Jason Calacanis

In his most recent email blast-turned-blog post, Jason Calacanis has chosen a familiar subject: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The post is more focused than his previous one about Zuckerberg, but in some ways, it’s more outrageous as well. In case you haven’t been following along for the past couple of months, Calacanis is no fan of Zuckerberg and the way he’s handled the recent privacy fiasco or his company. He’s hardly alone. But in this latest post, Calacanis (humorously) compares himself to Serpico, the whistle-blowing cop (a real-life figure) played by Al Pacino, in Sidney Lumet’s 1973 film of the same name. And he gives Zuckerberg five “simple” ways to make Facebook more trustworthy.

Calacanis has asked for a response to his thoughts, so I figured I’d write it out just as I did to respond to his “The Case Against Apple-in Five Parts” rant last Summer. To be clear, many of Facebook’s recent privacy issues are very real. And Facebook, as usual, has done a poor job addressing many of them and managing the backlash. That said, the overall implication Calacanis keeps making that Facebook (or Zuckerberg in particular) is in some way an evil force out to screw us all is silly. Calacanis brings up Serpico, but this actually reminds me of another Lumet/Pacino pairing: Dog Day Afternoon. In that film at one point, Pacino’s bank robbing character, Sonny, starts screaming “Attica! Attica!” over and over again, invoking the Attica Prison riots in order to get the people to rise up against the police.

So is Calacanis Frank Serpico? Or is he Sonny Wortzik? The five points:

1. Add an export key

Okay, this seems like a fair idea at a high level, but the key to this is the details. Calacanis wants a button that a user can click and get returned all of their data in some kind of file format (similar to the tools most blogging software offer, for example). “In the case of Facebook you could do this by having the ability for users to export all their photos, contacts and–gasp–their social graph!,” he writes. Okay, contacts is simple enough, but their social graph? What exactly does that mean? The connections you have with everyone else on Facebook? How exactly do you export that? And even if you do, where else do you import that to?

If it’s an XML file showing who you’re connected to, how would another service be able to use that? They’d have to be able to match names to names — assuming that those people were also on their service in the first place. And if it’s not for import into another service, what use would this be to the user? Just peace of mind?

Further, the picture export is interesting. For a long time, the major critique against Facebook was that it was a completely closed garden. What’s funny now is that in some regard, we’re hearing almost the exact opposite complaint. Pictures is a good example of this because you can (finally) allow other service to import your pictures (and more importantly, keep them for more than 24 hours) through the new Open Graph Protocol. Sure, this isn’t exactly a user-friendly export — but I’d actually argue that no user-export feature is user-friendly. All pump out XML files (or the like) that 99.9% of users have no idea what to do with.

Better would be if a third-party service built this exporter tool (which Calacanis does sort of allude to). But that again would bring up privacy issues. What data about your social graph should this tool be allowed to access and export? Your data is the obvious answer, but the social graph means grabbing at least some data from others as well.

Calacanis does note that “no more than 1% of users would ever use this feature” — that’s undoubtedly true — so it’s important to note just how complicated it would likely be for Facebook to offer this sort of export. Aside from pictures and contacts (again, simple enough), you have status updates, social game data, wall posts, videos, etc, etc, etc. And you have all of this for connections between the nearly 500 million Facebook users. If we think the Privacy settings are a nightmare (and they are), I can’t even begin to imagine what the export settings would look like. And how much work would this require Facebook to put in for a feature that basically no one would use?

It’s a nice thought, but I’m not sure how much more trustworthy this would make Facebook seem to the average user.

2. Support a common ‘Like’ standard

Okay, this obviously isn’t a new idea — in fact, it sprung up at the same time that Facebook’s Like button did. Here’s the problem with this: it sounds great in theory, but would it be great in practice? And further, while it may be nice if Facebook supported something like this, they are still a company with their own goals, so what’s the benefit of supporting it from their perspective?

Calacanis’ stance is obviously that the benefit of Facebook supporting this would be as a gesture of good will towards both the open community and the larger web community that they (according to him) have screwed over again and again. Okay, again, that’s a nice thought, but I’m not sure it outweighs the benefits of Facebook having its own product. As I see it, there are two key benefits to this:

1) Facebook gets all of the “like” data. This is the core of why a lot of critics hate the Like button, but it’s also the core of why Facebook is doing it. This information is valuable both because it helps Facebook’s stated goal to make the web “more connected”, and it allows Facebook to be the service that can be the best at doing that. And it’s also undoubtedly valuable from a monetization perspective. Facebook won’t yet say how such data will be used to serve up ads, but it likely will be in the same way that Google searches are. No one calls Google evil for doing this (or at least, that has died down over the years), so why can’t Facebook do it? Newly instated CTO, Bret Taylor, recently told VentureBeat the following about the Like button:

Let me clear something up. We are 100 percent focused on explicit data. We have pretty strict data retention policies. The implicit data is anonymized after 90 days. We use it to measure something called “like-through” rate so we understand how the buttons and plug-ins are used and how we can improve them.

2) Facebook can control the experience. If the Like button was an open standard, Facebook would have to wait for whatever standard body is overseeing it to make changes. Chris Saad had a great guest post on Mashable the other day about some of these issues. In it, he writes, “Facebook’s challenge, however, is that they are pioneering many of these interactions and can’t necessarily wait for standards to emerge or crystallize before acting.” While he doesn’t specifically mention the Like button, Saad undoubtedly wants to see Facebook adopt an open version — but he also wisely acknowledges that it may not be in their best interest to do so in the short term. And he points out that Facebook leading the way in new areas gives ideas for new open standards, such as OpenLike.

Calacanis goes on to say that Facebook should support the Like standard rather than “steal everyone’s ideas and incorporate them into your product and then make them closed,” but I’ll get to that in a second.

3. Do not require folks to use your currency

I’m not sure this would actually make Facebook “more trustworthy” at all. Calacanis says the service should allow “100 different currencies inside of Facebook“, but wouldn’t it seem more trustworthy to users if they had the one simple option that Facebook vouched for?

Calacanis uses a good portion of his post to heap praise on Apple CEO Steve Jobs, saying that Zuckerberg could learn a lot from him — but this one payment system rule is the exact same system Jobs has in place in the iTunes/iPhone/iPad ecosystem. In fact, I have no doubt that this movement to Facebook Credits is Zuckerberg learning from Jobs. Some techies bitch about Apple’s system being “closed” in this regard, but customers don’t. They like the simplicity. Can you imagine if developers were allowed to offer 100 different ways to pay for things through iTunes? Would that make the system more trustworthy? No, it would make it a lot less trustworthy.

I just don’t get this argument at all. This might make Facebook more trustworthy to third-party payment systems, but not really to anyone else. And further, the praise of Jobs in this post seems to directly go against much of the criticism against him in the post from last Summer that I responded to.

4. Remind users of their privacy setting

This idea Calacanis did pull directly from Steve Jobs. At the D Conference, Calacanis quotes Jobs as saying, “Privacy means people know what they are signing up for in plain English. Some people want to share more data. Ask them. Ask them every time. Let them know precisely what you are going to do with their data.” Calacanis takes that and says that Facebook should: “Require a dialogue box every 10 days or so that reminds users of the default status of their updates before posting them, and allow them to set their standard privacy setting in that dialogue box.” Setting aside the fact that this would annoy a huge percentage of those 500 million users to no end, that’s not exactly what Jobs was talking about.

Sure, Jobs played up Apple’s respect of user privacy in broad terms, but what he was actually referring to there was the sharing of location data. When you load up a new iPhone app, it prompts you if it’s going to use your location data (which you have to opt-in to). But for native apps, this setting is remembered (not brought up again every 10 days). Meanwhile, in Safari, each time you load an app that wants to use location data, there’s a prompt each time — and let me tell you, it’s annoying as hell to have to hit “Okay” each time.

Google is actually better than Apple at letting users know what each app does. Every time you install an app on Android, you’re alerted what it needs access to in order to fully function. Sure, you could argue that Android needs to do this since it doesn’t have the same locked-down App Store approval policies as Apple does, but it’s still worth noting that Apple isn’t quite as strong here and you may believe. And why not? Again, some of it is because of the App Store policies, but some of it is also because such prompts take away from the user experience.

Also, one application that does prompt you about your sharing of information every so often is Google’s Latitude. Because it’s running all the time in the background, every so often they send you an email to let you know it’s on, and to see if you’d like to turn it off. It’s a pretty good way of handling a controversial feature — but they key there is “feature” — it would be overkill for Facebook to do that for all of its privacy settings.

It’s also important to note that both of these Google and Apple “prompt” examples are about location. Facebook does not yet have a location feature. And you can be sure that the recent privacy flare-up is one of the reason they haven’t released anything yet.

5. Stop stealing every idea out there and partner!

This is an interesting point because (like point 3) it has absolutely nothing to do with the users. Users don’t care if Facebook is copying ideas from other startups. Most of them would have no idea. So I guess this is for Facebook to be more “trustworthy” within the startup community. But Calcanis’ argument breaks down quickly here.

