I think his issue was that the meeting was in bad faith. He was under the impression that he would be demoing his technology so it could get visibility within Facebook, not walking into a negotiation.
If they had been upfront about their intentions with the meeting, he probably would have never gone.
What do you think the purpose of the “platform developer relations” executive is?
To advocate AGAINST Facebook and for random outside developers?
Actually, yes. Usually that is what someone in that position does. They are the advocate for the customer, to help the company see things from the customer's point of view.
He's pissed because the conversation went from "Hey, this is great for both of us, what can we do to help you build it?" to "Join us or die".
If Facebook went from expressions of support for the project to hostility, I think anyone would feel they'd acted in bad faith.
It's not illegal, and it's a fair point that developers should anticipate Facebook's conflicting interests. But it's also fair to publicly shame sleazy behavior when you see it.
By creating an open platform, Facebook has made the big picture decision that encouraging third party developers to build applications leveraging their social graph is beneficial to the company's bottom line, allowing them to be embedded in places where they otherwise wouldn't be.
This is where utilizing a product company's platform can be very morally dicey. They offer a platform for others to build on, because it raises the value of their company by making it more pervasive. They also build their own products on top of their platform.
Which takes precedence over the other? My view is this: in the long run, the developer platform is more valuable than any product Facebook can build themselves. The short term thinking that is demonstrated here leads to damaging the trust that developers have in the Facebook platform.
It's one thing to use Facebook for authentication. It's easy and takes little investment. However, building a REAL product on the platform is a risk. If Facebook behaves like this, they show that it's a risk NOT worth taking, and they devalue their own platform, putting short term gain (product) over long term gain (platform).
It is absolutely stunning to me how badly people miss the point on here. You really wouldn't be annoyed if I scheduled a meeting with you, decided to make the meeting about something else and then basically acted like I was being a good guy when it was clear I was trying to milk as much as possible out of the deal in a meeting I lied about the purpose of while I was wasting your time? Would you then want some angry asshole on the internet to mock you and call you a precious snowflake? You wouldnt? Bizarre, you seemed to think being an ass like that was pretty reasonable.
While I agree with your assessment of how the platform dev relations guy should have been expected to toe the FB line, I do have to say that I highly respect Dalton for clearly stating he had no interest in the acquihire.
In fact, this completely confirms my previous post from two weeks ago:
>All these aquisitions are more insidious, they are being done by the big players to stifle diversity in the market and continue to solidify their leads on online services under the guise of talent acquisition to better their companies - rather its an effort to prevent that talent from building something that would be a detriment to their positions
As well as:
>The acquiring of the teams is defensive in that they take that team and their IP etc off the market from their competition. It is offensive in that it squashes any possibility that whatever service it was the startup had would compete for their similar service.
And:
>Attention is the resource that social services are harvesting from their users and monetizing.
...
Companies that provide features, utility and services that keep the attention of users (especially when providing no physical product) are those that will have longevity.
So, capturing those that would build things that direct user attention away from your product is critical to these huge companies.
It seems like Dalton was under the impression that he was rather explicitly threatened with being denied access to the Facebook platform through a change in terms of service, in a way that is critical to his business. That's a strong-handed negotiation tactic for a supposed business infrastructure provider.
I don't get it either. Last week this guy wanted to make some sort of paid Open Twitter competitor. This week he's mad at Facebook for offering to acquire his company rather than simply build a first party feature!
No good deed goes unpunished. Moreover, it's just not smart to publicly pick a fight with Facebook after they offered to acquire you. If you're the guys on the other side of the table, you might well brand this guy "unreasonable" and reckon that Kevin Systrom beat him once (score of $1B to $0), and Kevin is now playing for Facebook.
Seriously, this was not a good move on Dalton's part. As for this ("perhaps the public markets...will give you the time and goodwill to fix the obvious structural flaws"), he must be joking. Facebook has helicopter problems. Their dilemma is whether they are worth 20 billion dollars or 100 billion dollars. For Dalton to lecture Zuck in this tone, when Zuck has lapped him like 1 billion times over, and after they extended him a hand in good faith...just not smart.
And, as a for profit business, they don't even have to hit anywhere near 100%. They just have to do well enough in how they operate not to loose business or somehow jeopardize what they have. It's really that simple.
This is a story that prior to the Internet nobody would ever hear about. No journalist would tell this story except in a magazine piece maybe that had an agenda and wanted to paint a picture.
