser. [2011-05-17]

3 1262 Introducing Word Lens [2010-12-17]

4 1232 Today you, tomorrow me [2010-12-14]

5 1196 Google Buys Motorola For $12.5 Billion [2011-08-15]

6 1129 A new approach to China [2010-01-12]

7 1100 Ooops. [2011-06-16]

8 1083 So A Blogger Walks Into A Bar… [2010-09-21]

9 1004 Airbnb Nightmare: No End In Sight [2011-07-29]

10 994 Twitter Bootstrap [2011-08-19]

11 940 Thoughts on Flash [2010-04-29]

12 929 Violated: A traveler’s lost faith, a difficult lesson learned
[2011-07-27]

13 906 Chosen: A javascript plug-in that makes long select boxes user-
friendly. [2011-07-22]

14 859 I was once a Facebook fool [2011-09-23]

15 856 Osama bin Laden Is Dead [2011-05-02]

16 850 I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count
[2011-04-28]

17 832 How I Hacked Hacker News (with arc security advisory) [2009-06-03]

18 827 Bored People Quit [2011-07-12]

19 822 33GB of public domain JSTOR articles, and a manifesto [2011-07-21]

20 808 A lesson on the importance of encouraging your children with their
projects [2011-07-13]

~~~
davidhollander
> _the top 20 most upvoted articles of all time_

I don't think that's an accurate list, as it excludes [dead]ed articles. Zed
Shaw's "Programming, Motherfucker" received 870 upvotes:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2355427>

~~~
freemarketteddy
what is the link to the deaded article

~~~
freemarketteddy
<http://programming-motherfucker.com/>

------
spinchange
I recall Chamath Palihapitiya also figured somewhat prominently in the Beacon
saga.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon#Privacy_concern...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon#Privacy_concerns)

Edit: I see the FA has been edited, now referring to him as "AOL Guy"

~~~
mmaro
He also replaced 'iLike' with 'the "competitor"' and 'Sean Parker and Mark
Zuckerberg' with 'senior Facebook executives'

------
yakto
Not the first interesting tell-all by Numair:
<http://public.numair.com/2006_parker.html>

------
dendory
This is not new, there are tons of tales online of Facebook cutting off apps
because they were working on a competitive product. Just this summer a ton of
photo apps got their access removed with no explanation, only to find out that
Facebook was revamping their galleries.

------
paulballen
My own Facebook developer story...going from 21MM MAU to less than 500k. In
our case, we were booted off of key pages (profile pages) and replaced by
Facebook's own functionality.

[http://www.paulallen.net/advice-to-facebook-time-to-
launch-o...](http://www.paulallen.net/advice-to-facebook-time-to-launch-
operation-baby-come-back/)

I do think Platforms, in the long run, if they want to win, need to treat
developers fairly and honestly, as much as possible. Like other developers,
I'm glad to see other social and mobile platforms to build for.

------
sunchild
"I was sitting in Jimmy Iovine's office; Jimmy personally called the GC of
Universal"

That's worth the price of admission alone. Sounds like fun!

------
blrs
Here's a prediction: Since facebook "senior executives" are so fond of central
planning, i.e., personally picking winners and losers for kickbacks, instead
of creating a level playing field and letting the users pick the best
services, its very likely that facebook will suffer the same fate as other
centrally planned entities...viz., run into the calculation problem
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem>). They'll make
one big miscalculation that will be the end of it. The most obvious
miscalculation is mismanaging security, letting in a potent virus that takes
down all or enough of facebook's servers.

------
ryandawidjan
Numair also has a very interesting read of a homepage. <http://numair.com/>

"Live your life as though it is the world's best-kept secret, as though you
are living in an amazing TV show with an audience of one."

------
veyron
Every time i read something like this, I think about the fred wilson quote
about being someone's bitch. Anyone have that direct link?

~~~
joejohnson
I had no idea what you were talking about. But Googling "Fred Wilson bitch"
gives this: [http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/23/fred-wilson-be-your-own-
bit...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/23/fred-wilson-be-your-own-bitch/)

------
shasta
I've never seen or heard Sean Parker speak, so this really just reinforces to
me that Justin Timberlake is a douchebag.

------
tuhin
I did not realize until this point that it was this very Numair who wrote this
brilliant answer on Quora [http://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-so-difficult-to-
build-a-music...](http://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-so-difficult-to-build-a-
music-startup/answer/Numair-Faraz)

------
gavanwoolery
I definitely sympathize with the story - that just flat out sucks... but...
Making a "feature" product is always a bad idea, IMHO, for reasons even beyond
the ones the author points out. You should never build a feature for a
product, if history is not a lesson on its own - very few of them make a
successful exit. At any point, the company might decide they can do it better
than you or it would be cheaper to build the feature than acquire you - or,
most importantly, your hacks and external servers might not mesh well with
their vision of an integrated platform.

------
briandear
So, is getting "Zuckerberged" now a legitimate synonym for getting screwed?

~~~
GrahmWellington
How about just shortening it to getting "Zucked"?

------
rblion
"If you are entrusting your life data to Facebook, or if you are depending on
Facebook and its platform for your livelihood, beware. In the real Facebook
world, there is no trust, and there is no friendship -- there is only money
and power. Think really hard -- really, think -- before trusting Facebook or
its employees with anything. Don't be a Facebook fool."