In terms of stealing other features — Facebook absolutely has done this in the past. But to bring up Calacanis’ newfound hero again, Steve Jobs has a favorite Picasso quote on this. To which he adds, “we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”

Calacanis notes: “The proper protocol in the valley is to at least try and partner, or purchase, the startups who have innovated in a space you’re going into. It’s clear you have no intention of doing that, and hey, that’s your right!“

In my very first post for TechCrunch, I noted that Facebook was more or less copying FriendFeed, and that the Facebook you’d be using in the future would look exactly like it. What ended up happening? 4 months later, Facebook purchased FriendFeed.

Twitter is another company that Facebook has clearly been emulating. You may recall that Facebook tried very hard to buy them, but Twitter (probably wisely) wouldn’t sell.

In terms of partnering up with other startups, Facebook does seem to do this quite a bit. With video events, for example, they often use Ustream. For their own events, rather than selling their own tickets, they use Eventbrite.

So I’m just not sure about Facebook having “no intention” of partnering with or buying (even if only attempting to buy) other startups.

“That being said, no one trusts you any more after you screwed app developers and lifted Twitter, FourSquare, Quora and countless other startups’ innovations,” Calacanis writes. Twitter was already addressed, but Foursquare is an interesting one to bring up since, again, Facebook’s location features haven’t launched yet. That said, the indications are that Facebook will actually team up with services like Foursquare in some way to federate their check-ins. This again, is hardly smashing the competition.

As for Quora, it’s a product being built by ex-Facebook executives (not just your average new startup). And Facebook has already said (on Quora, no less) that it’s not trying to compete with Quora.

Attica! Attica! Attica!

Again, does Facebook have some privacy issues? Of course. But the real question we need to be asking ourselves is: why? Is it because the company and its CEO is evil and/or doesn’t give a shit about the users? I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: if you honestly believe that, quit Facebook immediately. Don’t blog about it, don’t tweet that you’re thinking of doing it, just do it and never look back.

Personally, I have a hard time believing that. I do not believe we’re in some old-school James Bond movie where villains do evil things just to be evil. Nor do I believe this some new-school James Bond movie where villains do evil things for money. Is Facebook trying to make money? Of course. But they’d have to be the dumbest company run by some of the smartest minds in the world to start doing evil things on purpose to make money and believe that is a long-term business strategy. Everyone would follow my advice above and the company would go under.

Some people (like Calacanis) think we’re seeing that now. But the fact of the matter is that despite a lot of hubbub in the tech media, most users don’t seem to be fleeing – just as they didn’t after the last flare up, and just as they didn’t the time before that. I wouldn’t be surprised if more people joined Facebook on Quit Facebook Day than actually quit. Instead, Facebook continues to grow at an expanding rate. The limiting factor there seems more likely to be the number of people on Earth rather than privacy concerns.

So if the company isn’t evil and/or does actually give a shit about its users, then why are we seeing these very real privacy issues? Because they’re trying to do something very difficult. Facebook is trying to move from a service where most of the data is some level of private (which again, many people used to bitch about), to a service where much of the data is shared. If you believe them, they’re doing it because this will be the future of the web.

Twitter has had this stance since their inception, so for them, there is no controversy. But considering Facebook’s more private history, the transition is rough (to say the least). This is a big, ballsy bet for them. But that’s how Facebook got to where it is today — by making big, ballsy bets.

And again, I don’t think it’s in the name of screwing over the users — remember: most have signed up in the past year and don’t have the same notions of privacy on the service as some of us long-time users may. And I also don’t think this bet is entirely about making money (though some of it is). I think that many people at Facebook actually believe the steps they’re taking to make the larger web more social will lead to a better web. (If they didn’t believe that, wouldn’t we see a lot of them quitting?) And we can all take comfort in the fact that if they’re wrong, history will shove them aside. But I actually think history is on their side here.

Calacanis can build cases against Apple and Facebook all he wants (and then later make a case for Apple against Facebook, or something), but the fact of the matter is that the masses aren’t with him here. Why? Either A: they clearly don’t think Apple or Facebook are evil or they wouldn’t support them the way that they are. Or B: they simply don’t give a shit. Or C: both. I’m tempted to go with C, but I’m going to go with A here.

And if that’s the case, screaming “Attica!” over and over again isn’t going to work. It’s just going to make you lose your voice.

Also, Lakers in 6.

[images: Warner Brothers]

Everyone seems to be against Mark Zuckerberg, founder/CEO of Facebook, lately.

Shel Israel says he should step down.

Market Watch’s Therese Poletti says he had a Nixon moment on stage at the AllThingsD Conference.

Jason Calacanis details what Zuckerberg should do to regain trust, all while noting that he imploded on stage at AllThingsD.

Even Steve Jobs was schooling Zuckerberg on privacy. More on Jobs later.

Heck, on this week’s Gillmor Gang, even +I+ was saying that Zuckerberg should put Sheryl Sandberg into the CEO role and should go and run R&D, basically agreeing with Shel Israel.

Part of me wants Mark to tell us all to go to hell and keep changing the world. He would be justified in having a Carol Bartz moment. After all, in his 26 years he’s done more than me or Calacanis TOGETHER will ever do. To detail:

1. He has — in less than seven years — created a company that has hired more than 1,000 people. How many other USA companies have hired 1,000 people in Silicon Valley in the past five years?
2. His company has been valued at many billions of dollars.
3. His company has created a platform that supports, among many companies, Zynga, which also has hired 800 employees (it’s only two years old) and my friends are throwing around valuations of billions for Zynga.
4. His company has 500 million people using it around the world and most love it a lot. My wife still is effusive with love over Facebook.

He’s done 100x more in his few years of running Facebook than Carol Bartz has AT ANY COMPANY! In her entire career! But she felt enough confidence to tell off Mike Arrington, on stage at his own conference, and telling him to “f*** off.” (that part comes at about 25 minutes into the video of Bartz on stage at Techcrunch Disrupt).

Zuckerberg, for some reason, doesn’t have that kind of personal confidence to clearly answer questions and also tell all of us to f*** off.

He should take some lessons from Bartz and have his own “Bartz moment.”

After all? How many people have I hired? 1? Israel? 0. Calcanis? 40? Even add Arrington’s 15 into the pile, it isn’t even a wart on the pile of people Zuckerberg has hired.

Have any of us changed the world the way Zuckerberg has? No. Not even close.

Have any of us caused Google to look at itself differently? No. Not even close (even Bartz hasn’t been able to do that).

Plus, he’s 26 years old. I’m not as smart or done as much and I’m 45 years old. Heck, add us all together, that’s more than 100 years of living more than Zuckerberg has and, yet, we haven’t accomplished nearly as much.

Heck, Calacanis has done such a poor job of being a CEO that he doesn’t even talk about HIS OWN COMPANY anymore. Zuckerberg should have just stared back at him and asked him “how’s Mahalo going again?”

OK, OK, now I’m going to tell you why Mark should still step down. Even though his answer to me SHOULD BE to “f*** off.”

1. Life is too short to do stuff you don’t like to do and it’s clear that Mark doesn’t like being the public face of Facebook. He doesn’t enjoy it. If he did, he would be happier on stage and wouldn’t be sweating. I’ve seen him up front and close and he’s far better when he starts talking geekery than when he is trying to represent Facebook’s business interests. I’ve recently turned down some pretty serious money to do something else because I wouldn’t enjoy it as much as what I’m doing now for Rackspace. This is something I ask myself every week or so. “Am I having fun?” If I’m not, I’m going to do something else. So should Zuckerberg. Not to mention Zuckerberg ALREADY has financial freedom I’ll never know in my life.

2. I’ve been studying Zuckerberg for a while and comparing notes with people who know him even better than me, like David Kilpatrick, who wrote an excellent book on Facebook, and it’s clear Zuckerberg has a vision for changing the world with social technologies. If we get his brain focused more on the technology side of things and less on the representing Facebook side of things I think we’ll win more. Do we really want Zuckerberg in front of Congress trying to convince politicians that Facebook isn’t evil? No. He has far more value to all of us focusing on the tech side of things, even though he’s hired very well and built a world-class organization that is disrupting Silicon Valley in a huge way.

3. My boss evaluates the job I’m doing every six months and we look at whether I’m doing more good or harm to Rackspace. I think Zuckerberg should do the same with his performance. Could he find a role that would let him use his skills in a better way? My report card of him? Hiring: A+. Mergers and Acquistions: A+. Technology leadership: A-. Execution: B+ (only because they could have gotten privacy right when they first shipped). Ability to sell: D-. Ability to positively affect perceptions: D-.

It’s clear to me where Mark has considerable skill. So why is he trying to do something he clearly isn’t having fun at? Just to get the experience? Or is there some other reason, like ambition and wanting to be the next Bill Gates? (Bill, by the way, has always sucked at public speaking and hasn’t been a loved character either, until recently when he started to save the world, so, again, why shouldn’t Zuckerberg tell us all to screw off?)

I come down to #1 the most. If Mark called me tonight and asked my opinion (he has not) I’d focus on that. Is he having fun? He sure doesn’t look like it. To me that would lead me to tell him to step down from CEO and take on a role that he’d have more fun with, like head of R&D.

