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Comment by dalton | Hacker News Reader

Rather than get involved with all of these threads, I'd like to clarify something.

I build a product that pre-dated App Center by several months. Facebook dev relations people tested it and actively encouraged me to build it. I was assured that it was considered "good" and "helpful" as an example of using Open Graph. At an earlier point I was offered marketing help from Facebook for my launch.

I am not clear why some folks don't see the issue with building something that is encouraged by employees of a company, and then, in the matter of months, being told "never mind". That is not good for an ecosystem.

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Hey dalton, I've posted my thoughts in this thread, and I'm also considering writing a blog article about this, but I have one meta thing to share with you.

This letter doesn't make two things clear to me: 1) what exactly it is you're upset about and 2) what you think should have happened. Because of this, people in this thread are making a lot of assumptions which are uncharitable and inaccurate, and you come across as looking more naive than I suspect you actually are.

Clarifying in the thread is good, but it's damage control. I'm not sure if you wrote the letter when you were angry, or if it was originally written to people with more context, but I just wanted to share a part of why I think this thread is going the way it is.

1) I am unhappy that I wasted my time and energy building on a platform that encouraged me to do so, and within the matter of months changed their mind. This is the same thing that makes me unhappy with what Twitter is doing to their ecosystem: http://daltoncaldwell.com/what-twitter-could-have-been

2) Once Mark Zuckerberg gave personal blessing, he shouldn't have changed his mind. I have an interesting email thread along these lines.

It's a game to them. Don't initiate games with children if you don't want to be involved where childish things can be done. Children can do nasty things. They don't understand or possibly don't care of the consequences. Their goal is to create and maintain a controlled ecosystem. They know legally where they stand and they have billions of dollars now to drag out any lawsuit, if anyone decides to waste their energy on such a thing. I am sure they feel invincible, and I can understand how that could develop with what they have power of / are in control of.

I recently had an issue with a local group of 'investors' / tech people, and after learning more details I was clearly mislead into presenting to them.. What they were looking to invest in was absolutely not a match to what I am doing. Sure, it was under confidential and private settings, though I know I taught them a lot and exposed a lot I rather would not have - simply because I don't think these people have good intentions or are honest people - and I don't want to support that as a human being, because I don't think that's good for society.

>I am unhappy that I wasted my time and energy building on a platform that encouraged me to do so, and within the matter of months changed their mind.

I am no fan of facebook, but it seems like they offered to compensate you for your time. In fact, it seems like that entire meeting was designed to demonstrate to them that you'd actually built something that worked so that they could buy you off.

They didn't have to do that, they could have just squashed you. In the end, I think you should have taken their offer (perhaps all in cash and then leave ASAP , as someone else suggested) and then built something else.

The key point here is that you seem to value your autonomy, and a surprisingly few people on this board seem to see that. What I'm trying to say is that there was a way for you to exit a situation that was going to deny your autonomy in such a way that it could set you up for the next thing. Who knows? Perhaps it's not too late for that.

Perhaps he shouldn't have changed his mind.

But he could, and he did.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.194596-Faceboo...

But Dalton was it really such a surprise for you? Was it a first time you heard or had a felling that someone is building something cool and dataset owner wants to shut them down? Seriously, I have at least 50 different cool ideas taping into both Twitter and Facebook streams, but will never lose a minute on any of those because I know that the stream can be turned off any minute. If you ever read techcrunch, mash, sai, a vc etc, you would sooner or later stumble upon a similar situation. "Blessing" from Mark doesnt change a shit -- he doesnt answer to you, he answers to the board and stock owners and since IPO with this thing tanking 40% he is on a very tight leech and you are the last one to answer to.

You story also reminds me of a gentleman agreement I had with Don Dodge. His "blessing" and interest in my idea made me work days and nights to deliver asap, and at the end he totally backed out. It was painful and disappointing, but one cannot do nothing about it.