This tale goes nowhere near even scratching the surface of how business operates. Spying. Payoffs. "Cut off their air supply" (Microsoft/Netscape)
Here's a story from when I started in business years ago. I called a friend of my fathers for a reference on someone who had worked with him in the past. He said "hmm, Bob left his job? Hmm." and then gave me a nice reference on him. Before I knew it he had hired Bob and basically told him "he's a startup you are wasting your time". I lost out on hiring Bob. This was a friend of the family. That may or may not be how any one of us would operate but in business as you say you can't be "a precious snow flake".
I mostly agree with you, but I don't really buy the line that they were offering him millions of dollars for his company (I assume the aqui-hire would be in that range) as "a courtesy".
What they'd really be paying for is avoiding exactly this situation they're in now, with him talking quite loudly about how they shut him down. Can't blame 'em for trying, but they need to suss out their target a bit better before threatening them.
> "Your team doesn’t seem to understand that being “good negotiators” vs implying that you will destroy someone’s business built on your “open platform” are not the same thing."
It's Facebook's platform. Sometimes they are going to create internal products that compete with developers' ideas. The fact that they brought you in, explained what they were doing, and raised the possibility that they were willing to give you what I assume to be a boatload of cash to compensate you for your efforts seems almost comically generous to me.
The simple fact of the matter is that they CAN crush your business. They seem to be cognizant of that fact and were wiling to do something to help you. All I can say is that I'll bet most people reading this wish they had this kind of "problem" and would be writing "thank you" letters to Mark Zuckerberg, even if we ultimately rejected the offer. The title of this story could easily have been "This Just In: Facebook Has a Heart".
Totally agree with you.
It's a game, FB used hard tactics, now he is using public sentiment. It is just an money game in the end. Blog posts like this just hurt both companies perceptions.
If FB did not declare itself a platform...if it had not encouraged others to build on its platform...if it had not encouraged DC to build his product on this platform...then you would be right. But if you are a platform, if you do encourage others to build on your platform (which is the whole point) and if you encourage a company to continue developing a product then it is not right. It may be realpolitik. It may be that having done all those things the platform company realizes that something it has encouraged is more strategic than it had realized, that it doesn't want a third party owning that product and it has to reel back its promises (which is what is sounds like here) but that is (a) a crippling result for the poor developer who took you at your word, and (b) and blow to your credibility as a platform. One incident like this won't kill you. Two won't. But at some point people just won't develop on your platform because there's no trust. ALL successful platforms have to walk this tightrope. Some do it better than others.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
I don't get it. FB took an opportunity to make an acquisition offer (or at least open the dialog) and used some hard tactics (in this case the threat of direct competition) to improve their negotiating position.
What's the problem here? This is just business. Facebook has every right to develop that app, just like Dalton Caldwell did. If it makes sense for them to do it themselves, then they will. If it makes sense for them to buy an existing player, ditto. And if so, clearly they'd want to acquire that player at a good price, right?
I just don't see the ethical problem here. They didn't lie, and they offered a check (that it happens the OP didn't want).
A lot of people seem to be missing Dalton's point. Dalton isn't complaining Mark's behavior is bad (in the short term). He knows why Mark did what he did, it makes sense if you are thinking short term. It makes sense if you think Facebook is worth 110 Billion.
This isn't a letter so much to convince Mark that he is heading down the wrong path. I think Dalton is convinced FB as an organization has made too many promises. It's too late for FB too change direction. They are headed for and iceberg at 110 billion dollar speed and can't course correct in time.
Rather this is a letter to us. Dalton is pointing out the prediction that Facebook won't be around in 10 years. So don't build your apps on it. If you build your apps using Facebook you will be at its mercy. And as Facebook starts to die, you will feel the pain it inflicts on its closest "partners" as it scrambles to squeeze blood from turnips. It will use every nasty trick in the book to keep a monopoly on its market and squeeze every last drop of money and value (your personal info) it can from users.
Dalton has seen what people who run a company, with a dying business model, are capable of before. The Record/Music companies... He knows what a company, that is seeing its monopoly slip through its fingers, is willing to do to keep that monopoly just a little longer.
Intimidation and dishonest negotiation tactics are just the start. Will we soon see Facebook suing users? Lobbying congress for SOPA like laws to protect its monopoly? Remember GoDaddy was a main supporter of SOPA. It saw SOPA as a way to keep its URL retailing monopoly.
