Oh I see, thanks. I didn't realize this kind of jurisprudence was linked to the child porn issues. Obviously that's a commendable reason to add exceptions to the 5th amendment.
253 karma · joined August 25, 2008
To justify cost to brands it might be easier/more 'sellable' to insist on actual, measurable engagement (links clicked, tweets retweeted, tweets favorited etc.) around their own tweets. I'd worry about unrelated tweets (i.e. sharing the same keyword but about something else altogether), or either bad publicity being accounted for.
I can absolutely understand the heat they must be feeling -- it's especially chilling since she's clearly not famous enough to require protection, but might become just enough so that she actually pays the heavy personal toll of constant fear of reprisal.
It's very sad to see this lifelike Prisoner's Dilemma happening -- we would all like to see people of goodwill the world over to show some spine and make a respectful but clear and strong resistance statement. But no one, absolutely no one can afford doing this anymore in an age of exponentials, viral growth, annihilated privacy and geocoded checkins broadcast to the world, where you can rise to (unwanted, in this case) virtual fame in a matter of hours. Anonymity is not a protection anymore.
I sincerely hope that being the first globally connected generation will somehow help us avoid tearing this planet apart over religion in the next 20 years...
To clear things up regarding Facebook and the original link as well, I should explain that I have a really hard time believing what the original poster says about their ads. It might very well be that a lot of people fail to use them in a meaningful way because they haven't thought through what makes Facebook advertisement unique. I am certain that a sizeable fraction of the ad market can and will exploit them, and especially the infinitely granular targeting.
My experience as a user is a bit mixed (lots of crap and/or scam, and thankfully less and less social games silliness as I've downvoted it), but I've seem true gems too (job ads targeting my university + degree + class, pretty neat! -- or a nice ad campaign by Hulu in its early days that targeted a show I had just listed as one of my interests). All in all, the future of FB is pretty bright in my book.
Edit: Also, I should point out that I do not think at all that Facebook's business has anything fraudulent, improper or immoral. My original post (second from the top) was just trying to explain why someone who held the post's author's views on FB ads could believe the company was fundamentally instable and depended on perpetual growth for survival. I personally don't agree with this view, and think they'll be just fine -- and apparently I'm not alone: http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/20/facebook-valued-at-14-billi...
>irremediably tainted by the vileness of Bernie Madoff. My point here is that, while Ponzi schemes used to be a mostly overlooked white collar crime and a curiosity for the students of economics, they now have come to light in a very public manner and came to personify all the excesses of Wall Street pre-2008.
1. I actually do like Facebook, and am very impressed by what they are pulling off.
2. I learned about Ponzi schemes a while back in macro theory class, before they were mainstream and irremediably tainted by the vileness of Bernie Madoff. The story of Ponzi himself -- as I remember our macro professor telling it five years ago -- is pretty 'funny', or at least provided welcome distraction between two utility maximization derivations in econ class; he's supposed to have been a 16th century Venitian who ended up in the Venice lagoon once the bankers he was pulling his cash from realized what happened. I didn't think of it as a crime. All this to say that I never implied nor intended to imply that Facebook was committing any sort of fraud, immoral behavior or else.
3. What I mean by this derivative thing is quite simple -- imagine the movie Speed with a bomb that explodes, not when the speed goes under X mph, but when the bus's acceleration goes below X mph/h, forcing the bus to keep on accelerating, driving faster and faster and faster. Eventually you'll hit the physical speed limit of the bus, acceleration will converge to zero, and the bus will explode. That's a very silly metaphor for what I was trying to explain - being that, if indeed FB had to rely on an ever growing in-flow of first time ad buyers to keep the lights up, they are would be in as desperate a situation as was Mr Ponzi in 16th century Venice.
Just to cool everyone's mind -- I really don't think this will happen. The team is least extremely smart to have gotten where they are, and I trust Facebook to eventually find as ridiculously profitable a business model as AdSense, with high probability. As a user I do hope it will respect my privacy, and as an entrepreneur I do hope it will allow some cool new distribution models.
:-)
;-)
Another intangible but real benefit is the backchannel that fan pages open from the users to the company, and the other fans. Hard to quantify indeed.
What I am curious to see is hard data on acquisition cost of fans vs. mailing list subscribers, and subsequent mailing conversion rates.
I am making things worse by compulsively reading blog posts on low information diet: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/category/low-informatio...
There also was some great data on the wide disconnect between attention market share and ad spend market share of the net in the last Meeker report: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mary_meekers_internet_t...
If eventually (though I'd personally find it extremely surprising) Facebook doesn't manage to find a sustainable and highly profitable business model, that description would have been accurate.
Still waiting for data from the OP though :-)
Credit goes to @jballanc on this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1292611
What's interesting in this debate is that Mark's own experience isn't where he puts his mouth. He spent the first 8 years of his career at Accenture (which screams failed attempt at making partner -- sorry to be harsh), but drastically changed occupations every two years inside the firm (switching from IT to strategy, changing countries etc.).
I really like reading Mark, so I'm afraid of overbearing my point. But his inital blog post sounded like shamelessly getting his cake and eating it too.
He felt that such frequent career changes were the best way to prepare himself to lead a startup someday -- why would the same trait magically become a liability in others? Optimizing against this very behavior in job selection signals a quite detrimental two-tiered mindset -- himself at the helm, and employees who are there to take orders.
This is to some extent the reality of capitalism, but it isn't admirable leadership, nor a good way to generate innovation, and certainly not the best way to inspire people to stick on a sinking ship while the rats drown away. As the OP said - money can't buy you love... :)
Contrast this with Yelp, Aardvark and the second-generation breed of entrepreneurs coming out of the PayPal and Google mafias.
Some key moments from the first half of the show:
- brain scan research at Stanford on the impact of multitasking on productivity
- a Korean facility for internet and video game addict high school students, and a shot of 5 or 6 year olds signing up for a school-operated social network and singing a song about 'netiquette'
- a teacher and the principal of a 'wired' high school in the US saying 'We can argue for ages about about kids needing to stay in their seats and keep quiet, but I don't know any job that exists, now or in the future, that requires them to stay in their seats and keep quiet' 'They won't be asked to remember a bunch of information someone told them, they will be asked to do stuff, build things, work on stuff'
- the dean of that same school monitoring the computers in real time (most students have Photobooth open) -- huge privacy breach (at least that's how I'd feel).
This is fascinating -- what are your thoughts on this?