But, if Mark was on the phone and I gave him that advice I’d be secretly hoping he’d tell me (and Calacanis and Israel and all the rest of the chattering masses) to screw off and have him go off and change the world again.

Oh, and back to Steve Jobs. If I were him I’d worry that I’ve lived without my iPhone for seven days so far and I haven’t missed having the crappy cell phone service from AT&T, not to mention I like having the extra features of the Android OS that aren’t yet available on the iPhone. Now, most of those features are rumored to show up on Monday but Steve should worry about AT&T. More and more of us are deciding to leave iPhones because of that (to me AT&T’s quality is worse than ANY of Zuckerberg’s privacy problems). Jobs should also worry about the kinds of anti-Apple stuff I’m hearing from developers lately, too. One developer just wrote me and told me his app hasn’t been approved for two months. How is THAT not worse than anything Zuckerberg has done to our privacy? Jobs should worry more about what his own company is doing rather than poking at Zuckerberg.

Privacy means people know what they are signing up for in plain English. Some people want to share more data. Ask them. Ask them every time. Let them know precisely what you are going to do with their data.

- Steve Jobs, at D8 conference (according to Jason Calacanis)

Early in his administration, President Obama vowed to open up government with more interactive online initiatives like Recovery.gov. Though some called his early efforts a "significant failure," Obama has pressed on with attempts to create transparency, including a memo earlier this year calling on government agencies to use challenges and prizes to promote open government. Today, it has been announced the U.S. General Services Administration has picked ChallengePost as its official platform to fulfill this need.

Sponsor

ChallengePost is a online marketplace for challenges that lets people donate money and offer solutions to various problems. The company has a strong group of VCs and angels providing support, including Jason Calacanis, Steve Wozniak, Betaworks and Rose Tech Ventures. ChallengePost has been used to run large scale competitions, such as the NYC BigApps challenge, which offered developers a prize for creating the most innovative apps leveraging New York's government data.

First Lady Michelle Obama, a leading advocate for eliminating the growing problem of childhood obesity, launched the Apps for Healthy Kids challenge earlier this year on the ChallengePost platform. The challenge offers "$60,000 in prizes to create innovative, fun and engaging software tools and games that encourage children directly or through their parents to make more nutritious food choices and be more physically active."

With this new government contract, ChallengePost will be the official platform on which challenges from government agencies like these are built. These open, crowdsourced challenges are valuable because they inspire innovation and creativity focused around a specific problem in the public interest. Whether it's helping kids discover healthy eating habits, or creating apps that help the public better access government data, ChallengePost and U.S. government will be hosting a number of challenges in the coming years to help promote open government.

"We're extremely excited to be working closely with the government, and to use challenges to help solve problems, generate ideas, and increase innovation," said ChallengePost CEO, Brandon Kessler.

Full government integration of the platform will being in July as agencies will then be able to post problems and invite the public to vote, pledge money and judge solutions. It's great to see the government making strong attempts to offer a more open and transparent system to the public, and with ChallenePost's help we may soon be seeing some innovative applications that leverage government resources.

It’s interesting that lots of people who really don’t like Facebook’s privacy don’t get mad when journalists and bloggers put into public view Steve Jobs’ emails to them.

Today I got an email from Mark Zuckerberg, CEO/founder of Facebook. I am not going to be the one to put that into public view until he gives me permission to.

Why not?

1. Mark is a friend. Someone I want to have a long-term relationship with and I can guarantee you that if someone took MY emails and put them into public view they wouldn’t be trusted as a real-life friend.
2. If I start doing that, other people will trust me less. Even if I didn’t care about what Mark thought of me, I do care what other people in the industry think of me and I want them to be free to send me emails without having them show up on my blog without their prior permission.
3. If he wanted it in public he could have answered me in public, there’s lots of ways to do that, including at http://facebook.com/scobleizer

That said, I asked for permission to put the email into public view because I think you all should have access to the information in it. I’ll let you know later.

What would you have done with an email if Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg emailed you?

It’s amazing to me that people who are speaking up about privacy and Facebook, like Jason Calacanis, Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis haven’t spoken out against having Steve Jobs’ emails taken out of a private context and printed in a public one.

If you don’t speak up for Steve Jobs’ privacy, what right do you have to speak up for your own privacy? Why isn’t that hypocritical? Just because CEOs are public figures and their emails contain information that would be of interest to the public?

Shame.

UPDATE: Zuckerberg gave me permission to print this email while I was typing this post:

Hey,

We’ve been listening to all the feedback and have been trying to distill it down to the key things we need to improve. I’d like to show an improved product rather than just talk about things we might do.

We’re going to be ready to start talking about some of the new things we’ve built this week. I want to make sure we get this stuff right this time.

I know we’ve made a bunch of mistakes, but my hope at the end of this is that the service ends up in a better place and that people understand that our intentions are in the right place and we respond to the feedback from the people we serve.

I hope we’ll get a chance to catch up in person sometime this week. Let me know if you have any thoughts for me before then.

Mark

Here’s a screen shot of the email string:

In a typical Jason Calacanis move today, the West coast based entrepreneur will delete his Facebook page live on the Internet. He has 22,969 fans. You’ll be able to watch it here. Jason announced this move today on his JasonNation newsletter, which replaced his regular blogging way back in 2008.

In a less typical move however, he has set up a newsletter list which now enables every one of his 23,286 members to reply to the entire list. Now, whether this was intentional or not is unknown.

So far only 6 members have replied to the whole list, perhaps because the majority are in the US, where most people are asleep right now. [Update, make that over 50 and counting]

But somehow I doubt turning JasonNation into a discussion list, rather than one where Jason’s sage words can simply be broadcast to an adoring fan base, was really in the plan. We’ve reached out to find out the truth.

Then again, perhaps the demise of Jason’s fan page is the perfect moment for the JasonNation discussion list? Though one or two might disagree (see below)

It’s clear you are having some PR issues with the changes you’ve made to Facebook.

Folks like Leo Laporte deleted their accounts. Jason Calacanis is making page view budgets because of these problems. Jeff Jarvis is taunting you on Twitter. People are posting your supposedly private texts from when you were a teenager (I don’t even know if those are real, but they are getting reported as if they are).

You can ignore these issues. They will go away, especially next week when Google gets aggressive at its I/O event and releases a ton of stuff that shifts the pundits attention back to Google’s real market power.

The ones you can’t ignore?

The common feeling that we can’t trust Facebook anymore.

See, I don’t have that problem. I never +did+ trust Facebook, especially after your systems deleted my account a couple of years back. I knew then that we were buying into a system that was not trustworthy. Or, at least, not trustworthy in the way we’ve come to trust software and companies in the past.

That said, I still use Facebook. Most of the people I’ve friended over the years are still using it. And I keep putting more data into it. 400+ million people do. And more, I bet, are coming every day.

Here’s what I would do:

1. Split Facebook into two pieces: one private, one public. We already sort of have that. My private Facebook account is at http://facebook.com/robertscoble while my public one is at http://facebook.com/scobleizer
2. Make the private piece much easier to understand and setup. The New York Times actually exposed something gone very wrong at Facebook: you have too many privacy settings and too many choices. Boil them down to a few choices.
3. Put a third party in charge of “verifying” that privacy settings actually work. For instance, I’m pretty sure you are getting bashed for privacy in some areas wrongly. But the market simply doesn’t believe you on privacy, so get someone who can verify for us that when you set something to be seen only by your mom that it, indeed, is only viewable by your mom.
4. Do a better job of explaining why you are putting more and more emphasis on the public part of Facebook. I know that you get a lot of cool new features when you share your life with people, but most people don’t understand that because most people have never lived in public view before. So, SHOW THEM and show them better than you have been to date. For instance, what happens if you click “like” on a restaurant on Yelp? What does that enable? Or, what happens when you listen to music on Pandora and let your friends see that?
5. Use video to explain what Facebook is. Video is harder to read, yes, but it’s more emotional and it’s easier for you to explain and show some of these features. It’s amazing to me that you haven’t been in the public view since you’ve made these announcements. Get onto Techcrunch TV. Have lunch with Kara Swisher and Om Malik Invite me over your house. Demonstrate that you are public yourself and willing to stand up for the changes you’ve made. VentureBeat is giving you some similar advice.

Or, well, you can just ignore them all. I don’t think it will slow down Facebook at all. Most of the people I’ve talked with really don’t care about this issue or have already figured out what they are going to do about it (I handled it by changing all my privacy settings to as public as possible, others by deleting their accounts, yet others, like my wife, carefully went through the privacy settings and changed them to what they wanted).

Anyway, good luck, I’ll be in Omaha interviewing Matt Mullenweg about the future of Wordpress at the Big Omaha conference and maybe I’ll ask him what his advice for you is.

It was announced today that the TC50 conference put on by Jason Calacanis and Mike Arrington is no more. This is a shame, but hardly surprising considering the personalities of both men. I attended two of these conferences and it was obvious who the driving force was. Jason. Outgoing, talkative, a leader, a mentor. Mike [...]