Dalton is warning you. Dalton cares about you. He has given up on saving Mark. Mark wants to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Dalton wants to raise the goose that lays the silver egg. And share those eggs with us. Well, that's my interpretation of this open letter to Mark. I could be wrong, I often am.
This pretty much nails the sentiment I took from the story. He isn't so much complaining or railing against Facebook, but kicking himself for being, in hindsight, so naive. Not that anyone could blame him for it though. I mean, it certainly made perfect sense at the time, in fact for most of us, it still appears to make a lot of sense which is precisely why he is putting out these words of caution.
The one line summary seems to be: Facebook and Twitter represent a closed model of social networking, which rails against the very nature of web and internet as a technology platform and it probably won't last.
Not saying if I agree or disagree with that statement and prediction, but I definitely see the argument.
This is great. Completely agree. He believes this to be an oft repeated cycle in which the small guys get hurt because they are suckered in to develop on a platform. Because whilst the platform is augmented by the added value such developers bring to the table, they have little or no security and can be crushed at will. There have been many platforms. There will be more. All have to walk the fine line between short and long term self interest. Microsoft played hardball but did a better job than this. More developers had more stability for longer and made more $$$. Developments like this are scary.
So you were building a service that competes with a service Facebook was working on, they offered to buy you out, you declined, and you're angry about this? I'm sorry, but that's absurd. Most companies would not have even thought about steamrolling you, forget about offering a check. Did you expect them to just decide not to pursue their App Store offering because ol' Dalton Caldwell wouldn't like it? That's fucking ridiculous.
It sucks that you were naïve about this, but that's hardly Facebook's fault.
This. Business is business. It's not the Dev Relations team that decides if an app on the platform is competitive. Just because they told him to it was 'cool' doesn't mean the execs think it's too competitive...
Moral: Make sure you're talking to the right people.
He's upset that what he thought was a demo meeting was actually their way of luring him into an acquisition meeting. And he doesn't seem to have a problem with FB having their own app store, he's going to compete with them regardless.
Let's be clear, the only purpose of this post is to bring attention to App.net. Calling Facebook 'rotten-to-the-core' isn't a great way to capture the sympathy of its CEO.
To clarify for those confused comments here: app.net is in part a platform to showcase your app. Facebook's AppCenter is similar. If they were building an open platform, app.net could build into Facebook's AppCenter. Offering a aquihire and refusing to make an open platform is what Dalton doesn't like.
His critique is tied to his project at http://join.app.net because the reason the platform isn't open according to Dalton is because Facebook needs the ad revenue to hit its performance numbers.
"Offering a aquihire and refusing to make an open platform is what Dalton doesn't like."
Typically, when someone doesn't like an acquisition offer, they decline it. Is it wrong for Facebook to build a platform that isn't open? I don't see why Mark Zuckerberg (or the public, as the comments on this submission indicate) would read this letter and decide that his employees acted improperly, which the letter seems to expect.
Your team doesn’t seem to understand that being “good negotiators” vs implying that you will destroy someone’s business built on your “open platform” are not the same thing.
That's probably a true statement, but who the heck actually considers Facebook to be any sort of "open platform" in the first place? Honestly, how many times have we seen this lesson re-iterated here on HN in the past few months: It is very dangerous to build a product that depends on a platform that someone else controls.
And this isn't a new lesson either... remember "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run?" (And it doesn't really matter if Microsoft were actually breaking Lotus on purpose or not... the risk was - and still is - there, and has to be accounted for).
Don't build a house on a river and then blame the water.
There has never been a company-controlled ecosystem that has EVER thrived for long without the company swooping in to get that easy money.
In fact, now that Facebook is public, its their fiduciary duty to do just that. They could get sued if they DIDN'T try to cheaply build out their own versions of successful products.
The only surprise is that anyone is surprised by this, or thinks that Facebook has "lost their way", or had any other intentions when they started their platform. This is standard business practice - make a little ecosystem, let people futz around in it for a while. If it fails, shut it down; if it succeeds, go pick the low-hanging fruit.
Why wait 1.5 months to make an open letter after a "June 13th, 2012 at 4:30pm" meeting? Did you try communicating directly with Facebook for 45 days, then let it go? What makes now the best time to incite public wrath against Facebook (I'm assuming that was the intent in resolving never to write another line of code for a "rotten to the core" company) in an open letter that was anything but conciliatory?
