Gawker: valleywag, joe green

The Facebook Faithful Turn Against Mark Zuckerberg's Redesign

Owen Thomas — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:22:06 EDT

When will Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wake up and realize he made an idiotic mistake by copying Twitter? The Facebook-loving masses loathe the new look — as do Facebook's best pals in Silicon Valley.

The redesign is built around a new "stream" of status updates. It closely mimics the "timeline" feature of Twitter, a much smaller service which, like Facebook user, allows people to post short messages which are then broadcast to friends. But in adopting Twitter's simplified look, Facebook threw out or hid a whole host of features users have grown used to. (Try finding upcoming events, for example, or looking for updates on new friends people have made.)

A Facebook application built to poll users on the design is running 94 percent against the new design, with some 716,000 "no" votes against 44,000 "yes" votes.

One might argue that Zuckerberg didn't do the design to please the lowest common denominator of users, but instead was trying to win over the cognoscenti of Silicon Valley, who have been buzzing nonstop about Twitter. If so, he missed that target badly, too.

Facebook has a special program called "Great Apps" to recognize the best third-party add-ons to the social-networking sites. The favored few include iLike, a music app, and Causes, an app built by a startup called Project Agape which helps people rally their friends to various social issues.

Both have close ties to Facebook: Marc Bodnick, an influential Valley investor who sits on iLike's board, is the brother-in-law of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Project Agape is backed by former Facebook president Sean Parker, who still owns an estimated 5 percent stake in the company.

But guess who's been dissing Facebook's redesign on Facebook? iLike CEO Ali Partovi and Project Agape's Joe Green. Green recently wrote:

The stream does not out-Twitter Twitter and under-Facebooks Facebook.

Partovi snarkily noted that the new design inspired him to join Twitter — and employees at Slide, another Facebook-app maker, applauded his wit:

And mind you, these are people who make a living off Facebook. If they hate it, what friends will Zuckerberg have left?

Facebook shows its favoritism

Owen Thomas — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:20:00 EDT

Many developers are giving up on Facebook's third-party applications platform, finding it too hard to follow the social network's strict rules for programs which piggyback on its lists of friends and news feeds to find new users. But one application has thrived: Joe Green's Causes has seen traffic triple in the past month, helped in part by interest in the election. But only in part.

Causes, Inside Facebook notes, is part of Facebook's "Great Apps" program — handpicked applications which enjoy special treatment from Facebook, including more frequent appearances in users' news feeds. What makes Causes a Great App? One hopes it doesn't have anything to do with Green being Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard roommate. (Chart by Inside Facebook)

Facebooker Dave Morin turns 28, but fails to destroy Internet

Owen Thomas — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 05:00:00 EDT

When I got an unauthorized invite, via a tipster, to Dave Morin's birthday party Tuesday night, I knew I had to crash — if only to find out what he and his friends were thinking. Morin, you see, is a Facebook employee and a prime instigator of Camp Cyprus, the gang of Internet instigators whose shockingly fun video scandalized a shaken Silicon Valley. What's with these Web kids? First they go to Cyprus and destroy the entire economy by filming themselves cavorting at a rich friend's dad's vacation house on the Mediterranean. The horror! But then, what's worse, they return to the United States, unashamed, and continue spending money and enjoying themselves! All this economic activity cannot end well!

Can you imagine, kids in their twenties having a good time? This must end! Didn't they get Sequoia's memo? Morin, Facebook's official speaker-to-geeks, turned 28 and rented a downtown art gallery Tuesday night to celebrate. After I tracked down Morin, I gave him a salami I'd picked up at VC firm Alsop Louie's party earlier that night. (It was a heartfelt regifting.) Besides Morin, I identified several other members of Camp Cyprus:

Brittany Bohnet, Morin's steady Googler girlfriend and the other half of the Internet's cutest couple
"Professor" Meagan Marks, known on Valleywag for her ancient-history stint as a recruiter (she's now working as a program manager)
Joe Green, famous for his Causes application, infamous for his squarecut swim trunks
Jessica Bigarel, a graphic designer at Apple
Scott Marlette, the coder behind Facebook Photos

With Morin, that's almost a third of Camp Cyprus. (Sadly, Wall Street Journal Jessica Vascellaro wasn't there.) You'd think they'd be enough to bring down the Internet, but no.

I caught a brief glimpse of soon-to-depart Facebook founder Dustin Moskovitz, but didn't get to say hello — he left early, which just confirms his reputation as being not much of a party animal.

Things got a tad more surreal when MC Hammer showed up. When I left the party, the former rap star was chatting up angel investor Ron Conway, who has, yes, invested in the Hammer's inevitable startup.

Digg's Matt Van Horn plots with Keith Rabois, Slide's evil-genius mastermind.

Ron Conway invests in a glass of wine.

Working for Comcast sounds pretty good to Plaxo's Joseph Smarr and John McCrea right now.

Really. MC Hammer was there. At Dave Morin's birthday party.