I guess that judgement depends upon the degree to which you receive credible assurances that you feel you can rely on. You have been bitten by Don Dodge and are now twice shy. Doubtless DC will be doubly cautious in the future. I am sure he is trying to warn others to do likewise.

How much elapsed time would make it OK? 6 months? a year? 10 years? Expecting a large company to know where it's going a year in advance and reveal it to outside devs seems unreasonable, even for pure platforms.

If you can't provide any stability and predictability for outside devs you shouldn't represent yourself as a platform. It's ridiculous to pretend othewise. A platform HAS TO BE STABLE. It HAS TO OFFER TRUST.

Should have played hardball back and demanded only being acquired for cash. Gotten as much as possible then left as quickly as possible.

This still doesn't sound wrong to me. You built something. You showed it to them. They liked it. They later liked it so much that they wanted a similar product.

Did they threaten to revoke API access?

yep. That was presented as an option they could use by one exec, on a phone call.

OK, that's definitely uncool. That should probably be part of the letter.

I have digital "proof" that all of the other details in my post are true, in case FB PR attempts to discredit me.

I don't have a recording to back up my claims of what was said in that phone call, so I chose not include those details.

That makes sense, but what remains in the letter isn't a significant grievance. Facebook using API access in an anti-competitive manner is.

I agree, the letter makes it sound there isn't anything serious going on. And the general skepticism here on HN seem valid. But if a FB exec informally threatened to revoke API access, then it's a whole different picture. This little detail deserves a bit more visibility.

But they suggested they were wiling to compensate Dalton (by buying his company) which makes it decidedly less uncool.

P.S. did people here believe before this story broke that Facebook would never revoke API access when it is in their strategic interest to do so? What did Facebook say or do to give off that impression? Is this an industry norm I am not familiar with?

Starting a company on top of FB's platform without the confidence that your API access is safe from FB's "strategic interests" is not business, it's russian roulette.

An awful lot of startups these days are created on top of an existing giant's rather volatile shoulders: Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, heck even Gree and Zynga. The APIs and platforms are a rat trap for developers, but the massive userbase is oh such tasty cheese. Most hope to be quick enough delivering value for a buyout to make more sense than a shutdown, but few can pull that off.

Absolutely right. The only difference between alleged platforms is how the platform owners treat their devs. All platform companies face the same issues of balancing developer trust and the ensuing added value and their own strategic imperatives but not all platform companies are alike. Companies can have very different cultures and very different attitudes to third parties with whom they have business relations. The fact that they CAN turn on their own on a whim doesn't mean that they have to or WILL. So stories about the documented behavior of any such companies are very valuable to devs.

I agree with many of the comments in this thread about how an acquisition offer isn't a bad alternative to just getting ran over by the platform.

However, I can see your point. They should not have encouraged you to build it on your own if they were going to build it themselves. This seems like a lose-lose for both parties.

I've heard a lot of talk on how teams within facebook can work without much centralized oversight and this might be one of the drawbacks. Whoever you spoke to months ago might not have known that another team was working on it.

Then when they prep'ed for your meeting they found out someone had been working on it, felt guilty about leading you on months ago and offered a buy out.

It seems like a communication problem more than anything else.

disclosure: if it is not absolutely clear from my post, I'm speculating on events, I have no ability to gauge what really happened at facebook.

You are right, it could be a communications problem. There are a few details I left out of this post that would suggest it probably isn't.

I would never have spent months and capital building this without constant support and encouragement from Facebook.

You should have used your Marc Andreessen connection to talk to the VP of Product instead of a Level 2 or 3 dev relations employee.

Thanks for the details and clarifying the stuff going on "behind the scene".

A communications problem though is still a problem for the business. You don't get a free pass just because you are big.

You should definitely have explained this in your original article. I can absolutely understand your frustration, given their earlier encouragement. Absent this explanation, you did come off like a ... precious snowflake.

But when you dance with Godzilla, you will eventually get stepped on. Mostly by accident. There's little evidence they acted in bad faith. Big companies change their plans all the time, and they're entitled to do so absent an NDA.

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