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Comment by cathames | Hacker News Reader

2011 is the context: a height of the start-up wave, ascendance of FB--presumably due to "genius". The implication being that if you are really smarter than others you must have the rewards to show it. Hopefully this would be received today as a tone-deaf denial of privilege. The great myth of meritocracy has been blown apart.

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Do you really believe Zuckerberg is an idiot? He has successfully navigated industry shift to mobile. He decisively and swiftly purchased Instagram and WhatsApp, buying his way into two major upcoming trends. You may think he is jerk or evil but no way an idiot.

"idiotic" was stated by the original post, not my reply. My objection is to the formulation that massive financial success in tech is proof of genius-level intellect. Being relatively smart may be necessary, but it is certainly not sufficient. Connections, opportunity, timing, and greed are other prerequisites. On the other hand, moral concerns about the negative downstream effects of your goals--something that a supposed genius would have insight into--would be inhibitors. As to the purchases you mentioned, I would argue that the game is a lot easier when you already have hotels on Boardwalk. And I certainly don't attribute strong imperial instincts as a mark of genius.

Facebook's dominance was earned. Remember Myspace? They were huge when Facebook started. Now they're tiny by comparison. Google tried and failed several times at social networks. Zuckerberg figured out how to manipulate humans in quantity through subtle programmed social cues. That's an achievement on a par with that of Hiram Maxim.

Oh come on, MySpace was an absolute disaster from a speed and usability point of view. It was obvious anyone could have done better than MySpace.

At the time I was using mixi.jp which was "MySpace done right" and was hugely engaging. (It's quite possible that Mixi might have become Facebook had they not committed commercial suicide later with some very stupid decisions. The only social network I know that deliberately tried to limit their userbase.)

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