You have perfectly worded what I have felt. I've watched Facebook evolve into
Big Brother over the past few years. People seem to have no idea that they
don't see us as beings but as bytes.

------
properez
I agree with, But it also means that in this industry you have to have a
backup plan of some sort. He knew the character of Sean Parker and his antics.
The man is a player and always will be.The industry is a relentless field of
battle. Doesn't excuse leading someone on though.

i know to well of having a business partner lead me on while he worked other
projects.

But i dont think Facebook as a company should take all the blame for that one
person.

------
snorkel
tl;dr: Facebook offerings are skewed by corporate politics and whoever can
score a better partner deal.

No surprises here. Large companies are heavily staffed by biz dev people whose
job it is to make partnership deals. The key essential ingredient in all
partnership deals, the brass ring, is "exclusivity" without which there often
is no deal to speak of. This particular individual unfortunately was not
awarded exclusivity.

------
rmc
It seems like doing any sort of business around the Music Industry is a
massive pain in the head, and liable to get you sued/shut down easily.

~~~
properez
This is true.Being originally from the Bronx NY i have been in connection with
a few people who know how FAT JOE does business.

Allegedly Puerto Rican and African American rappers from the Bronx were
getting signed to FAT JOES label and then being kept on the back burner for
publication.

Turns out the plan was to make sure to not have any new rap icons come from
the Bronx so that he can get all the notoriety of being the Bronx icon. The
music business is no joke. This is a true story.

------
tresjuh
Why is Facebook special? Twitter supported bit.ly and Google supports Google
Reader. They all act the same.

~~~
roopeshv
google reader is google's own product. what is your point with that?

~~~
tresjuh
And that is why it is first result for keyword reader? or feed? They use
search to support RSS. Not to mention Checkout. And those messages in Gmail
about Firefox being not optimal? It's is the same thing: using one product to
support another one. I dont give a damn if Chrome is google's or not.

I want to say that they all do that. I don't support it, but it's not unique
for Facebook.

------
swah
[http://magazine.lankahelp.com/2011/01/21/chamath-
palihapitiy...](http://magazine.lankahelp.com/2011/01/21/chamath-palihapitiya-
a-proud-sri-lankan-in-higher-post-in-facebook-company/)

------
wccrawford
Aren't there laws against things like this?

~~~
eyko
Against bad-mouthing big, powerful, businesses? Yeah, I think so.

~~~
praptak
I believe that "bad-mouthing" does not imply "lying". There are no laws
against vilifying, criticizing severely, speaking unfavorably of big, powerful
businesses as long as you have some backup in facts.

Edit: Supreme courts (or equivalents) in most countries make it very clear in
their verdicts that protecting the right to expose scoundrels is very high on
their priority list. _Especially_ if the scoundrels are big and powerful.
Public interest and all that.

~~~
dos1
Big powerful businesses maybe, but apparently you can tell the truth and still
have to pay damages to individuals:
<http://www.startribune.com/local/117805398.html>

~~~
tokenadult
That trial court verdict is extremely anomalous (I say as a lawyer from the
same state) and is being appealed.

[http://www.minnpost.com/braublog/2011/03/14/26584/johnny_nor...](http://www.minnpost.com/braublog/2011/03/14/26584/johnny_northside_damn_right_were_appealing_60000_judgment)

[http://minnlawyer.com/jdr/2011/03/21/is-the-special-
verdict-...](http://minnlawyer.com/jdr/2011/03/21/is-the-special-verdict-form-
to-blame-for-the-johnny-northside-verdict/)

[http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2011/06/06/johnny-
northsid...](http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2011/06/06/johnny-
northside-60000-judgment-upheld-northside-blog-suit)

<http://www.rcfp.org/newsitems/index.php?i=12002>

[http://www.citmedialaw.org/blog/2011/60000-ruling-against-
tr...](http://www.citmedialaw.org/blog/2011/60000-ruling-against-truthful-
blogger-tests-limits-first-amendment)

------
jprobert
Congratulations I think you are now the all time #2 behind the announcement
that Steve Jobs is leaving!

------
carnivore
I was once a Facebook fool, now I'm just a Facebook tool.

------
kanwisher
Seems strange that Chamath was 'evil' wanting to get his friend's business in
as the music app for facebook, but it was totally fine when the author was
getting his friend in? Seems like a double standard

~~~
gnaffle
I missed the part where the author asked his friend to have other music apps
pulled on order to promote his own app? Apparently this is what Chamath did,
and what Morin tried to keep from happening.

------
One_adm12
This is a great insight, thanks for sharing!

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grey666
Facebook, the world's easiest site to hack, is on the front page 3 times yet
again today. But the links are not about hacking, they are about how great
Facebook is.

I submit to you that this is not hacker news, but rather victim news.com.

Good luck fuckers.

------
grey666
Facebook was designed to provide corporate America with your email addresses.
There are over 400 known hacks. Every-time you click on a link to Facebook -
it's moron+1.

------
itswindy
Nasty business so watch your back

------
vvpan
Too much DRAMA.

------
brain5ide
Could have happened at any other big company. No biggie. "Facebook" here is
just headline making. I don't deny it being u-g-l-y and bad, just that it's
not a Facebook issue.