I give – I call.  I’m getting really tired over all the “I’m deleting my Facebook because they have gone corrupt” posts all over the place.  Some of the smartest minds in the industry (and those I respect most) are all doing it, even Leo Laporte, and it’s breaking my heart.  I don’t understand how any of these people can talk about Facebook with any grain of salt after this without some level of bias.  How can you talk legibly about Facebook from here on out if you’re not using the service?  How can you know how to compete properly if you’re not using your competitors’ products (ahem, Matt Cutts)?  How can you know whom to invest in unless you’re truly trying out all the biggest players in the game?  It doesn’t make sense to me.

Jason Calacanis wrote a scathing letter to his e-mail list today just ripping apart Mark Zuckerberg, coining a term I’m not sure I want to repeat here since it’s almost a curse word (okay, he coined the term, “Zucked”).  He called Zuckerberg a liar, a cheater, a backstabber, and even inferred he had Asperger’s-like tendencies (which anyone who has or knows someone with Asperger’s should be offended).  According to Calacanis:

“Zuckerberg represents the best and worst aspects of entrepreneurship.
His drive, skill and fearlessness are only matched by his long
record–recorded in lawsuit after lawsuit–of backstabbing, stealing
and cheating.”

I’ve heard elsewhere Zuckerberg compared to a Nazi, and other Facebook employees all “drinking the Kool-Aid” they were being served there.  I’ve been called names myself for supporting them.  I really feel bad for those at Facebook right now – quite honestly, as a company, despite their audience, they’re not that big!  Bullying them certainly isn’t going to help.

Let’s address the Zynga issue that Calacanis seems to be basing much of his letter on (the reason Calacanis calls Zuckerberg a liar and stealer).  As a Facebook developer myself, and having addressed, consulted and discussed with many very successful Facebook developers as both a consultant and author of Facebook development books (see the upper-right, and a Dummies book on the way), I’ve seen the pain of many, much more than just Zynga, that have been affected by what Calacanis is talking about.  Zynga is the last of the successful Facebook.com developers that managed to make millions by building applications on top of Facebook.com itself.  I know one  developer that went from 0 to 2 million users in just a couple weeks in the early days of Facebook.com – it was a mad GoldRush!

The problem, however is that none of these developers adapted.  Facebook gave them all the tools they needed to adapt and move outside the platform, and I’ve seen very few actually take Facebook up on that offer.  Facebook gave the hints that they were pushing in that direction and no one followed.  Zynga is just now realizing that as they build their own website – it’s the smart thing to do, and Facebook hasn’t abandoned them in the process.  Facebook, in fact, has pushed Zynga in that direction, offering tools, plugins, protocols, and many other ways of building outside the Facebook platform, while still enabling them to maintain their existing user base on Zynga.com itself.  Zynga’s finally doing the smart thing here, and Facebook wants that to happen!

The crazy thing here is Zynga probably has one of the closest relationships with Facebook of any Facebook developer I know.  Sure, Facebook is trying to make money off of what Zynga does in their own environment, but can you blame them?  It’s Facebook’s own environment.  They have every right to control their own IP, and every developer on the platform should know that by now – I’ve written about it many times.  Every company needs a core. I’m a little jealous of the relationship Zynga has built with Facebook though – there is no reason to feel bad for them.  And they’re now working on their own core as Facebook helps them through that process.  I don’t see anyone lying, cheating, or stealing from anyone here.  Is Facebook supposed to be giving their IP away?  I don’t get it.

Now let’s talk privacy.  Were you aware that Facebook actually gives users a chance to debate privacy policy changes when they go into place?  For every change to Facebook’s terms that goes into place, users have the opportunity to complain, react, and share their feelings in whatever manner they feel necessary about new changes put into place.  The November policy changes (which were probably the biggest recent change) were proposed here (if you really have problems with the Privacy changes you really should subscribe to the updates, that is, unless you’re no longer a Facebook user):

“Facebook has proposed an updated privacy policy. We encourage you to view the proposal and offer your comments here <http://www.facebook.com/fbsitegovernance?v=app_4949752878> by 12:00 PM PDT on November 5, 2009. For future policy updates, become a fan of the Facebook Site Governance Page.”

When this was proposed, users were overwhelmingly for the changes.  Comments were overwhelmingly in a positive tone, resulting in the changes being adopted.  Had users complained back then, the changes would not have gone into place.  This is actually the same process that got Beacon reversed.  New changes were again proposed on March 26, shortly before F8, when the OpenGraph initiative was announced.  Users again overwhelmingly supported the changes, and on April 22, the new changes were accepted.  It was on April 23 that Matt Cutts, and others deleted their Facebook accounts – I’m very curious if they even tried to make their concerns known on the Site Governance site.  It should also be noted that Facebook issued press releases for each of these proposed updates – Mashable covered it.  ReadWriteWeb covered it.  So did TechCrunch, in vivid detail.

So I don’t get it – Facebook is opening up more than they have ever before (despite these same people calling them a Walled Garden before).  They’re the only site out there with a policy in place that actually lets users vote on privacy and policy changes.  They’re the only site out there with the ability to provide any level of granularity towards privacy (did you know you can specify specific groups, exclude specific individuals and groups, and get very specific with exactly who sees your status updates on Facebook?  That’s only the beginning.).  Facebook seems to be making all the right moves, yet they’re Nazis.  They’re liars.  They’re cheaters.  They’re stealers.  All this doesn’t compute!  I don’t see Google doing any of this.  And talk about taking developers out of business – Google’s the biggest culprit of all!

I’m sorry Jason, but calling names isn’t how you win Poker either.  It’s time we start encouraging Facebook’s moves, hoping they continue this momentum to become more open.  It’s time we start educating users that they get to vote on this stuff before it goes live (which they did!).  It’s time we start helping to get the word out to users on what is private and what is not in their Facebook accounts now that the changes have gone into place.

I’m sorry, but I’m getting sick of all the bloggers and so-called “experts” complaining about this when they didn’t do anything to stop it in the first place.  This, especially, when we’re given so many options!  Right now they’re all starting to sound like a bunch of complainers to me.  Am I really the only one that sees this?  I feel like I’m the only one writing about it.  Maybe it’s time I fold, or is everyone else just bluffing?

A number of high-profile web industry leaders have quit Facebook this week, a turn of events that's sure to heat up conversation about the social network's perceived transgressions. Tonight leading video podcaster Leo Laporte announced that he's closed his Facebook account and made a financial donation in support of Diaspora, a project working to create an alternative social network outside of Facebook's control.

Laporte said he was convinced to make the move by a post written by entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, in which Calacanis called Facebook a "monster" and called for users to throw their support behind OpenID and advocates of distributed social networking as open as the internet. Calacanis to date has not canceled his own Facebook account.

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Earlier this week, uber-blogger Peter Rojas, co-founder of Engadget and Gizmodo, announced on Twitter that he has deactivated his Facebook account. "The issue," he said, "is that users should have real control over what is shared, that's all. FB keeps taking that away."

A search on Twitter for deactivated Facebook turns up a number of interesting thoughts from other people doing just that, though it's hardly a torrent of quitters in the face of more than 400 million Facebook users.

Deactivating or deleting your Facebook account is a fairly drastic step for a self-promoter to take, and it's not clear where these people were when OpenID and the movement for distributed social networking had their biggest pushes over the last several years. But now the chorus of Facebook critics is getting very loud.

What an Alternative Might Look Like

An ideal alternative would probably not be a single replacement social network, but the creation of an interoperable social networking protocol. That way multiple vendors would compete based on quality of service and would keep each other honest, while still allowing users of different services to message and subscribe to each other much like customers of different phone carriers can call each other.

That's many the ideal alternative many people have proposed to a near monopoly over mainstream social networking by Facebook. Of all the biggest 2nd-tier social networks currently online, Google Buzz is most in line with this vision of standards-based interoperability.

Arguing Privacy With Facebook

We've argued at length for months that Facebook is wrong about privacy. A thorough counter-argument is made on the New York Times today by Elliot Schrage, vice president for public policy at Facebook. Unfortunately, Mr. Schrage continues trying to frame the new changes as increased control for users and everything as opt-in (you chose to use the service, after all!).

Yesterday we posted about Google Suggest suggesting "How do I delete my Facebook account?" when a user began searching for the phrase "how do I," something that could indicate a substantial spike in searches for that query.

Have you deactivated (see Facebook's odd reaction) or deleted your Facebook account? If so, why? Do you think that some high profile users canceling their accounts will have an impact on other users or the company?

A few weeks ago was the Events Guide's one-year birthday - and while we don't know how many thousands of conferences, unconferences, seminars, summits and meetings we wrote about over the last year, we can say this: It was a heck of a lot. Year two of calendar goodness, coming right up.

How do you like your events guide? You can import individual events into Google Calendar using the link beside each entry, or download the entire thing as an iCal (and Google Calendar-importable) file, or even view it as a world map. Know of something cool taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.

