Gawker: valleywag, tim kendall

Facebook less like a college dorm than you'd think

Owen Thomas — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:00:00 EST

One imagines Facebook as a geek utopia, where hackers who dropped out of college play Rock Band all day, then stay up all night coding. The reality: It's as depressingly Dilbertian as any other company — and COO Sheryl "No-Fun" Sandberg is making sure it keeps getting more boring every day. Take the latest tiff we happened to hear about — in the social network's business-development department, the home of glad-handing charmers who negotiate deals. You'd think they'd be experts at sucking up to each other. Tim Kendall (shown left), the company's director of monetization — Valleyspeak for "guy who comes up with ideas to make money" — was left fuming after his boss, VP Dan Rose, instructed him in the art of time management.

"Every day, you need to create a to-do list," Rose told Kendall. "You put the items you need to do on the list, and you need to review the list with me every day. As you do them, you need to cross them off." Kendall's retort, which he delivered not to Rose but to friends within and without Facebook: "No shit Sherlock, I didn't get to where I am today without knowing how to manage a to-do list!" What's odd about this rumor: Rose doesn't have a reputation as a micromanager, and the two both worked at Amazon.com before joining Facebook. They put on a convincing buddy act for the New York Times recently, too. Anyone care to play Encyclopedia Brown and help piece together this puzzle? My only conclusion: The best algorithms can't predict what will break a friendship.

(Photo by Chris Pan)

Facebook's new money plan: same as the old one

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:00:00 EDT

Tim Kendall is Facebook's director of monetization. (We were sad to learn his job has nothing to do with the French impressionists.) He says Facebook can make its notoriously low-performing Social Ads work — basically by bring back Beacon. The key, Kendall told AllFacebook, is keeping track of Facebook users' commercial activities on and off the site and then, when a user buys a product, offering the product's marketers a chance to pay Facebook to tell that user's friends in their Facebook News Feeds. "Marketers will be able to pay for increased or enhanced distribution above and beyond what News Feed already provides," explains AllFacebook's Nick O'Neill.

An example would be purchasing a ticket to a concert. Usually, a small subset of your friends would receive a notification of this action, however, in the future Cheryl Crow or Ticketmaster could pay for this to be distributed to your full friend group.

Kendall said Facebook will roll out the new plan in the next 6 to 12 months.

How's this different than Facebook's failed Beacon product? Not very. But we count at least three ways. For one, Facebook widgetmakers will be able to participate by serving the new Social Ads, though Kendall was light on details. For another: Marketers didn't pay to be a part of Beacon. They'll have to pay now. Finally, we're betting Facebook learned its lesson and will make it easy for users to opt in and out. We still say the best way for Facebook to turn its users into a team of product marketers 100 million strong would be to offer them a cut.