Valleywag
The Facebook manual, to which all execs and investors now faithfully adhere, states that the social network will remain independent. Mark Zuckerberg's company won't sell to Yahoo; hell, they'll buy Yahoo one of these days. But, as recently as six months ago, some of the 23-year-old founder's key managers weren't so much on message. To one outsider who suggested they sell, one of the grown-ups answered: "Obviously, we all want to sell, at least some of the equity. But Mark owns the whole thing and he's a crazy kid. He doesn't let us in on his ideas, and all he cares about are the users." The users? Shocking.
'A crazy kid'
The Facebook manual, to which all execs and investors now faithfully adhere, states that the social network will remain independent. Mark Zuckerberg's company won't sell to Yahoo; hell, they'll buy Yahoo one of these days. But, as recently as six months ago, some of the 23-year-old founder's key managers weren't so much on message. To one outsider who suggested they sell, one of the grown-ups answered: "Obviously, we all want to sell, at least some of the equity. But Mark owns the whole thing and he's a crazy kid. He doesn't let us in on his ideas, and all he cares about are the users." The users? Shocking.
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1:21 PM on Wed Jun 27 2007
By Nick Denton
3,051 views
5 comments
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This is why Zuckerberg is my hero.
Hah!! The users?! Someone needs to watch this video:
[albumoftheday.com]
There's a lot of things Mark Zuckerberg does that aren't what users say they want. He does what he believes is "right". For instance, lets delete all users we know are dead. They clearly are no longer in the photos we have on facebook, are they? Nope, didn't think so...
Or what about users who aren't people. Can a student group have a user profile? No, facebook says that's wrong and will suspend the account if they find out (although it seems rather arbitrary when they do and don't). Why would you want a user account for a group? Well, let's look at things like facebook tagging. You can't tag a group in a photo. How else can a group show off photos of its group? Adding photos to groups is a stupid idea, sorry, that's not as easy as just tagging. That's just one of 20 reasons why student groups could benefit from being a user.
The VCs bought $1 million worth of his stock so he wouldn't sell prematurely.
Really, it's just a matter of timing and luck which way Facebook goes. It could pull a AOL and endup buying someone HUGE like Yahoo...or...it could just endup another Pointcast or Broadcast.com.
It is an addictive service, I must say.
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