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11 May 2010: Online

100 Things

100 Things: An online conference for entrepreneurs, start-ups and online marketers. 10 of the world's most successful internet startup founders sharing 100 powerful business secrets. Speakers include:

• Paul Graham: founding partner of Y Combinator
• Matt Mullenweg: founding developer of WordPress and founder of Automattic
• Joel Spolsky: founder of Fog Creek Software, which is the creator of FogBugz and Stack Overflow
• Kevin Rose: founder of digg
• Gary Vaynerchuk: New York Times bestselling author of Crush It!, creator of Winelibrary TV
• Jason Calacanis: founder and CEO of Mahalo.com, co-founder and CEO of Weblogs, Inc.
• Ben Huh: founder of I Can Has Cheezburger, CEO of the Cheezburger Network (FAIL Blog and GraphJam)
• Mike McDerment: founder and CEO of FreshBooks
• Jeff Veen: founding partner at Adaptive Path, founder of TypeKit
• Tim Ferriss: author of the New York Times best seller The 4-Hour Workweek
• plus more ...

11 May 2010: San Francisco, California

FinovateSpring

FinovateSpring 2010 will again showcase the most cutting-edge financial and banking technology innovations to Silicon Valley and the world. With Finovate's signature mix of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) from handpicked companies and intimate networking time with their executives, this conference packs a ton of unique value into a single day.

Come see the cutting edge of banking and financial technology and network with hundreds of the leading financial executives, venture capitalists, press, industry analysts, bloggers and fintech entrepreneurs. Early bird registration rates are available.

11 - 12 May 2010: Berlin, Germany

next conference 2010

Jointly organized by SinnerSchrader and STATION-Berlin, the next conference is one of the most important networking and trend conferences within the European Web industry.

We're expecting a hundred international speakers and up to 1,500 participants. Amongst them will be decision makers of the media, technology and advertising sector, agencies and service providers, investors and startups. It is the only conference that unites the Internet community with brands and leading companies. To learn about our success story, check out the websites of next06, next07, next08 and next09.

Please feel free to contact us for more information or support at next10@nextconf.eu!

12 - 13 May 2010: New York City

Creative unConference

If you have to sit at another conference and listen to another yammering fraud your head is going to explode. Right? Us too. That's why we're doing an unConference. No hype. No egos. No BS. Just smart people talking about the stuff they love. Either way, it's time to step up. You have something to say; we have a place for you to say it.

With two distinct tracks -- Digital Advertising and The Independent Agency Forum -- and near limitless potential for participant-generated sessions, the One Show Creative unConference offers a free-form, highly-interactive alternative to the usual conference. You tell us what you want to say. You tell us what you want to hear. You set the agenda. See who's coming.

Register now and save. Use promo code 54/creative to receive a 20% discount.

13 May 2010: Cape Town, South Africa

Net Prophet 2010 Conference

Taking place on 13 May, 2010 at the Old Mutual Business School in Pinelands, Cape Town, this is the second annual Net Prophet conference to be hosted by the RAMP Foundation, a non-profit entity created by the RAMP Group as a means for social investment within the local Internet based economy. After a very successful conference last year, where over 400 attendees tapped the minds of leading Internet experts and successful entrepreneurs, Net Prophet 2010 will build on the same format and anticipates on reaching many more people.

May 17 2010: San Francisco, California

SF MusicTech Summit

The SF MusicTech Summit will bring together 700-plus visionaries in the music/technology space - the best and brightest entrepreneurs, developers, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving music, business and technology ecosystem in a proactive, conducive-to-dealmaking environment. Enter the discount code "rww" to get 10% off.

18 May 2010: Silicon Valley, California

Founder Showcase

On Tuesday, May 18th, 10 companies elected by over 13,500 registered CEO Members of TheFunded.com will present to an audience of 200 investors, founders, and members of the press. A panel of experts will critique the pitches, and voting from those in attendance will determine the grand prize winner, who will receive $2,500 on the spot and a host of other prizes.

Founder Showcase guests will be treated to food and drinks, as well as informative talks by two leading Silicon Valley CEOs. There is also a networking and Pitch Table area for startups, service providers, and investors to convene. Previous investors that have attended include Charles River Ventures, JAFCO, Leapfrog, Polaris, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, First Round, Blue Run, and various angels. Over $250,000 has been raised by presenting companies that met investors at previous Founder Showcase events.

Use discount code "RWW" to get a 10% discount.

18 - 19 May 2010: Santa Clara, California

Social Media Strategies

Social Media Strategies is a conference on social business, social marketing, advertising and optimization. Social media technologies are fundamentally changing the sales, marketing and operations process. Business are leveraging social technologies to acquire, market, and communicate with customers. This conference features cutting edge topics, keynotes, workshops and discussions that provided strategic knowledge, insights and real world examples on how to successfully plan, implement and manage your organizations social media efforts to achieve your business goals.

Use the code "readwriteweb" when you register and get $100 off.

25 - 27 May 2010: Denver, Colorado

Glue

Glue is the only conference devoted solely to exploring the problem-sets facing architects, developers and IT professionals in a "post-cloud" world. Glue focuses on the APIs and protocols (Twitter, Facebook, Websockets, PubSubHubBub, XMPP), formats and standards (RDF/Linked Data, JSON, Microformats, HTML5), platforms and providers (Amazon, Rackspace, Google App Engine, Salesforce.com, Eucalyptus), Identity Protocols (OAuth/WRAP, SAML, OpenID, SPML) emerging NoSQL data models (Cassandra, CouchDB, MongoDB, Riak, HBase), and other mechanisms that are building the post-cloud world.

ReadWriteCloud will be blogging live from Gluecon and CloudCamp, and ReadWriteWeb's Alex Williams will be moderating the "Managing Complexity in the Cloud" session. Please join us May 25-27 in Denver, Colorado. ReadWriteWeb readers can receive 10% off of registration by using the code "RWW12".

27 - 28 May 2010: Beijing, China

Global Mobile Internet Conference

The Global Mobile Internet Conference is designed specifically for entrepreneurs, executives and influencers to understand and capitalize on the growing opportunities in mobile internet. Though focused on opportunities in Asia, much of the conference dialogue is intended to compare and trade best practices across borders, especially between the East and West. Around 1000 industry leaders from Asia, Europe and North America are expected to attend. The conference will be in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

28 May 2010: Beijing, China

Global Mobile Internet Conference - Innovation Show & Startup Competition

The Global Mobile Internet Conference Innovation Show intends to be a launch pad for innovative mobile internet startups from around the world. Innovation Show finalists will have the opportunity to present their company to an expected 1,000 investors, industry leaders, and press. Finalists will be judged by and receive feedback from a team of respected venture capitalists and angel investors. The judges will choose one company as the GMIC Innovation Show Winner. Startups must apply by April 4.

4 - 6 June 2010: Chicago, IL

Blogs with Balls 3

The bright future of sports media gathers for Blogs with Balls 3 in Chicago at the legendary Wrigley Field. This third installment of the conference focuses on sports and local media, the ever-changing face of traditional media, as well as all the ways that mobile and emerging technologies are changing the world of the sports fan (and the companies trying to reach him or her) today. Feature speakers from established players like ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo! Sports & The Sporting News and emerging blogging/podcasting personalities and sports new media entrepreneurs, not to mention former professional athletes who are bolstering their brand through digital.

Register before May 15 and save more than $50 off the full ticket price at blogswithballs3.eventbrite.com. Use discount code RWWxBWB

15 - 16 June 2010: New York City

Corporate Social Media Summit

The Corporate Social Media Summit is a two day conference focused exclusively on how big businesses can take advantage of social media to enhance their marketing/comms strategy. Featuring:

• Practical and relevant insights from peers who have already used social media successfully
• 20-plus corporate speakers (including PepsiCo, Whole Foods, Dell, McDonald's, General Motors, Citi, Johnson & Johnson),
• Best practice, benchmarks and practical next steps you can use to take advantage of social media in your business
• A tightly-focused agenda with 14 in-depth, practical workshops giving you knowledge on only the most critical business issues surrounding corporate use of social media

22 - 24 June 2010: Santa Clara, California

Now in its third year, Velocity - the Web Performance and Operations Conference from O'Reilly Media - is dedicated to helping people build a better Internet that is Fast by Default. Join hundreds of web developers and experts under one roof from June 22-24, 2010 in Santa Clara, CA Velocity packs a wealth of big ideas, know-how, and connections into three concentrated days. You'll be able to apply what you've learned immediately for high impact results and you'll come away prepared for what's ahead. O'Reilly Velocity 2010 is the premier conference dedicated to building industrial strength sites, at internet speed. Velocity">Register Now and save 25% with discount code "vel10rww".

29 - 30 June 2010: London

Cloud Computing World Forum

The 2nd annual Cloud Computing World Forum is the perfect event to learn and discuss the development, integration, adoption and future of cloud computing and SaaS. Building on the success of the 2009 show, this two day conference and free-to-attend exhibition will provide a focused platform for the global cloud and SaaS industry. Show highlights include:

• Co-located with CloudCamp London
• Co-located with Green IT conference
• Free-to-attend exhibition with seminar and scenario theatre
• Free-to-attend evening awards presentation
• Hear from leading case studies on how they have integrated cloud computing and SaaS into their working practices
• Learn from the key players offering cloud and SaaS services
• Evening networking party for all attendees

7 July 2010: Melbourne, Australia

Digital Sport Summit

Digital Sport Summit is Australia's premier sport and digital media event. Hear from social media pioneers who are changing the face of Australian sport. Learn how social media and mobile technology is taking fan engagement to a whole new level.

