Defends Facebook mood experiment
In response to the revelation that Facebook attempted to manipulate user moods, Andreessen tweets:
https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/483024580554932224
Andreessen says that this type of testing helps improve websites.
Company diversity report
Facebook’s first diversity report states most of their workers are white males. The report reveals that 69% of Facebook’s global staffers are male and 85% of the company’s tech workers and 77% of its management team, are also men. The company’s U.S. workforce is 57% white, 34% Asian, 4% Hispanic and 2% black. Maxine Williams, Facebook’s global head of diversity:
As these numbers show, we have more work to do — a lot more.
Hires ex-PayPal president
Facebook hires David Marcus as the vice president of its mobile messaging division. Marcus previously worked with PayPal, first as the vice president of the company’s mobile department and most recently as the company’s president.
We are incredibly excited to work together with David and to learn from all his experience, and David will be sharing more about his work in the coming months. Welcome aboard!
Study: Users avoid recommending products
0 CommentsA study conducted at the Imperial College Business School in Britain shows that Facebook users are unlikely to recommend products to their friends and family on the social media site, preferring to give suggestions when they meet face-to-face. Andreas Eisingerich, the lead researcher, explains:
They would rather communicate via word of mouth because many users do not want to embarrass themselves online as work colleagues or acquaintances may not endorse or appreciate the same products that they do.
On Facebook’s 10-year anniversary
Zuckerberg reflects on Facebook’s 10-year anniversary on interview with TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie.
I remember really vividly — you know, having pizza with my friends a day or two after — when I opened up the first version of Facebook at my school.
Zuckerberg interview
Arrington talks with Zuckerberg at Disrupt 2012 in his first interview after the Facebook IPO announcement. They discuss the stock price, ads, Facebook phone, and the mobile version vs the website. Arrington:
The stock has lost roughly half its value…if you could’ve done anything differently with hindsight?
Zuckerberg:
The performance of the stock has obviously been disappointing…We’re going to execute this mission where we’re going to make the world more open and connected
Psychological study
0 CommentsFacebook conducts a psychological study of 600,000 users, who are not informed about the test. It tests whether positive or negative posts by people’s friends affect their own emotional response to a topic. The paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that it does have an effect:
When positive expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred. These results indicate that emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive-scale contagion via social networks.
Warns startups about Facebook
Calacanis issues a warning for Y Combinator companies:
If you tell Facebook about your startup before you reach critical mass, if you become involved with Facebook in any way, you are an idiot. They will steal your company’s ideas, and try to get you to take a small price for your company, and take a job at Facebook, which by they way, is going to be a job that sucks.
“The Social Network’ trailer released
The first trailer for the upcoming movie based on Facebook’s early days is released. The movie will star Arnie Hammer as both twins and Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg.
Joins Facebook board
After a period of speculation, Andreessen officially joins Facebook’s board of directors alongside Mark Zuckerberg, Jim Breyer, and Peter Thiel. The official press release calls Andreessen’s venture Ning, “a complementary platform to Facebook,” rather than a potential rival. Andressen says:
Facebook is one of the most innovative companies on the Web and it’s an honor to join the board. I’m looking forward to helping the team as Facebook continues to grow.
Zuckerberg hacks into ConnectU
Zuckerberg hacks into ConnectU’s site and makes changes to multiple user profiles, including makeing a fake profile for Cameron Winklevoss. The profile lists Cameron’s height as 7’4″, his hair color as “Ayran Blond,” and his eye color as “Sky Blue.” He listed Cameron’s “language” as “WASP-y.” He also logged into the accounts of some ConnectU users and changes their privacy settings so they are invisible to other users. He also deactivates about 20 ConnectU accounts entirely.
Cease & Desist
The HarvardConnect team send a cease & desist letter to Zuckerberg.
Winklevosses find out about thefacebook.com
The Winklevosses and Narendra find out about thefacebook.com when they read a press release in The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper.