It sounds like Facebook used some hard-handed tactics, but I'm more curious as to your choice of timing.
One thing I don't get, and I've started to feel really stupid for it, is this whole Social as Infrastructure meme that has started going around and that the author touches on. I'd love for someone to explain to me exactly what it would entail, why any company would move to become a commodity, and where the user value would be?
I'm not saying there aren't any really good answers to these questions, I'm just too thick to see it.
Imagine a world where everyone used a protocol to communicate. Lets call that protocol "English". Now, imagine "English" is owned by one company, who changes "English" and compromises your conversations consistently, and then tries to monetize your conversations in increasingly subtle and annoying ways.
Now in reality no one owns English. Its an open form of communication that anyone can use, anywhere. You can even create variants of it and use it with your friends as long as they understand your dialect.
"Social Infrastructure" would require a common social protocol as a specification. This would open up an entire ecosystem of smaller players to contribute to it, providing delicious synergy and innovation along the way. Kind of like modding Minecraft, etc.
Not every company wants to become a billion dollar start up. There are many IT service providers and MSPs that are perfectly comfortable servicing 30 clients and making a lifestyle business for everyone involved. If its a commodity, it opens up locality and niche markets easier than a monolithic implementation.
Nothing but good would come from a true technological social protocol. Right now online social behavior is dictated through the mind of one man, which isn't really social at all.
The user value is in that the users have all the power. If social service providers are a commodity, if they misbehave or provide a bad user experience they could simply take their social graph somewhere else. This empowers the user. This is also why Facebook does everything in its power to retain hegemony.
For one thing, the OP author is responsible for the whole meme, and is posturing his startup as the litmus test for the idea (which is probably fair).
From a certain perspective, the whole idea of Google is to get users off the search engine faster, which doesn't sound like a great way to make money as compared to Yahoo! whose core idea was to keep them on the site as long as possible to serve more ads at them. In the end, the Google idea is more profitable because users prefer to use things that don't parasite them by a huge margin, especially if both are free.
Caldwell's idea, as I understand it, is that there are a lot of interesting applications that could use Twitter's technology that aren't or can't be written because of their restrictions (or it would suck because of their ads), and that people would be willing to pay for a service like Twitter's if it enabled access to or the ability to author these applications. He thinks he can win at choosing to be the commodity by being first and doing the best job. The user value is hard to envision, because the apps that will be powered by this social infrastructure don't exist yet or are perverted by the presence of ads and Twitter's own self-interest.
We are moving into an era of the walled garden. Apple has it's iTunes Store and Mac Store, Microsoft will have a Windows store when Windows 8 launches, FB has its platform and apps that run on its platform, Twitter, on and on... All companies are looking to build walls and moats around their "platforms" because walls mean profits.
Now you need to blessing of the landlord, and not be competing against them in any way.
The issue is that facebook and twitter have derailed from their earlier stated mission of connecting people and facilitating communication. Their goal as public businesses is making money from advertising, anything else is just feeding into that. This kind of misalignment of goals results in end users experience suffering. A thing like a social network is part of the fundamental fabric of the internet As a result the organization running this infrastructure should have very clear goals. It doesn't have to be a non-profit, but the goal should not be to generate 30% growth and billions in profits. The goal should be to make it easier for people to communicate.
Given the decrease in the cost of computing, there is no reason that it should cost billions of $ to run an infrastructure like facebook. What we need is a linux for the internet. Fundamental infrastructures like social network and search engine being run by entities with no hidden agendas! It will happen!
This is a recurring theme.. if you don't want to be in this position, then don't build on top of someone else's closed platform. When you do that, expect to see this situation because that is what such platforms are designed for!
Mega-meh. I find this "open" letter to be as totally self-serving as "Open" Graph will ever be. You got a meeting with a lot of FB poo-bahs. Whatever you thought it was going to be about, if you were unprepared for the crushing embrace of the Big Face, it's on you. Of course they want to intimidate you into an "aqui-hire." It's called hardball.
Their "platform" is what it is. A highly flawed way to instantly reach astounding numbers of people for potentially deep or shallow exchanges of questionable value. Many your age have made millions for a half-year's work on this "joke" platform, as you call it. This is known, and blaming their tanking stock price for their behavior seems like a cheap shot at execs you don't even name.
I would advise you to get ready in case Apple calls. Unlike FB, they won't apologize after they gutpunch you.
Mark will probably see this, but will anything change? Probably not.