Speakers on the day will cover a variety of topics including:

• iPhone application development for sport
• Convincing management of the case for social media
• How to monetize social media
• Fantasy sports
• Social media from an athlete's perspective

With speakers representing Essendon Football Club, Cricket Victoria, Herald Sun, Football Federation Australia and more. Digital Sport Summit will take place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

5 October 2010: New York City

FinovateFall

FinovateFall will return to Manhattan on Tuesday, October 5 to showcase dozens of the biggest and most innovative new ideas in financial and banking technology from established leaders and hot young companies. The Fall event is the original and largest Finovate and features a single day packed with our special blend of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) and intimate networking time with top executives from the innovative demoing companies.

FinovateFall is a unique chance to see the future of finance and banking before your competition and find the edge you need in today's market. Early bird registration rates are available.

Download this entire events calendar in iCal format.

Posted to my email list yesterday.

I only post one out of every five email newsletters here, and I normally take them down after a while. If you want to get my newsletter and you can figure out to use LISTSRV software from 1994 visit http://www.jasonnation.com. By signing up for the newsletter you are agreeing to the Declaration of Calacanis.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Jason Calacanis
Date: Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 5:21 PM
Subject: Red, Jackson, Gen Y & Loyalty

Note: We setup a new, hopefully more reliable, server for Jason’s
mailing list. If you have had any issue signing up or being removed
(we’ve heard a handful of each) hit reply or send request to
unsubscribe@calacanis.com.

Note2: Going to try to get these out more regularly now that the baby
is sleeping through the night some nights.

——————————————

Tuesday night, around 10:30PM.

A dingy visitors locker room in the basement of the Staples Center
dressed with pipe and drape, hightop tables and a sad selection of
beverages. Kobe Bryant’s stunning wife sitting on a five-dollar
folding chair in the hallway wearing a wedding ring that is,
literally, covering half of her hand.

Twenty minutes after the Gen X Lakers held on for a win against the
energetic Gen-Y Oklahoma Thunder, the large-framed Jedi master–a six
foot Yoda–slowly shuffles into the room. Five or so VIPs who’ve
waited for the post-game press conference to end quickly turn silent
and direct their attention to the master.

A calming grin, “Hi, I’m Phil Jackson.”

With reverence, “Jason Calacanis–a real pleasure to meet you. Nice win.”

“Thanks. Those kids can block shots huh?”

“Oh yeah. One question, what was Bill Bradley like when you played
together on the Knicks?”

Fifteen minutes later, the question is answered at a level of detail
no one expected, and few probably comprehended. The master operates on
many levels–concurrently and unspoken.

The Knicks won their only two titles in 1970 and 1973, and when they
did, it was with a team of solid players, including Dave DeBusschere,
Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Dick Barnett, Phil Jackson and Bill
Bradley. Bill Bradley famously went on to become a senator, but I’ve
had the privilege of eating dinner or lunch with him once or twice a
year for the past four years. (He works with Allen & Company, which
has an investment in my company).

Bill and Phil both played for the legendary Red Holzman, the coach of
those championship teams and a mentor to Jackson.  Red was from
Brookly,n and he was known for getting the best out of his players by
developing one-on-one relationships and treating each person as an
individual. He was blunt and he was fiery. He was infamous for,
allegedly, punching a fan squarely in face who came at him.

Red let players make their own decisions on the court, but demanded
they play right and as a team. Red created the concept of “hit the
open man.” Basically, get the ball to the person who was open–doesn’t
matter who.

He was fiercely loyal to his people and hated by opponents–by design.

Compare that to the self-centered “I need to get mine” NBA of today,
where superstars try to take three players on at once just so they can
fill out their stat line and perhaps get a highlight feature on
SportsCenter. Oh yeah, doesn’t hurt to pump your stat line when
everyone’s playing for their next contract. I suspect that the reason
Phil Jackson is always a year away from retirement is somehow related
to this trend.

You get old, the world changes and–at least here in the US–character
devolves.

We live in a decaying empire and if you want to know what’s killing
us, it’s not the Chinese, bankers or politicians–it’s the trophy
generation. Not all of Gen Y, you can never paint with that wide of a
brush, but the majority of them seem to lack killer instinct but have
excel at entitlement.

Can our lot surprise us when the default has shifted from sacrifice
and drive to entitlement?

You’ve Got Mail!
===============
An email with the subject line every CEO loathes: Resignation.

Ugh.

Another promising Gen Y-er leaves after one year and a couple of days,
shockingly right on time to vest their first cliff of stock options
(25%). Via email? At nearly midnight? To go to a 15-year-old
competitor that we’re trying to crush?

No “hey boss…” discussion? No “I know it’s unprofessional to leave
after 12 months, but I feel this is an important career move. Can I
explain my thinking?”

CEOs and founders understand that folks leave, but that discussion is
customary. A late-night resignation email isn’t appropriate. The most
frustrating part is not losing a great person–which happens–but
rather watching someone with promise set their career back five years
in order to have their salary jump ahead by three years.

Trading massive advancement to pop your salary, is a career move I
could never understand. Back in the day when I was employable I would
never have made that trade off–instead I cultivated my network.
Nothing puts me on tilt like talented young people trading long-term
rewards and career development for short-term greed and negative
expectations.

“Congratulations on being employee 4,235 at a dying company” was the
most I could muster as an e-mail response while parked at a light,
getting on the 10 freeway. Oh yeah, today was your last day. And since
you’re going to a competitor, please don’t show up at the office.

Right after I hit send I had that familiar moment: “did I really just
say that?”

It’s not easy being me. I’ve got a version of tourette’s where instead
of yelling obscenities at inappropriate times, I say something
brutally honest without regard to my reputation or the other person’s
feelings. There’s no reason to make the kid feel bad on the way out
when I could have just said “Good luck, we will miss you greatly!”

What’s the benefit of telling people how you really feel when the
result of doing so only results in unpleasantness?

C’est la vie. No one is perfect. We all have flaws and the best we can
hope for is that our virtues outweigh them right?

Oh, it turns out my response is now on your blog, Hacker News and TechCrunch.

Great.

I wonder if there is any lemonade to be made out of these lemons?
Let’s try shall we?

Background on my Gen Y Rant
===============
My belief is that one third of Gen Y kicks ass. I meet these folks at
TechCrunch50, Open Angel Forum and on This Week in Startups all the
time. I love them. They inspire me and give me hope.

However, the majority of Gen Y seem to operating under the bizarre
rallying cry of: More money! Less responsibility! Shorter hours! No
stress! More freedom! It’s all about me!

It’s so obvious to me why our country is spiraling like a regional jet
piloted by a $9 an hour, 20 year-old pilot with under 1,000 hours of
flight time.

Red and Phil wouldn’t tolerate it and neither do I. If you put
yourself above the team, you’re out. If you think your “get” is more
important than the team’s, you’re out.

If you leave after a year, you don’t get a ticker-tape parade and you
don’t get celebrated. It’s not always about you and your karaoke going
away party–after 90 days! (really? 90 days and you host your own
going away party? lame.)

… but moving on.

How to resign
===============
Since we’re on the subject of how to do something uncomfortable like
resigning, here is my road map.

1. If things are going well at the company, and you’re learning and
developing, you should stay three years–at least. There is no reason
to jump ship if you’re learning and enjoying your time at a company.

2. If you’re not learning, enjoying yourself or developing, you
probably shouldn’t stay in a company. On that, I think we all agree.

3. Ask your boss if you can take 10 minutes of her time to speak in
private. If your boss is busy, ask their admin if you can get on the
schedule and say that it is urgent.

4. Tell your boss everything truthfully. Tell them why you’re leaving,
where you’re going and what you’ve loved about working at the company.
If they ask, tell them what you think could be improved.

5. If you would rather stay at your company, but need to make more
money, be straight with your boss and let them know you would like
them to match, or come closer to a competing offer.

6. Don’t post correspondence of any private discussions with your boss
on the Web. That’s not good for anyone–even though it’s highly
entertaining for many.

Here is a basic script for a situation where you absolutely want to leave a job:

“Boss, this is hard for me to say, so I’m going to just come out and
say it: I’m resigning today. Don’t worry, I will give you as much time
as you need to transition–within reason. It’s not personal, but I
really want to take on this challenge at company TKTK. I understand if
you don’t want me here in the office as a distraction to the rest of
the team. Please let me know how I can help us all have a really
smooth transition.”

Here is a basic script for the situation where you would rather stay,
but need for some things to change in order to do so:

“Thanks for taking the time to talk to me today, Boss. I wanted to let
you know that I’m considering leaving the company and have received a
compelling offer at company TKTK. However, I would much rather stay
here if a couple of small things could change. Would you like to hear
what those things are?”

