Thoughts on Facebook | entrepreneurship

I just saw Jason Calcanis letter to Mark Zuckerberg concerning Facebook’s current business practices.  Like everyone else in the Tech industry, we all have our 2 cents and I’m not any different.  My thoughts on Jason’s points:

1. Being able to export everything – I do believe this feature would be nice to have, however this is an aspect of Facebook’s sustainable competitive advantage.  They’ve created an ecosystem where there is a huge cost to switch to a competitor.  If a competitor that was everything facebook but 10x better, it would be hard for them to convert users away from Facebook.  Facebook is where all the content is and by enabling users to export their content creaks the door open for competitors.  And no, Facebook is not too big to worry about 5 kids in garage.
2. Universal Like Button – People are not doing open source without strategy behind it.  Having an open source system is to create a standard and quickly capture the market.  Bluetooth radio standard is free to use and license.  Bluetooth did this model in order to accomplish the interoperability between devices and quickly gain market share versus competitors such as Zigbee.  However there is no need to do this when your company is the standard.
3. Currency – 100% behind you there.
4. Remind users of privacy settings – This sounds annoying.  The truth is that everyone sub 30 doesn’t have much problem with sharing everything.  Your open letter is a sign of this.  Mark probably would have appreciated a direct letter to him and would have read it just the same.  Sharing more information and creating a search index for more than just sites is the future of web 2.0.  Without displaying certain information to the public, it is impossible to create the internet of people.
5. Partner more – This way of partnering sounds like a lot of Barney relationships.  If the partnership saves time, money, and creates value Facebook (like most companies) partner or purchase the startup.  But partnering just because it’s the good thing to do in the valley does not sound reasonable.

Those are my thoughts on the letter.

Few obvious points on me:

• Yes, I am a fan of Facebook
• As a young entrepreneur, I do look up to what Mark Zuckerberg is doing now
• I am a lot dumber than Jason Calcanis and my knowledge cannot compare to his

-Chris

Over the course of the last month, the repeated accusations and frustrations that social media networks are violating our privacy have been hard to ignore. Facebook undoubtedly leads the industry in consumer complaints, but in the latest scandal MySpace is part of the bundle. The Wallstreet Journal reported this morning that a few sites including these network giants have been dishing out user information to advertising companies like DoubleClick and RightMedia. The weirdest part about all of this is that the receiving companies claim that they never asked for the data. Why would Facebook (et. al.) volunteer confidential information about their users, a clear breech of the terms & conditions we all agree to before signing up? Not cool, Facebook.

But at the same time, we have to realize that by signing up for Facebook we are taking a risk. At the end of the day, we’re the ones who sign up for Social Media Networks, input our own information, and open our profiles to the invasive nature of the internet. Facebook may re-evaluate their terms & conditions, they may make new ’simpler privacy settings’, however in the end we still need to watch our backs. Sure, they should act in line with the contract, but it would be naive to assume that everyone always follows the rules. Laws get broken–that’s why we have a justice system.

We can blame social media networks all day for dishonesty, privacy violation, etc., but the only way to insure our privacy is to take matters into our own hands. Facebook’s legal issues might not be enough for you to delete your account, but at the very least we should all  reconsider our account settings.

-Gabrielle

You might recognize the people to the left.  The ConnectU team.  Their current claim is that Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea to make facebook.  Their current course of action is to repetitively raise litigation against Zuckerberg and Facebook because they “got screwed”.

Boo Hoo.

The fact is that if we assume all their claims are true and Zuckerberg stole all of ConnectU’s technology (which isn’t very impressive) to make Facebook, I still believe that they do not deserve a penny.  They had all the same technology as Mark and did nothing.  The facts are that until they raised litigation against Facebook, no one in the world knew or cared about ConnectU.  ConnectU was merely a page in the internet history books.

Mark took the technology and was able to proliferate it in a way that not many people can do.  In a way that has changed the very face of the internet (no pun intended). Ideas don’t change the world, people change the world. That’s the truth and the people behind ConnectU are still a bunch of whiny kids trying to steal someone else’s glory.

When we started Phone Halo back in 2008, there were no other competitors.  No other systems that claimed to be the “first wireless leash”  No other systems that talked about using mobile applications to link the physical and mobile worlds in unique ways.  But with any real business opportunity, competitors arise and companies must compete.  Our execution in the business and how we continually try our very best to help our customers will drive us to be #1.

ConnectU team, didn’t you ever play sports?  Go Big or Go Home.  Time for you to go home.

-Chris

And for your viewing pleasure: