ereldon

The most interesting, underutilized and least known aspect of Facebook's platform, imho, is the fact you can export Facebook data to other sites and other communication systems (albeit in a limited way). O'Reilly's been blogging about this lately.

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/10/mark_zuckerberg_fa...

"I do think that there are two views of the social graph, though, and how it gets deployed: there's a platform view in which it can be exploited to build smarter applications on Facebook; there's a deeper view in which the Facebook-discovered social graph can be accessed by other applications elsewhere on the net. Facebook's granular control of what information you reveal and to whom is thus a key part of the platform -- but the question is how far Facebook will go in letting other sites use this information. If Mark's answer is the first, Facebook is ultimately a closed platform; if the latter, it becomes a true open platform and value enabler."

Here's a relevant post to that: http://gigaom.com/2007/10/18/big-internet-is-web-20s-os-so-w...

The Economist article also confuses news feeds (your friends actions, on your FB homepage) and mini-feeds (your own actions, on your profile page). Makes you wonder if the author has actually ever been on to Facebook. Perhaps there's less to The Economist's analysis of Facebook than meets the eye?

as the old saying goes, success has a thousand fathers

no kidding! that's quite a cut-n-paste job

um, talk about fuzzy math, how about fuzzy copy-editing at the IHT:

the caption reads: "Right Media, co-founded by Brian O'Kelley, was valued at $200 billion when Yahoo invested in 2006...."

the article reads: "Yahoo's investment valued the company at $200 million."

i agree with emmett. mint is great. it lets you pull in data from multiple bank accounts and track your spending patterns across all of them. and in a cleaner, simpler interface than competitors like geezeo, or wesabe, imho.

as to the whole security issue -- is anyone scared about making online purchases these days, like they used to be a few years ago? mint is as trustworthy as anyone else in the online finances business: http://mint.com/safe.html

i bet the "northern europeans have bigger brains" crowd is gonna have a field day misinterpreting this data.

have you actually worn a tie to work to be different? did it work for you?

the funny thing here is that ted is the prototypical candidate for ycombinator:

- technical skill: math degree, radrails - belief in tech meritocracy - ambition to solve a hard problem

thats why ted's criticisms hurt so bad -- he is slamming his peers. at least give uncov some credit for both brains and balls. life without these guys would be more status quo, which is not what any of us want.

i don't think this article is about PR gaming reporters, even though PR sadly does set the agenda with reporters sometimes.

my read of the article is that some hipster NYT reporter's narrow hipster-centric view of the world made it through the NYT editorial filter. why? because the reporter was no doubt influenced by their hipster friends in ny/la who were wearing this crap.

beyond the reporter, the NYT prides itself in its NY bias, whether its fashion or politics or whatever else. they love this local fashion hype, because its local and strengthens the paper's own image as a part of the local scene. that's most likely why some aging NYT editor let this BS through.

all that said, i'm pretty sure we can all agree that the dudes in those NYT pictures looked really, really annoying. punchable, even.

Your point isn't addressing the fact that this guy is right more than everyone else, most of the time.

Also, what's with the "women" comment?

I believe they're headed in that direction -- the sooner, the better!

Here's to replacing fiat currencies with oil-backed currencies (directly)

the story has a good point, but the example is weak.

if you're willing to pay for a ferrari, one would think you'd be willing to buy a regular parking spot for it.

and why would you drive it to the airport in the first place if you're planning on going out of town for a couple weeks? why not get a ride from a millionaire friend in their ferrari?

i'm not a millionaire, but it seems like being a good planner is at least as important as being a penny-pincher if you want to make serious money.

A bone tossed to the writers in the crowd :)

"Switching back to writing has confirmed something I've always suspected: writing is harder than hacking. They're both hard to do well, but writing has an additional element of panic that isn't there in hacking."

I don't get why this study is trying to draw big conclusions through comparing stories published by mainstream news outlets and stories that are popular on social news sites heavily, heavily skewed towards geeks.

As the cliche goes... apples vs. oranges.

The guy doing the study even says this about the inherently different foci of the two:

"This technology bias was partly down to the fact that it was early adopters of technology that lead the way when it came to 'playing with the potential of the internet to empower users', said Mr Rosenstiel.

quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

herdrick, sorry if this wasn't clear. khosla's name was made publicly available in march when another blog found it in a regulatory filing concerning xobni's latest funding round.

xobni has sinced decided to release the names of its other investors, as well.

This article is well-written, and the particular issue of status updates is especially pertinent considering the growth of related sites, such as Twitter.

However, the larger issue of Facebook changing the rules on people is a reality that any developer using Platform has been living with daily for months. Facebook is still searching for the balance between keeping a lock on its users' data and behavior, and opening up.

heh.

the guy featured in the article sounds charismatic like a cult leader, with a message as easy to sell as bottled water.

Interesting article but a quick look at wikipedia shows a lack of consensus among historians and archeologists as to whether water levels in the Black Sea radically affected ancient civilizations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_theory

if this non-sequitur post is the best valleywag can do, seems like the rest of silicon valley gets it a lot worst.

thanks.

got a story? reach me at ereldon@gmail.com.

if you've emailed and haven't heard back, could you do so again?

that's what i was gonna say

i write for venturebeat.com -- send me a copy at ereldon@gmail.com

It's funny how Facebook says this and at the same time they say that apps will be able to keep all of their revenue.

This is a fascinating post... I have to wonder if the web is going to get more boring, with large companies solidifying their market share.

i'm part of writewith, a yc startup, and i have a side gig writing for venturebeat. the readership skews towards investors and established entrepreneurs. so although it has a smaller readership than TC and some of the others, there's a lot of value in getting covered by it.

email me at eric at writewith dot com if you have a good story idea.

Lately people in the valley -- and on this list -- have been talking about how successful entrepreneurs are more likely to be young (say, in their 20's).

This article and its sources would appear to flatly contradict that thought, except that I think the article is defining "startup" as any new business. Whereas we're talking tech.

So maybe younger people do better in tech businesses but not in general? Why would that be? More in touch with new technology? More willing to ignore conventions in applying it? At the same time, suffering from less legal, financial and market acumen.

------------

According to Challenger, start-ups in the first quarter were dominated by experienced workers over 40. Of those starting their own firms, 88 percent were over 40. That was up from 78 percent in the previous quarter.

“It makes sense that these seasoned veterans might be more jaded about the corporate employment experience and are therefore more likely to turn to self-employment. In many respects, these individuals are also better suited than their younger counterparts for entrepreneurship, since they have a deeper foundation in business operations and probably have built a larger network of professional contacts who are critical in drumming up customers,” says Mr. Challenger.

“New start-ups will most likely be dominated by older, more experienced veterans of corporate America for the foreseeable future as baby boomers leave the traditional workforce and start their own firms,” he says.

Evidence that this is already occurring can be found in unpublished government data revealed by Challenger, which show that those 55 to 64 and older represent one of the fastest growing groups of self-employed workers.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the number of Americans 55 to 64 categorized as self-employed in non-agricultural industries increased 33 percent from 1,439,000 in 2000 to 1,919,000 in 2006. The number of self-employed 65 and older grew 19 percent from 659,000 to 781,000 during the same period.

The largest number of self-employed workers consists of boomers 45 to 54 years old, who accounted for more than 2.7 million or 25 percent of the nation’s 10.9 million self-employed in 2006.

this post reads like a parable, not a transcript of an actual conversation. it's cleverly crafted to appeal to anyone who 1) is not extremely wealthy and 2) has the ability to procreate.

it makes us feel better about who we already are. so maybe not parable, but movie script

I can see this... but the best way to judge whether such bias exists (and is also a bad thing) is by looking at the success or failure of our startups, right? The free market ain't perfect, but it's better than most other methods of deciding value. This point assumes that we take each other's advice here ;)

Also, I recall a BBC article a while back citing a study showing that ~half of all scientific studies turn out wrong because they failed to exclude variables. The study, below, needs to be supported by other studies in other circumstances (and maybe those exist -- I don't read psy journals).