If you say that script to almost any boss–including a fiery one like
myself–they have no choice but to be reasonable. They may be upset at
losing you, but they can’t really be upset at you. Every year, I have
five people come to me with one of these two scripts. In every case,
the person leaves on good terms or we figure out a way to make it
work. Generally speaking, 3/5 leave and 2/5 stay.

The Value of Loyalty
================
What you gain by dedicating yourself to a company, leader or project
for three or four years is much greater than what you give up, more
often than not. Again, if the company is not a fit, or you’re not
learning and growing, than no one would expect you to stay. We’re
talking about the value of staying at a good company with good people.

Loyalty is “trust + time,” and as you get older you value loyalty more.

Since this is the case, it’s good to start your career by being loyal
to the more senior folks around you. This makes them want to help you;
not just now, but for the rest of your life. Older people, especially
successful ones, are suckers for helping young people. It’s a trait
based in equal parts narcissism (i.e. “I see myself in him” and “I
discovered her”) and sentimentality (“we’ve been together and seen a
lot, huh, Tyler?”).

As a young person, you should work the loyalty angle. Keep in touch
with your former bosses and take them to lunch or dinner whenever you
can. This gratitude exercise will do more for you than it will them.
Trust me, I know, because I take my first boss out to dinner three or
four times a year, whenever I’m in New York City.

One of the best advantages our society and economy has is our
free-flowing talent marketplace and the fact that companies can reboot
or pivot at any time (within some basic constraints). We don’t want to
lose that, but we don’t want to reward and build a culture of job
hopping–it’s dysfunctional and short term.

Mark Suster did a really good blog post about why he doesn’t hire job
hoppers if you want another perspective on the same issue:
http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/04/22/never-hire-job-hoppers-never-they-make-terrible-employees/

My Loyalty Pledge
===============
I’ve never outlined how important loyalty is to me explicitly, but
since I’m involved with so many companies and projects today, perhaps
it would be beneficial to outline exactly what I’m willing to do–and
have done–for my peeps. “My peeps/people” being defined as partners,
investors, bosses and employees.

I realize it is absurd to outline in detail what loyalty will earn
from me, but I never thought the average expected employment period
would drop from four years to one! Then again, people gave my
generation a hard time about “only” working at a company for four
years! I know, it’s hard some people to believe but I remember many
people in the 90s questioning two, three and four year stints, saying
“why did you only stay three years?”

There is tremendous upside in being loyal and I’m going to outline it
for folks. If you are thinking about working with my it’s a FANTASTIC
deal provided you’re hard working, loyal and resilent. If you’re not
hard working please, for the love of God, do not apply for a job with
me. I have an insane work ethic that is modeled after watching my
mother work three jobs to put three boys through private Catholic high
school.

Every work day of my life I’ve tried to work half as hard as she did
and on some I actually did so.

If you put in at least three solid years for me here is what I’m
willing to do for you:

1. Have a meal or cup of coffee with you at any time to discuss your
career or help you brainstorm you next company.
2. Introduce you to anyone I know with a sterling endorsement (if you
lasted three years working for me, then by default you are awesome).
3. Help you find a job at any company in my Rolodex.
4. Mentor you when you start your own company.
5. Introduce you to venture capitalist or angel investors.
6. Help you prepare yourself for being at TechCrunch50, Open Angel
Forum or any other event I run.
7. Be an advisor or possibly on your board of directors if you wanted
me to (provided it’s a fit).

This is just a high-level snapshot. I’m sure there are dozens and
dozens of things that people have done for me and that I’ve done for
them that don’t fall into these bullet points.

If you want examples of this, I can show you many.

1. Brian Alvey worked for me at my first company, Silicon Alley
Reporter. He was my full partner at my second company, Weblogs
Inc.–which I BEGGED him to do with me. When he was looking to start
his own firm, CrowdFusion, I did everything I could to support him,
including introducing him to at least 20+ investors.

2. Peter Rojas and Ryan Block worked with me at Weblogs Inc., building
Engadget. I told them that the second they figured out what their
startup would be, I would a) invest and b) tell everyone I knew that
they should invest. I also offered to be on their board of directors
if they wanted. I’m happy to report that I’ve participated in both
rounds of funding for their company and that I’m on their board. Any
chance I get, I tweet, retweet and promote their amazing product. I’ve
set up meetings with companies outside the US to try and get them
partnerships, and told sponsors that they HAVE TO support GDGT because
it’s such an amazing product.

3. Shawn Gold worked with me  at Weblogs Inc. and was a huge piece of
our success. When he was building out CoCoDot, I did everything I
could to support him, including acting as a reference for due
diligence from his impressive investor list.

4. The companies from the three years of TechCrunch50 are all on my
support list. I will tweet any new product update or future company
they are involved with. I will help them find financing and I’ve even
invested in one of them recently.

5. Brian, Peter, Ryan and Shawn from the first three examples above
have all been on my show, This Week in Startups.

6. Mark Jeffrey was the CTO of Mahalo for three years and I’m happy to
say Kevin Pollak and I made him a full partner and CEO of my latest
company, This Week In Studios (www.thisweekin.com). I wasn’t upset
when he told me he was looking for a new challenge after three loyal
years at Mahalo. In fact, I thought “gee, what gig can we get you next
to make you even more successful?”

7. Jason Krute has been my loyal assistant and operations manager for
over three years. He’s carried my bags, gotten me mochas and crawled
under desks to rerun cables all night long at TechCrunch50 in order to
keep the Jason show on track. I’m happy to announce that he’s just
become the GM of my other new organization: Open Angel Forum
(www.openangelforum). He’s running it!

8. Whenever anyone attacked Mike Arrington over the past three years,
they heard from me. Any criticism of Arrington in my presence or on
the Interwebs was met with a quick and decisive response from me. I
didn’t need to know the facts; I was automatically on Mike’s side.

I’m old, I’m sentimental and I value–maybe even overvalue–loyalty.
Take advantage of it! That’s the smart thing for young folks to do!
Invest in crushing it for your boss today, and have them in your camp
for life!

There is NOTHING I wouldn’t do for the people who have helped me get
where I am today and who are helping me build my current crop of
projects. The reason to work hard is to build great things and share
that success with your friends and family! You can’t do this by job
flipping.

For the current crop of team members at my companies, you can know
that my pledge to you is one of undying support, provided you put in
your time and effort. Three years is a small price to pay for having
me in your corner the rest of your life.

Bottom line: If you’re a flake I won’t even remember your name, but if
you’re loyal I will sing it in praise from on high.

It may not be your philosophy, but it’s mine and it’s worked really well for me.

Red Holzman was intense and he had as many detractors at times as he
did supporters at times. However, his undying love and loyalty for his
people–and the time he took to help develop them–is what defined
him.

You could easily write a book filled with criticisms of Red, but you
would fill a library of books commenting on his virtues.

Good luck peeps.

best, Jason

Questions (answer any, all or none):
==============================
1. Who are the flawed leaders you admire most and why?
2. What are the pros and cons to the world view I’ve outlined?
3. Compare and contrast the leadership styles of the Phil Jackson and
Red Holzman. Do you have a preference? Why?
4. What would you like me to write about next?
5. How would you define loyalty?
6. Did you get this? I moved to a new email system and I’m not sure if
anyone is getting this.
7. Is the Gen Y issue real or all in my head?

———————
To subscribe/unsubscribe visit: http://jasonnation.com or email
unsubscribe@calacanis.com

sent from sunny Santa Monica with love

Jason McCabe Calacanis
Mahalo.com
902 Colorado Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90401

There are two sides to every story, but this email exchange between Mahalo founder and CEO Jason Calacanis and one of his (now former) employees is a lesson in how not to handle a resignation.

Jason says this was a private exchange and that he was just being honest with Evan. Evan says Jason can’t control his emotions.

If you’re going to trash your employee, do it verbally so that there isn’t a record of it on the Internet later. Or, don’t trash them at all and organize drinks with the team to see them off so that the rest of your employees know you care. Read from the bottom up.

April 20, 2010

Resignation

Jason Calacanis at his finest.

I should note, that instead of responding, he instead removed my email account. Real pro of him. Good thing I forwarded it to myself first :P

Begin forwarded message:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Evan Culver
Date: Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 10:53 PM
Subject: Re: Resignation
To: jason@calacanis.com

Really?

What is your deal? I will ultimately *have* to come back to Mahalo to pick up my things. Why so rash, what is your rationale? This seems really unprofessional and when other developers and employees see this, it just makes them want to leave ASAP. Is it really that big of a deal that people find better things for them than Mahalo?

On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 10:19 PM, wrote:

Evan,

Don’t come back to the office, do not email the team list.

Elliot will send you paperwork tomorrow. Today was your last day.

Good luck being employee 4,367 at a dying company.

Horribly disappointed in you.

J

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

From: Evan Culver
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2010 21:48:37 -0700
To: Jason Calacanis; Jacob Burch; Jeff Ammons
Subject: Resignation

Hey guys,

This isn’t an easy email to write, but as the subject suggests, this email is to inform you of my resignation from Mahalo effective in 2 weeks. An amazing opportunity came out of nowhere that I just couldn’t say no to. I’ll be writing code as a UI engineer at and contributing to the open-source project on a full-time basis.

