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Comment by whalesalad | Hacker News Reader

I dislike your lack of humility and modesty in this discussion. You may be correct in your A point, but "just hiring a couple of engineers/designers/product folks" remark makes it sound like you guys are some elite squad, and FB is picking up some stragglers to join their team.

I can see why you've taken this attitude though, since commenters here are attacking Foursquare and making you seem like you lost to Gowalla+FB, but there is really no need to say these things in HN.

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Oh, I think that the team at gowalla is great, and I have mad respect for them. But in terms of facebook's overall hiring this is a relatively small deal. Don't really know how many folks FB hires a year but I'm guessing hundreds?

Sorry if I was curt. Just trying to be clear and concise.

I like clear and concise. I'm like that a lot (unless I'm intentionally verbose) and tend to get looked at in the same light.

Fwiw, you were perfectly clear. Anytime someone says "Facebook/Google/Awesome-Tech-Company-of-the-decade bought them as a talent acquisition", the obvious implication (and compliment) is that the talent is really talent. Don't know where this confusion is coming from.

It's a tricky connotation based on context, but I read it as sometimes more positive than others. It does imply that the talent in question is quite talented, and worth paying significant money to acquire, but it also sort of implies that the product/company wasn't in itself particularly great or interesting to the acquirer.

Probably because of this line: 'Once you're beating someone by a factor of over 100:1 you move on to other things.'

which I thought was abrasive.

The clear message without the PC Sugar coating communicates fine with me as-well. Also agree that it's primarily a talent Acquisition.

Just to play the devils advocate a bit: Sometimes you need to forge ahead without any fear or concern for what Facebook is doing or does.

There are millions of people, like myself, who will never have a Facebook account - or at least will use services that are not fuly coupled to FB.

I think, while one should certainly keep track of what facebook does - one should never not do something/change their behavior simply because of facebook

He answered the question.

Why would you expect him to lavish complements on a competitor that lost by a wide margin?

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