The simple fact is that as a company, FB have to meet their targets and Dalton's app is a bit of a conflict of interest. So, no surprises there.
However, I agree with his point about big "media company" social networks being eventually replaced by a much larger number of specific micro-networks. One network for photo sharing, music sharing (Soundcloud?), messaging etc.
Even once you have all these niches, I'm sure there's space for two or three due to the fact that people have different priorities and visual tastes.
As a company, Facebook aren't on course to die but I'm sure we're going to continue to see decisions like this being made that surprise us as the tech community due to the fact that they don't align with the vision we thought the company once had.
Representing yourself as a platform is something very different.
A platform a representation that you are providing a set of services on which others can safely build. It is a form of contract. And this representation has to be trusted because who in their right minds would otherwise invest on a 'platform' that turns out to be a flag of convenience? If a company loses this trust they ultimately lose the right to be called a platform. They lose developers and are ultimately left with a bunch of unused APIs.
Incidents like these described by DC are extremely important and should be publicly voiced because they bear directly upon the decision making of others who may be in the process of weighing their options. Should they or shouldn't they trust this alleged 'platform.' It is a huge strategic decision that can make or break a company. So people like DC who are prepare to go public with his experience are doing us all a favor because they are providing more perfect information, without which the market cannot operate accurately.
People can choose to criticize this or that dimension of the way various people played their parts, but that really isn't the key point, is it? Surely the key point is, can you trust the 'platformness' of FB? Did they imply one thing - that he was building a valuable product that they would be supporting - THEN choose to compete and wipe him out? That's the key point. The manners, the exact detail of how the wipeout was conducted aren't the point. If the story is accurate it is surely the breach of faith the is important. Some may argue that to expect otherwise is naive. But without some such faith there is no platform. You can't have your cake and eat it.
Getting bored of Hackernews being used as an internet slander machine. I think the age old rule of 'Not your personal army' needs to be enacted here =(
[+] [-] tjic|13 years ago|reply
They intend to enter this new space, using their technology and their people.
As a courtesy they offered to hire you / throw a lot of money at you.
What would you have had them do instead?
Not compete with you, because you're a precious snow flake?
Acquire you and treat you like a prima donna, giving you your own team and allowing you to take your own technical direction?
Why should Facebook - or any competitor - do either of these things?
Seems to me like they acted pretty reasonably here.
Of all the things you said, this struck me as the weirdest:
> Strangely, your “platform developer relations” executive made no attempt to defend my position.
What do you think the purpose of the “platform developer relations” executive is? To advocate AGAINST Facebook and for random outside developers?
I'm not a fan of the Facebook app (not a member) or the company...but in this case, the firm seems to be acting 100% reasonably.
[+] [-] jedberg|13 years ago|reply
If they had been upfront about their intentions with the meeting, he probably would have never gone.
Actually, yes. Usually that is what someone in that position does. They are the advocate for the customer, to help the company see things from the customer's point of view.[+] [-] gruseom|13 years ago|reply
Not compete with you, because you're a precious snow flake and
Acquire you and treat you like a prima donna, etc.
add nothing other than nastiness to Not compete with you and Acquire you, etc.
[+] [-] jasonwatkinspdx|13 years ago|reply
If Facebook went from expressions of support for the project to hostility, I think anyone would feel they'd acted in bad faith.
It's not illegal, and it's a fair point that developers should anticipate Facebook's conflicting interests. But it's also fair to publicly shame sleazy behavior when you see it.
[+] [-] JPKab|13 years ago|reply
It's one thing to use Facebook for authentication. It's easy and takes little investment. However, building a REAL product on the platform is a risk. If Facebook behaves like this, they show that it's a risk NOT worth taking, and they devalue their own platform, putting short term gain (product) over long term gain (platform).
[+] [-] ryguytilidie|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samstave|13 years ago|reply
In fact, this completely confirms my previous post from two weeks ago:
>All these aquisitions are more insidious, they are being done by the big players to stifle diversity in the market and continue to solidify their leads on online services under the guise of talent acquisition to better their companies - rather its an effort to prevent that talent from building something that would be a detriment to their positions
As well as:
>The acquiring of the teams is defensive in that they take that team and their IP etc off the market from their competition. It is offensive in that it squashes any possibility that whatever service it was the startup had would compete for their similar service.
And:
>Attention is the resource that social services are harvesting from their users and monetizing.
...