Tyler: None of us knew about it until we picked up the [Crimson]. We read this article that says ‘thefacebook launched by Mark Zuckerberg,’ and we sort of stepped back and were like, ‘Well, that sounds like our idea…’
According to Gao, who looked at the HarvardConnection code afterward, Zuckerberg had left the HarvardConnection code incomplete and non-functional, with a registration that did not connect with the back-end connections.
Zuckerberg launches thefacebook.com
Zuckerberg launches thefacebook.com, a social network for Harvard students, designed to expand to other schools around the country.
Zuckerberg meeting: No mention of the facebook.com
In a meeting with the team Zuckerberg tells the HarvardConnection team that he will continue to work on the site and would email the group later in the week. Zuckerberg informs them that he is involved with another project. but does not elaborate. He does not mention that he has registered thefacebook.com nor that he is setting up a rival website.
After the meeting, Zukerberg has another IM exchange with his friend. He tells her, in effect, that he had wimped out. He hadn’t been able to break the news to Cameron and Tyler, in part, he said, because he was “intimidated” by them. He called them “poor bastards.”
Zuckerberg registers thefacebook.com
Zuckerberg registers the domain name thefacebook.com. The next day he emails Eduardo Saverin, saying that the site thefacebook.com was almost complete and that they should discuss marketing strategies
Meet with Zuckerberg
After several weeks of saying he was busy with other work, Zuckerberg meets with the Winklevosses and Narendra in his dorm room, allegedly confirming his interest and assuring them that the site was almost complete. On the whiteboard in his room, Zuckerberg allegedly had scrawled multiple lines of code under the heading “Harvard Connection,” and this would be the only time they saw any of his work.
Zuckerberg ‘F**k them’ IM
In early January Zuckerberg has the following IM exchange with a friend
FRIEND: so have you decided what you are going to do about the websites?
ZUCK: yea i’m going to f-ck them
ZUCK: probably in the year
ZUCK: *ear
Zuckerberg busy, skeptical
In emails Zuckerberg says he is too busy to work on the site
Sorry it’s taken a while for me to get back to you. I’m completely swamped with work this week. I have three programming projects and a final paper due by Monday, as well as a couple of problem sets due Friday. I’ll be available to discuss the site again starting Tuesday…I”m still a little skeptical that we have enough functionality in the site to really draw the attention and gain the critical mass necessary to get a site like this to run…Anyhow, we’ll talk about it once I get everything else done.
Zuck IM shows conflict of interest
An IM exchange with Zuckerberg’s friend shows he is conflicted about developing HarvardConnections (“that dating site) and thefacebook.
Z: So you know how I’m making that dating site
Z: I wonder how similar that is to the Facebook thing
Z: Because they’re probably going to be released around the same time
Z: Unless I f-ck the dating site people over and quit on them right before I told them I’d have it done.
D: haha
Z: Like I don’t think people would sign up for the facebook thing if they knew it was for dating
Z: and I think people are skeptical about joining dating things too.
Z: But the guy doing the dating thing is going to promote it pretty well.
Z: I wonder what the ideal solution is.
Z: I think the Facebook thing by itself would draw many people, unless it were released at the same time as the dating thing.
Z: In which case both things would cancel each other out and nothing would win. Any ideas? Like is there a good way to consolidate the two.
D: We could make it into a whole network like a friendster. haha. Stanford has something like that internally
Z: Well I was thinking of doing that for the facebook. The only thing that’s different about theirs is that you like request dates with people or connections with the facebook you don’t do that via the system.
D: Yeah
Z: I also hate the fact that I’m doing it for other people haha. Like I hate working under other people. I feel like the right thing to do is finish the facebook and wait until the last day before I’m supposed to have their thing ready and then be like “look yours isn’t as good as this so if you want to join mine you can…otherwise I can help you with yours later.” Or do you think that’s too dick?
D: I think you should just ditch them
Z: The thing is they have a programmer who could finish their thing and they have money to pour into advertising and stuff. Oh wait I have money too. My friend who wants to sponsor this is head of the investment society. [He is talking about Eduardo Saverin] Apparently insider trading isn’t illegal in Brazil so he’s rich lol.
D: lol