Facebook

Excellent blog post / article / meta-article about Facebook on the Fastcompany website.

A few extracts:

a billion dollars (allegedly) is a lot of money. But specifically for businesses that live on the web, memories from the bubble of yesterdecade – epic stories of overvaluation and excess, business plans on backs-of-napkins, etc – have taken on powerful second lives as punch lines and cautionary tales. Hey: Lesser mortals, even well-meaning ones, have blown through investor money only to end up as occasional entries in “where are they now” columns. Or worse. And we all love the smell of schadenfraude in the morning. I mean, come on.

Facebook investor Peter Thiel put it this way - “The strange boom/bust cycle in the late ‘90s is a big part of things here. Most people who lived through that remember the bust more than they remember the boom. That distorts a lot of thinking.” (I lived through it, and he’s right.) His bigger point is that Zuckerberg’s youth works in his favor – he’s less likely to be haunted by a specter of imminent market meltdown and stay focused on building something worthwhile.

You'll all recall Peter Thiel of course - founder of X.com / Paypal and superstar hedge fund investor / space nut.

although I suppose it’s possible that Facebook could seriously screw things up, I’m inclined to believe that they are up to the task. This is a pretty smart group – 200 strong - who think very deeply about what, how and why they do what they do. And as any weary Web 1.0 survivor can tell you, a company that is ramping up for the sole purpose of selling itself off to the highest bidder has a very specific feel to it

Truer words were neve spoke

Meanwhile, the main Fast Company article about Facebook is here - I will post about it later