Companies that provide features, utility and services that keep the attention of users (especially when providing no physical product) are those that will have longevity.
So, capturing those that would build things that direct user attention away from your product is critical to these huge companies.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4272331
[+] [-] WiseWeasel|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] temphn|13 years ago|reply
No good deed goes unpunished. Moreover, it's just not smart to publicly pick a fight with Facebook after they offered to acquire you. If you're the guys on the other side of the table, you might well brand this guy "unreasonable" and reckon that Kevin Systrom beat him once (score of $1B to $0), and Kevin is now playing for Facebook.
Seriously, this was not a good move on Dalton's part. As for this ("perhaps the public markets...will give you the time and goodwill to fix the obvious structural flaws"), he must be joking. Facebook has helicopter problems. Their dilemma is whether they are worth 20 billion dollars or 100 billion dollars. For Dalton to lecture Zuck in this tone, when Zuck has lapped him like 1 billion times over, and after they extended him a hand in good faith...just not smart.
[+] [-] larrys|13 years ago|reply
And, as a for profit business, they don't even have to hit anywhere near 100%. They just have to do well enough in how they operate not to loose business or somehow jeopardize what they have. It's really that simple.
This is a story that prior to the Internet nobody would ever hear about. No journalist would tell this story except in a magazine piece maybe that had an agenda and wanted to paint a picture.
This tale goes nowhere near even scratching the surface of how business operates. Spying. Payoffs. "Cut off their air supply" (Microsoft/Netscape)
Here's a story from when I started in business years ago. I called a friend of my fathers for a reference on someone who had worked with him in the past. He said "hmm, Bob left his job? Hmm." and then gave me a nice reference on him. Before I knew it he had hired Bob and basically told him "he's a startup you are wasting your time". I lost out on hiring Bob. This was a friend of the family. That may or may not be how any one of us would operate but in business as you say you can't be "a precious snow flake".
[+] [-] jonmrodriguez|13 years ago|reply
natrius: "Did they threaten to revoke API access?" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325586)
dalton: "yep. That was presented as an option they could use by one exec, on a phone call." (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325593)
[+] [-] waterlesscloud|13 years ago|reply
What they'd really be paying for is avoiding exactly this situation they're in now, with him talking quite loudly about how they shut him down. Can't blame 'em for trying, but they need to suss out their target a bit better before threatening them.
[+] [-] downandout|13 years ago|reply
It's Facebook's platform. Sometimes they are going to create internal products that compete with developers' ideas. The fact that they brought you in, explained what they were doing, and raised the possibility that they were willing to give you what I assume to be a boatload of cash to compensate you for your efforts seems almost comically generous to me.
The simple fact of the matter is that they CAN crush your business. They seem to be cognizant of that fact and were wiling to do something to help you. All I can say is that I'll bet most people reading this wish they had this kind of "problem" and would be writing "thank you" letters to Mark Zuckerberg, even if we ultimately rejected the offer. The title of this story could easily have been "This Just In: Facebook Has a Heart".
[+] [-] MayanAstronaut|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petegrif|13 years ago|reply
If FB did not declare itself a platform...if it had not encouraged others to build on its platform...if it had not encouraged DC to build his product on this platform...then you would be right. But if you are a platform, if you do encourage others to build on your platform (which is the whole point) and if you encourage a company to continue developing a product then it is not right. It may be realpolitik. It may be that having done all those things the platform company realizes that something it has encouraged is more strategic than it had realized, that it doesn't want a third party owning that product and it has to reel back its promises (which is what is sounds like here) but that is (a) a crippling result for the poor developer who took you at your word, and (b) and blow to your credibility as a platform. One incident like this won't kill you. Two won't. But at some point people just won't develop on your platform because there's no trust. ALL successful platforms have to walk this tightrope. Some do it better than others.
[+] [-] onedev|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dalton|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] notJim|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] natrius|13 years ago|reply
Did they threaten to revoke API access?
[+] [-] ljd|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] paulsutter|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ajross|13 years ago|reply
What's the problem here? This is just business. Facebook has every right to develop that app, just like Dalton Caldwell did. If it makes sense for them to do it themselves, then they will. If it makes sense for them to buy an existing player, ditto. And if so, clearly they'd want to acquire that player at a good price, right?
I just don't see the ethical problem here. They didn't lie, and they offered a check (that it happens the OP didn't want).
