
How Facebook Hacked The NASDAQ Button - richoakley
http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/18/how-facebook-hacked-the-nasdaq-button/
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chubbard
+1 for the hack, but the other solution was to tell your lacky, ...err...I
mean personal assistant, to push a button on Mark's phone at the same time as
Mark rang the bell. We live in a age where we can execute all amazing
technical solutions to non-problems. Now was that truly epic? Waiting for the
pop to see...

~~~
mtgentry
It's cool because in a small but poignant way it represents how Zuck was able
to build his company w/o kissing Wall street's ass. So many CEO's tactics are
driven by quarterly earnings. By keeping his hoodie on and not flying out to
New York to ring the bell, Zuck kinda saying fu __off to all that.

If that blue Nasdaq button embodies short term, profit driven thinking, it's
neat that the engineers were able to hack it and bend it toward their will.
It's a poetic hack.

~~~
hafabnew
I really think you're reading too much into it.

It's not a 'poetic hack', it's just neat.

~~~
Dylanlacey
Poetry can be an emergent property.

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megakwood
IMO the beauty of a hack comes from two places:

1) Doing something that can't be done by hand, OR 2) Replacing repetitive
manual work, this saving time in the long run

IMO there's nothing "cool" about a hack that will only be used once and could
be replaced by Mark (or anyone standing nearby) pre-typing the message and
then posting the status to Facebook seconds after he pushes the Nasdaq button.

You could also argue that it might have been an opportunity for the engineers
to learn something, but IMO you could think of more worthwhile hacks to learn
from.

~~~
wickedchicken
> IMO the beauty of a hack comes from two places:

"In fact, hack has only one meaning, an extremely subtle and profound one
which defies articulation."

"Hacking might be characterized as `an appropriate application of ingenuity'.
Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or a carefully crafted
work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went into it."

So it has nothing to do with automation, perfecting your craft, saving time,
making money, impressing Paul Graham, "hacking education" (?), putting in
tremendous amounts of work, being irreverent, growing a neckbeard, or linking
up a button to a cell phone.

It boils down to somebody else saying "are you fucking kidding me?" and you
get to say: "no."

~~~
megakwood
> It boils down to somebody else saying "are you fucking kidding me?" and you
> get to say: "no."

Yeah, the "are you fucking kidding me?" comes from the fact that you did
something awesome, i.e. something can't be done trivially by some far simpler
means. So I'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me :)

The only "are you fucking kidding me?" that this hack evokes is "you spent all
that time and talent to do /that/?".

~~~
nknight
My image of you is now a cranky old man who never learned how to have fun.

I assume you're similarly annoyed by any Rube Goldberg machine?

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csmeder
A question for some one who knows trading laws:

Would it be legal for facebook to spam everyone's time line with ads that
essentially say: "Get an e-trade account today and buy a piece of facebook!
For the first time ever you can own part of facebook! Click here"

I am not saying this would be a good thing (a bunch of uniformed investors
speculating and boosting the price), however I am curious would it be legal?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
No - Facebook is not a broker-dealer and do cannot market securities. Further,
there are other disclosures that must be fulfilled before retail investors can
be marketed to. This is only taking US residents into account.

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adambyrtek
I don't understand why most comments here are so jaded. This is just a fun
simple hack pulled off by a creative engineer, nobody claims that it was
groundbreaking or even necessary. Personally, I think it's good that they have
a culture that encourages things like that.

~~~
no_more_death
Definitely agree. Some of the comments are positively ludicrous. This post
would have hundreds of points if it were Kickstarter or a company that
"hackers" like.

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83457
I would have found the reverse creative as well--something similar to the
release of portal 2. Have some actions on facebook by many people lower a
robotic arm to press the button.

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neilk
The real story for me is that, when you go public, NASDAQ brings some kind of
button to your offices? Or there's a button at their offices?

Why? Just ceremony, like a ribbon-cutting?

~~~
comm_it
Traditionally, with an IPO that's become as popular as this one, you have a
representative from the company being listed ring the bell on the trading
floor of the exchange they're listing on.

However, NASDAQ lacks a proper trading floor, as they're all electronic, so
they have companies deliver a live feed of said representative ringing the
opening bell from the company HQ.

~~~
Duff
NASDAQ allows any D-list dignitary type to "ring the bell". It's a total sham.
See: <http://www.nasdaq.com/marketsite/bell-event.html>

I have to respect Zuckerberg for not wasting the flight to NYC to do this sort
of thing.

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taylorbuley
It strikes me as incredibly post modern that a purely electronic trading
platform has an "opening bell."

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nickm12
Personally, this seems like a waste of time. The problem has a number of
obvious non-technical solutions.

~~~
richoakley
I don't think any of them decided to do it for reasons of being practical. The
entire reasoning behind it was that it was 'cool'. A pretty good reason, if
you ask me...

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xfax
Good to see the hacking culture alive and well!

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mohsen
"A couple of hours later, we had built our hack. The finished product wasn’t
exactly the prettiest thing, but hacks aren’t supposed to be. They’re just
supposed to work."

I can't say I agree 100%. Sometimes when you have time left over at the end of
the hack, it doesn't hurt to go back and clean it up.

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winkerVSbecks
Am I the only one with massively messed up layouts on Facebook today? What's
going on?

<http://cl.ly/0N3L34461V1z130f2W1e>

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nextstep
Oh wow, Facebook is so cool! These are real hackers. A button that posts to
your Facebook timeline? I thought this technology was at least a decade out.

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dariobarila
"So, like I said, it was just a normal day here at Facebook" -> I love this.

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djbender
Hacking is such an overloaded term these days...

~~~
dredmorbius
In fairness, this is actually fairly close to the original MIT tech model
railroader's club sense:
[http://steel.lcc.gatech.edu/~mcordell/lcc6316/Hacker%20Group...](http://steel.lcc.gatech.edu/~mcordell/lcc6316/Hacker%20Group%20Project%20FINAL.pdf)

~~~
scott_s
I'll go further, and say that this is a better example of the original meaning
of _hacking_ than most.

