The Big Game, Zuckerberg and Overplaying your Hand
calacanis.com
calacanis.com
Couldn't agree more.
To upvote or not to upvote, that's the question.
I am no fan of Mahalo, but before you run around telling people that they are wasting their time on shit, how about you make sure you aren't excreting any yourself.
But, you're absolutely right that ww.com is nothing to be proud of (and believe me, I'm not), other than that it has managed to stay alive for 12 years and counting against pretty strong competiton.
The horrific UI is there because I suck as a designer and because for the longest time I simply wished for it to die so I could get on with my life. That's a long story, maybe one day I'll write it up, the word 'depression' should probably figure in it somewhere and I countered that by building windmills on a very sparsely populated island in Northern Ontario, Canada.
The content is a matter beyond my control, I've been upset about it since day one and I've tried very hard to keep it in check but there seems to be no way of stopping the influx of jerks. The current balance is just about as good as I can get it.
As for the the difference between mahalo and ww.com, the second that I find a way to diversify I'm out of the webcam business, I've made that more than clear in other posts, but at least it does not pollute another resource that is useful, such as search results. The last four years have been an endless succession of trial balloons, none of which had enough air in them to go very far.
And I don't have the illusion that I have the business acumen of JC either, even though I've been around the block, I attribute most of the success to simply blind luck.
I'm grateful for the chance it gave me to learn though, and it has allowed me to materially improve the lives of a fair number of people in ways that would have otherwise been absolutely impossible, and it introduced me to a large number of very nice people.
Ww.com has caused people to find each other and get married, and has caused people to get divorced. People were born on the webcam (and Elephants too!) and died there, after long bouts with disease. It's an indelible part of the early history of the internet, and it was at times lots of fun to be part of it. And at other times an enormous headache.
Thanks for the feedback by the way, I'll definitely try to improve things.
Think of ww.com as the millstone around my neck that somehow keeps me alive.
Feel free to tell me how to turn this around for the better, I'm open to any and all suggestions, I've been struggling with this for longer than I care to remember.
The reason I held on to it for so long is that it kept my ex-wife and son alive, and I've had my share from that as well (but not in the last year and a bit).
That period is drawing to a close as we speak so within two weeks I'll be free to dispose of it as I see fit.
edit: finally.
Or you should just sell it. I'd do the latter if you are no longer inspired by the project.
The domain was not really kosher for obvious reasons, nor was our derivative site design. Google eventually asked us for the domain. The idea is still going at http://MysterySeeker.com with a new layout but much diminished traffic.
Mystery Google also morphed into http://MysteryMissions.com, which is going pretty well.
Neat to see its still going!
Luckily I have a rather marvelous mother-in-law, so I just need to find some other villain to borrow my junker.
Feel free to downvote posts that are malicious or flat out wrong but why vote down genuine conversation and responses? Sheesh.
And I think the various items on the list represent different things. Duplicating Four Square and Twitter features is hardly the same level of Zuckerpunching as constantly changing privacy features.
Personally, as much as I fear facebook taking too much control, I don't see either of these as being big issues. I don't put important stuff on my fb account, and most people I know do not care that all this information is available.
These are the same people who see absolutely nothing wrong with supermarkets loyalty cards, and their details being sold off to other companies. This is the majority now, who think more CCTV cameras are a good idea and make the world safer, who agree with more stringent airline boarding procedures, and support the government taking away out rights if they want to.
This is the world we live in, privacy has been slowely eroded away for a number of years now, and there are much more important stuff to worry about on the entertainment news shows.
Zuckerberg: Someone is already trying to make a dating site. But they made a mistake haha. They asked me to make it for them. So I'm like delaying it so it won't be ready until after the facebook thing comes out.
Meh.
It's sort of like dating someone who all the sudden decides to start calling you at work throughout the day. Just a bit unnerving.
Facebook ends up feeling dictatorial and paternal. And that's aside from whether the privacy concerns are valid (which at least some appear to be.)
Maybe jealousy from some, but I doubt the majority that dislike Zuckerberg/Facebook are jealous of him/it.
Bad sentence. It implies that Asperger's is a derogatory term.
Some of the biggest amoral criminals in the world have been very adept socially (think Goebbels or Bernie Madoff), while some people whose morality was always lauded were known to be socially awkward (e.g. Einstein).
So while Aspergers is a disorder it is completely wrong to equate it with lack of morality.
Of course it wouldn't really be a fair comment. And calling them "amoral" is just being a dick.
Deleted comment
It's his blog. He is allowed to call the guy a retard if he wants. I, on the other hand, don't have to like it, and it seriously detracted from selling me his POV. Just saying.
Understanding Asperger's "syndrome" through the metaphor of a "disease" is pretty misleading. It has its advantages and its drawbacks. Without people with Asperger's, we probably wouldn't have an internet to discuss this question on.
Diseases are progressive; often they are curable; often they are acquired; and they do not convey advantages. None of these things are true of Asperger's.
Maybe the biggest difference is that it's not something that can be cured; it's a fundamental part of who you are. A person with cancer is still the same person as before the cancer; if they cure the cancer, they're still the same person afterwards. The cancer doesn't give them the ability to do anything other people can't do. None of these things are true of Asperger's.
So I think the closest analogy is, what if he had said, "Last year, when I realized that Zuckerberg was an amoral, Negro-like entrepreneur..."?