[+] [-] csmeder|13 years ago|reply
This isn't a letter so much to convince Mark that he is heading down the wrong path. I think Dalton is convinced FB as an organization has made too many promises. It's too late for FB too change direction. They are headed for and iceberg at 110 billion dollar speed and can't course correct in time.
Rather this is a letter to us. Dalton is pointing out the prediction that Facebook won't be around in 10 years. So don't build your apps on it. If you build your apps using Facebook you will be at its mercy. And as Facebook starts to die, you will feel the pain it inflicts on its closest "partners" as it scrambles to squeeze blood from turnips. It will use every nasty trick in the book to keep a monopoly on its market and squeeze every last drop of money and value (your personal info) it can from users.
Dalton has seen what people who run a company, with a dying business model, are capable of before. The Record/Music companies... He knows what a company, that is seeing its monopoly slip through its fingers, is willing to do to keep that monopoly just a little longer.
Intimidation and dishonest negotiation tactics are just the start. Will we soon see Facebook suing users? Lobbying congress for SOPA like laws to protect its monopoly? Remember GoDaddy was a main supporter of SOPA. It saw SOPA as a way to keep its URL retailing monopoly.
Dalton is warning you. Dalton cares about you. He has given up on saving Mark. Mark wants to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Dalton wants to raise the goose that lays the silver egg. And share those eggs with us. Well, that's my interpretation of this open letter to Mark. I could be wrong, I often am.
[+] [-] lucisferre|13 years ago|reply
The one line summary seems to be: Facebook and Twitter represent a closed model of social networking, which rails against the very nature of web and internet as a technology platform and it probably won't last.
Not saying if I agree or disagree with that statement and prediction, but I definitely see the argument.
[+] [-] petegrif|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpdoctor|13 years ago|reply
The other reason: Putting a company with FB's reputation in your critical path is just asking for trouble.
[+] [-] jgrahamc|13 years ago|reply
This person is complaining because he didn't want to be acquired by Facebook but would like them to not compete with him. Oh well.
[+] [-] caleywoods|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilaksh|13 years ago|reply
From a business standpoint, that's just the way our society works.
The problem is the concept of business and how it controls all aspects of our lives and opposes technological progress.
[+] [-] notJim|13 years ago|reply
It sucks that you were naïve about this, but that's hardly Facebook's fault.
[+] [-] ryanmerket|13 years ago|reply
Moral: Make sure you're talking to the right people.
[+] [-] natep|13 years ago|reply
Actually, he phrases it better here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325566
[+] [-] shock3naw|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ivankirigin|13 years ago|reply
His critique is tied to his project at http://join.app.net because the reason the platform isn't open according to Dalton is because Facebook needs the ad revenue to hit its performance numbers.
[+] [-] natrius|13 years ago|reply
Typically, when someone doesn't like an acquisition offer, they decline it. Is it wrong for Facebook to build a platform that isn't open? I don't see why Mark Zuckerberg (or the public, as the comments on this submission indicate) would read this letter and decide that his employees acted improperly, which the letter seems to expect.
[+] [-] mindcrime|13 years ago|reply
That's probably a true statement, but who the heck actually considers Facebook to be any sort of "open platform" in the first place? Honestly, how many times have we seen this lesson re-iterated here on HN in the past few months: It is very dangerous to build a product that depends on a platform that someone else controls.
And this isn't a new lesson either... remember "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run?" (And it doesn't really matter if Microsoft were actually breaking Lotus on purpose or not... the risk was - and still is - there, and has to be accounted for).
[+] [-] lubujackson|13 years ago|reply
There has never been a company-controlled ecosystem that has EVER thrived for long without the company swooping in to get that easy money.
In fact, now that Facebook is public, its their fiduciary duty to do just that. They could get sued if they DIDN'T try to cheaply build out their own versions of successful products.
The only surprise is that anyone is surprised by this, or thinks that Facebook has "lost their way", or had any other intentions when they started their platform. This is standard business practice - make a little ecosystem, let people futz around in it for a while. If it fails, shut it down; if it succeeds, go pick the low-hanging fruit.
[+] [-] kevinalexbrown|13 years ago|reply
It sounds like Facebook used some hard-handed tactics, but I'm more curious as to your choice of timing.
Edit: not trying to be snarky, genuinely curious.
[+] [-] marcusf|13 years ago|reply
I'm not saying there aren't any really good answers to these questions, I'm just too thick to see it.