I’ve never worked with such a great team and learned so much in such a short period of time. I owe all of it to the opportunity you’ve given me, Jason and I thank you immensely for that. Jeff and Jacob, you guys are amazingly brave for tackling such a great undertaking. I’m impressed you do it with seemingly such ease. Many people would fail quickly in your shoes and I applaud you for your leadership in such a fast-paced environment and against such great odds.

I certainly won’t be going far (), so I hope to continue a lasting relationship and hope that we all can work together sometime in the future.

Thanks again,

Would you pay to have your tweets show up in a Twitter search for keywords? That’s what Bill Gross, a veteran of paid search advertising and founder of tech incubator Idealab, believes, and he’s launched his new TweetUp tweet search engine to prove it.

The idea behind TweetUp, which launched today, is simple: if you want to build your Twitter following for a particular niche, bid on keywords in your tweets to get better noticed in searches. There will also be algorithms in place to serve up the most relevant tweets for a search. Factors include popularity and the influence of a user; e.g., ratio of number of retweets to followers, as well as previous topic-specific tweeting).

Paying to show up in search results presumably benefits Twitter users who want to get recognized as experts on various topics. Current sponsored tweeters include Al Gore, Ariana Huffington, Richard Branson, and others. Current bidding on keywords is currently anywhere from a few cents to a dollar. Select Web site publishers are also monetizing TweetUp by integrating search results on their site. The revenue split in this case is 50/50.

Current investors in TweetUp include Idex Ventures, betaworks, Revolution LLC, First Round Capital, Jason Calacanis and Jeff Jarvis, with funds totalling US$3.5M. The company currently has ten employees. Gross is credited with the idea of paid search, via his Goto.com site, launched in 1999, which later became Overture Services and was purchased by Yahoo. (Note: at least one other search engine, created by Open Text Corp., mixed in paid listings as early as circa 2006.)

As interesting as this concept is, do you think tweets, with their 140 characters, contain enough information to warrant establishing your authority on a topic, let alone paying for others to know that? If you do, signup and take advantage of their free $100 account for the first 1,000 users.

Just as Twitter finally prepares to announce its plans to make money–after what has seemed an eternity–the man who was responsible for the invention of paid search is beating it to the potentially profitable punch and without the microblogging site’s involvement.

Armed with $3.5 million in venture funding from a group of leading investors, well-known entrepreneur Bill Gross is launching a public beta of TweetUp, a keyword-based bidding marketplace akin to Overture/Goto.com, the first paid search system he created a decade ago.

Gross will be the CEO of TweetUp, which will also offer an organic search service to surface the best tweets, a move that seems to put it into competition with Twitter’s own search service.

This come just as Twitter is aggressively moving to take over key parts of its ecosystem, which has largely been left to third-party developers.

TweetUp could now give these developers a chance to make money on Twitter without relying on Twitter.

TweetUp is backed by Index Ventures, betaworks, Revolution LLC, First Round Capital, as well as other investors, including Mahalo’s Jason Calacanis and BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis.

And TweetUp has struck a number of distribution deals with well-known Twitter search clients and Web sites–such as Seesmic, Answers.com and others–and will pay them half of its revenues.

Gross has been working on the service since February at his Idealab start-up incubator in Pasadena, Calif.

He said he got the idea after he was struck by how hard it was to sort through good tweets from the TED conference, as well as how quickly a more substantive tweet he did related to the global climate change event disappeared as more recent real-time ones replaced it.

Said TweetUp in a press release about its system:

“In addition to an algorithm that combines a variety of factors to determine relevance, tweeters can bid on keywords in a competitive marketplace very similar to what now occurs at Internet search engines. This sophisticated combination of factors pushes the best tweets to the top of the results of users’ searches, allowing them to find the most compelling tweeters, and it enables serious tweeters to expand their following quickly and cost-effectively. TweetUp search will work alongside Twitter’s traditional search to provide a richer array of results.”

Twitter is also making several moves to monetize itself of late too, with most expecting an advertising system to be announced soon.

It has also been adding to its tools, which is in direct conflict with outside developers. On Friday, for example, it announced it was purchasing Tweetie, maker of a popular Apple (AAPL) iPhone client for the messaging service.

The start-up has traditionally relied on third-party developers to build apps for the service, much as Facebook did at its start.

But Twitter management and key investors have recently been signaling that the company would be taking over key aspects of its business. This has caused tensions, obviously, in the wider Twitter ecosystem.

Thus, it will be interesting to watch how Twitter reacts to what Gross is doing with TweetUp.

(BoomTown also did an exclusive video with Gross about it all, which is posted here, as well as a tour of Idealab.)

Here’s a few screenshots of TweetUp (click on the images to make them larger):

TweetUp Client

Answers.com

Business Insider

Business Insider Search #1

Business Insider Search #2

And here’s the official press release from TweetUp:

TweetUp Establishes Twitter Marketplace Where the Best Tweeters Rise to the Top

Unique Combination of a Relevance Algorithm and Bidding System Increases Number of Followers and Improves the Quality of Twitter Searches

PASADENA, CA–APRIL 12, 2010–TweetUp, Inc., announced today a new Twitter marketplace designed to showcase the world’s best tweeters and enable them to grow a highly targeted following. TweetUp is a new patent-pending platform that combines the popularity, relevance and
influence of tweets and tweeters with a bid-based marketplace. Major partners, including leading Twitter search clients and top web sites, will display the results, enabling users to easily find the best tweets and tweeters in the world.

TweetUp was founded by Bill Gross at Idealab, where he also devised the first model for paid internet search, Overture/Goto.com, over a decade ago. TweetUp is backed by Index Ventures (investor in Skype, last.fm, Myheritage and Playfish), betaworks (investor in Twitter, TweetDeck,
Bit.ly), Revolution LLC (founded by Steve Case, investor in Zipcar, LivingSocial, Everyday Health),

First Round Capital (investor in Mint.com, StumbleUpon, CoTweet), Jason Calacanis (founder of Mahalo) and Jeff Jarvis (founder of BuzzMachine).

“Twitter has such tremendous potential as a real-time information network far beyond what has been realized to date,” said Bill Gross, Founder and CEO of TweetUp. “For most people, though, 80% or more of the tweets that fly by them when they’re searching for something are useless noise. For serious tweeters, the task of attracting interested and relevant followers is equally daunting. TweetUp will change all of that.”

TweetUp has addressed the needs of both users and tweeters in a single search mechanism. In addition to an algorithm that combines a variety of factors to determine relevance, tweeters can bid on keywords in a competitive marketplace very similar to what now occurs at Internet search
engines. This sophisticated combination of factors pushes the best tweets to the top of the results of users’ searches, allowing them to find the most compelling tweeters, and it enables serious tweeters to expand their following quickly and cost-effectively. TweetUp search will work alongside Twitter’s traditional search to provide a richer array of results.

Danny Rimer, a partner with Index Ventures, TweetUp’s lead investor, said, “TweetUp is an opportunity to bring real-time information to the entire Web, and to do it in a way that creates value for everyone concerned. We feel that TweetUp can dramatically improve both the utility and ubiquity of Twitter, and in doing so build a monetization mechanism for real-time search that rivals that of traditional Internet search.”

TweetUp’s search results will be available to hundreds of millions of individuals through revenue-sharing distribution agreements with leading Twitter clients, including one of the leading multi-platform clients, Seesmic, one of the leading Android clients, Twidroid, the leading source of
tweets, TwitterFeed, and the leading social media authority and influence ranking system, Klout, as well as popular web sites including BusinessInsider.com, Answers.com, and PopURLs.

Together, these clients and web sites will bring TweetUp search results to more than 40 million unique users per month and serve more than half a billion impressions per month.

“We believe that the impact of the real-time web, and of Twitter in particular, has only just begun,” explains John Borthwick of betaworks, a major investor in TweetUp as well as in TweetDeck and Bit.ly. “Because TweetUp will be accessed on mainstream websites across the world, Twitter will be introduced to hundreds of millions of new people. Furthermore, these new users will experience thoughtful tweets, in context, targeted to them according to their areas of interest, and delivered from serious tweeters who care about building a passionate audience.”

“When we created AOL 25 years ago, we believed in the power of community and built a significant company around it,” said Steve Case, AOL co-founder and founder of Revolution LLC. “Twitter is proving the power of community continues to thrive, and I am excited to be backing Bill Gross and TweetUp as they innovate in the social media space by making Twitter more useful to a mainstream audience.”

With today’s announcement, TweetUp launches a public beta period in which tweeters can open an account and begin adding search keywords to their profile. For the first 1000 who sign up, the company is providing a $100 in credits to allow tweeters to see how TweetUp’s network can improve their standing in search results and attract more followers.

About TweetUp

TweetUp (www.tweetup.com) is a product of Idealab (www.idealab.com), where Bill Gross also devised the first model for paid internet search, Overture/Goto.com, over a decade ago. Then, like now, the goal was creating a business model that would both improve the relevance of search results and enable a steady revenue stream for publishers. Today, the amount of noise in the Twitter feed is crying out for a similar solution, and TweetUp was formed to provide it.