(This analogy is weak in a couple of ways: first, clear memory, near immunity from social pressure, and improved logical ability are probably more significant abilities in today's world than resistance to sunburn; second, people with Asperger's tend to be wealthier than average, not poorer, so it may seem a little strange to treat them as an oppressed group.)
Calacanis is a neurotypical bigot. The clear implication of his statement is that people with Asperger's tend to be amoral. This is entirely false.
Also, Calacanis didn't link amorality with AS. Both amoral and Asperger-like are being used to modify entrepreneur.
That being said, I can understand that some folks might read into it that I am.
No, of course not. But their other positive qualities are due to being people, not to being black.
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/asperger/detail_asperger....
compared to http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DisabilitySuperpo...
For an overview of recent research in the area, I suggest reading http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627581.500-the-advan... before embarrassing yourself any further.
Saying that Twitter and FourSquare were "Zucked" is a bit much. Great companies do this all the time.
The biggest example I have is Apple.
We're reacting negatively to Facebook infringing on foursquare's turf because facebook is the bigger company.
Like Microsoft was ten years ago.
What about bing? Now that Microsoft is the underdog they're a lot more palatable.
I do agree with Jason that Zuckerberg seems to have a questionable history of integrity...based on rumor. And I certainly agree that Facebook seems hell-bent on harvesting the souls of their users. The latter is far more troubling that any competitive feature additions.
When given the chance, take the $750 million.
"Didn't anyone read "Tom Sawyer"? We're whitewashing Zuckerberg's fence."
Linking it to subsequent effort is like saying a programmer should only charge $1 for all bar the first copy of their program, given how easy it is to burn new dvds.
30% off of 2X is a great deal
Social Gold - http://www.jambool.com
Live Gamer - http://www.livegamer.com
GamerSafe - http://www.gamersafe.com
MochiCoins - http://www.mochimedia.com
HeyZap - http://www.heyzap.com
and more...
And none charge 30%.
Apple takes 30%. Needing to enter only a password to pay for something (instead of a credit card) probably makes that worth it. Facebook doesn't even require the password.
Facebook are starting from scratch with credits, these companies and others have millions of existing users who have existing money in their accounts. Facebook on the other hand have hundreds of millions of facebook users, not people topping up their credits to buy stuff in games. Most of their users don't even play games.
That doesn't make Facebook ubiquitous and it will leave people wondering why they can't use the balance of their other account in the games they play like previously, and it will leave developers eating a fee that is up to 22% higher than it was through 3rd parties.
Although some will 'win' and make assloads of money overall it's not a 'win' anymore than it would be if you could only accept Visa.
Their system is in closed beta.
Social Gold enables single click across games -- and a huge number of users already have stored credit cards. And of course it comes with a much better conversion and much lower fee for the developer.
Facebook is ubiquitous, but even on their own platform, Social Gold is far more widely used than FB credits. FB can force credits to be ubiquitous on their own platform, but the world is a much bigger place.
P.S. Yeah, I know the mathematics above isn't exact if there is already a fee for transactions, etc., etc.
But your last point about the risk of a changing playfor is very valid. In the case of payments, I'd bet for a conservative initial system that gets more flexible over time. The nature of anti-fraud almost mandates that approach.
Or the numbers could be exactly the same, either way, he's muscling in on 30% of their revenue for providing pre-existing functionality and expecting them to like it or lump it.
If it was a smaller cut, I imagine it would be a much easier pill to swallow, but 30% is just plain greed.
The hyphen is the key on your keyboard. It's what goes between some words when they're acting as one word, e.g. mother-in-law.
The dash is longer--it's either a long ("em") dash character or 2 hyphens, as I used here--and it's the grammatical construct that acts somewhat like a comma.
And I'm not just nit-picking. It's confusing to use a hyphen when you mean dash, especially when you also have hyphens in the vicinity. Here's the sentence that convinced me to post this:
>I predict a complete heads-up match with Facebook–Zynga’s now been double-crossed not once but twice by Zuckerberg.
The characters in "heads-up" and "double-crossed" are both hyphens, but the character between "Facebook" and "Zynga" should be a dash (or 2 hyphens).
Edit: So he's using en dashes, which are shorter, but they are different from--and slightly longer than--hyphens. But it's much easier to tell an em dash from a hyphen than an en dash from a hyphen, and the em dash is proper.
Here's a hyphen, followed by an en dash, followed by an em dash:
-
–
—
An em dash is typically considered bad practice in formal writing. If he wanted to be formal he would have used a semicolon I think. In informal writing an em dash often replaces the work of other punctuation.
Note: I don't care. I was able to understand him just fine and that's all I care about. If he was writing a scholarly paper I'd take the time to correct it and send him some suggestions. I'd also only do this if I was asked to do so.
Proper punctuation makes it much easier for readers to read and comprehend the material quickly. If you don't believe me, try reading a paragraph with no punctuation at all. You'll spend most of your time trying to figure out what words are grouped together because there's no punctuation to clue you in.
What's wrong with "to-day--a good day--is..."?
Even though the punctuation may be correct, that looks bad w/o spaces.
Many of these typographical conventions are fashion and culture based, anyhow. Quotation marks are especially diverse, with the << >> in French, the em-dashes used by Joyce, etc.
Edit: Also, it's a lot easier to tell in Firefox 3 than Chromium. Ah, the web.
Guess it takes a spammer to defend a spammer.