[+] [-] alttab|13 years ago|reply
Now in reality no one owns English. Its an open form of communication that anyone can use, anywhere. You can even create variants of it and use it with your friends as long as they understand your dialect.
"Social Infrastructure" would require a common social protocol as a specification. This would open up an entire ecosystem of smaller players to contribute to it, providing delicious synergy and innovation along the way. Kind of like modding Minecraft, etc.
Not every company wants to become a billion dollar start up. There are many IT service providers and MSPs that are perfectly comfortable servicing 30 clients and making a lifestyle business for everyone involved. If its a commodity, it opens up locality and niche markets easier than a monolithic implementation.
Nothing but good would come from a true technological social protocol. Right now online social behavior is dictated through the mind of one man, which isn't really social at all.
The user value is in that the users have all the power. If social service providers are a commodity, if they misbehave or provide a bad user experience they could simply take their social graph somewhere else. This empowers the user. This is also why Facebook does everything in its power to retain hegemony.
[+] [-] fusiongyro|13 years ago|reply
From a certain perspective, the whole idea of Google is to get users off the search engine faster, which doesn't sound like a great way to make money as compared to Yahoo! whose core idea was to keep them on the site as long as possible to serve more ads at them. In the end, the Google idea is more profitable because users prefer to use things that don't parasite them by a huge margin, especially if both are free.
Caldwell's idea, as I understand it, is that there are a lot of interesting applications that could use Twitter's technology that aren't or can't be written because of their restrictions (or it would suck because of their ads), and that people would be willing to pay for a service like Twitter's if it enabled access to or the ability to author these applications. He thinks he can win at choosing to be the commodity by being first and doing the best job. The user value is hard to envision, because the apps that will be powered by this social infrastructure don't exist yet or are perverted by the presence of ads and Twitter's own self-interest.
[+] [-] unreal37|13 years ago|reply
Now you need to blessing of the landlord, and not be competing against them in any way.
[+] [-] jarek|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] surferbayarea|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slurgfest|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Moseman23|13 years ago|reply
Their "platform" is what it is. A highly flawed way to instantly reach astounding numbers of people for potentially deep or shallow exchanges of questionable value. Many your age have made millions for a half-year's work on this "joke" platform, as you call it. This is known, and blaming their tanking stock price for their behavior seems like a cheap shot at execs you don't even name.
I would advise you to get ready in case Apple calls. Unlike FB, they won't apologize after they gutpunch you.
[+] [-] deveac|13 years ago|reply
Step 2) Complain when there is eventual feature overlap.
[+] [-] lewisflude|13 years ago|reply
The simple fact is that as a company, FB have to meet their targets and Dalton's app is a bit of a conflict of interest. So, no surprises there.
However, I agree with his point about big "media company" social networks being eventually replaced by a much larger number of specific micro-networks. One network for photo sharing, music sharing (Soundcloud?), messaging etc.
Even once you have all these niches, I'm sure there's space for two or three due to the fact that people have different priorities and visual tastes.
As a company, Facebook aren't on course to die but I'm sure we're going to continue to see decisions like this being made that surprise us as the tech community due to the fact that they don't align with the vision we thought the company once had.
[+] [-] petegrif|13 years ago|reply
Representing yourself as a platform is something very different.
A platform a representation that you are providing a set of services on which others can safely build. It is a form of contract. And this representation has to be trusted because who in their right minds would otherwise invest on a 'platform' that turns out to be a flag of convenience? If a company loses this trust they ultimately lose the right to be called a platform. They lose developers and are ultimately left with a bunch of unused APIs.
Incidents like these described by DC are extremely important and should be publicly voiced because they bear directly upon the decision making of others who may be in the process of weighing their options. Should they or shouldn't they trust this alleged 'platform.' It is a huge strategic decision that can make or break a company. So people like DC who are prepare to go public with his experience are doing us all a favor because they are providing more perfect information, without which the market cannot operate accurately.
People can choose to criticize this or that dimension of the way various people played their parts, but that really isn't the key point, is it? Surely the key point is, can you trust the 'platformness' of FB? Did they imply one thing - that he was building a valuable product that they would be supporting - THEN choose to compete and wipe him out? That's the key point. The manners, the exact detail of how the wipeout was conducted aren't the point. If the story is accurate it is surely the breach of faith the is important. Some may argue that to expect otherwise is naive. But without some such faith there is no platform. You can't have your cake and eat it.
[+] [-] Kelliot|13 years ago|reply