Zuckerberg, we’re told, lives in perpetual anxiety, preoccupied by the fear of Facebook losing its place, terrified that youngsters will get their social networking fix from other services. That fear served as the catalyst behind his decision to buy Instagram and keep it out of the hands of a cross-town competitor.
Paranoia is by definition irrational. I don't see this ending well.
This is a very good thing inside a company who can only grow through innovation. Imagine Zuck starting to become laid back and happy about what he has achieved.
Facebook would be obsolet within 1-2 years. He has to be on the lookout all the time to kill threats to his company whenever he can.
You can't innovate through fear - it kills creativity. When you're afraid, you tend to get tunnel vision and can't see beyond the threats, and everything you make becomes a derivative of them.
To the extent that Google manages to innovate (and we don't always - we've caught a lot of flack for that lately), I suspect it's because of the layer of middle-management whose only job is to stand between the paranoia of the executives and the creativity of the engineers & PMs. Well-functioning teams here always seem to have a strong leader that basically takes all the shit from above and lets only the high-level direction from the executives reach the engineers, filtering out all the fear and capricious whims.
terrified that youngsters will get their social networking fix from other services.
The thing is, this is all but guaranteed to happen. I would say that history has shown us that Internet users tend to be fairly fickle, and that mass migrations away from specific sites (like Facebook) are fairly inevitable. In fact, I'm surprised Facebook has remained as dominant as it has to this point. But I'd still bet that a sea-change will happen sooner than later and that Facebook will be the next site to be abandoned en-masse.
To be fair, there's no precedent for any network the size or scale of Facebook's.
It's not really just a site, it's a world. And the Facebook identity now extends beyond the walled garden. With Facebook Authentification, it's more like our online passport.
> And the Facebook identity now extends beyond the walled garden. With Facebook Authentification, it's more like our online passport.
I can't remember any website that _required_ Facebook to log in, except maybe weekend hacks were other login methods were added later one.
The online world may still have some freedom :)
Like superted mentioned - Spotify is one example. There's plenty more. A friend of mine is building LikeBright.com - it's a unique concept for a dating app that exists as a layer on top of the Facebook.
FB auth is obviously a huge part of Facebook's extension beyond their walled garden, but there's plenty more examples. The fan-page widgets for social proof, Facebook Comments for publishers, and like-buttons are all areas of integration that solidify Facebook's lead.
It's not just a site, and it's growing into being more than just a platform. Already, Facebook's certainly beyond anything any historical precedents have set before.
I think there's a history there where certain social/discussion/sharing sites/systems are popular, for a while, they peak, then the next cooler thing comes along and the masses move on. Yes Facebook has hit the highest peak to date. But that doesn't mean it will last. When Zuck started it was the small cool elite site for Hardvardies. Now there's a lot of Moms and Uncle Bobs on there, the masses, dorks, rednecks, coworkers, bosses, and precisely because Facebook has violated user's trust a few times, and spread it's Auth system and Like buttons everywhere, a growing sense of distrust and avoidance towards it, precisely because you don't want Facebook knowing everything you do, or risk having the Moms and Uncle Bobs find out, coworkers, bosses, etc. Popularity is a double-edged sword: if you get it virally over just a few years you can lose it virally just as well. Now I do think Instagram was massively overvalued based purely on objective evidence to date. But I do understand how Zuck could fear it, based on future possibilities, and priced it based on fear. He knows how quickly Facebook's success came to him. He knows how quickly it might have come to Instagram. And arguably, past a billion or two in the bank, it's all just play money.
It didn't end so well for Bill Gates personally (or Microsoft), though one could argue tech as a whole suffered since the spreading of the same paranoia is likely bad. This article reminded me of an aside from Naggum ( http://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3141310154691952@naggum.... ) though since the same behavior happens so often it's hard to say whether the instances inspire further instances or if it's just something about human nature (Dvorak mentioning youth). The Naggum quote:
"but of course, Lisp isn't dying -- it's just that if you think in terms
of the imminent end of the world, _everything_ is soon food for the great
garbage collector in the sky and whoever is not scrambling in panic looks
like they aren't moving and have been passed by or are dying.
"the problem I see is not that Bill Gates has shaped the world of useless
trinkets in software, but has also managed to spread his competitiveness
and his personal fear of losing to imaginary competitors to businesses
and homes everywhere, so now everybody is _afraid_ of losing some battle
which isn't happening, instead of getting about their own lives. like,
if you aren't using today's fad language in the very latest version of
the IDE, you'll be left behind. aaaugh! but it's good that some people
run like they are scared out of their wits. if they suddenly disappear
over the edge of a cliff, a good number of people will notice in time and _not_ follow them. those are the ones that matter.
"you can scare most people most of the time, but you can't scare all of
the people all of the time -- some will always use Common Lisp."
there is actual research that shows that the CEOs overseeing most of the greatest raises of companies in the past 30 years are essentially clinically paranoid. Jim Collins wrote about it.
That paragraph you quoted caused me to flag the article. Who are we 'told' by? It's just outrageous linkbait. Pulling in the title of Andy Grove's book (which the writer has probably never read) only makes it even more egregious.
Paranoia is by definition irrational. I don't see this ending well.