Facebook calls all hands privacy meeting
Competition gets launched/funded quickly

Usually, company wide meetings aren't called unless shit is hitting the fan. Usually they're intended to calm a jittery rumor mongering workforce and buy time for management to get its collective shit together.

(Apparently credible) Competition has been launched, claiming privacy concerns will be paramount.

The fundamental problem Facebook, and any similar "free" service schemes have, has always been their business model. Server farms and massive bandwidth cost real dollars. Unless you can do something with all that data, like say...sell it to someone else for real money, or generate enough ad response kickbacks, you got nothing. When the idiot VC cash dries up, so does your bank account and you're trading the Ferrari for a clapped out Yugo.

The competition claims to not have used VC money and appears to be operating on a shoestring, that's the good news. They apparently plan on staying small as long as possible. Lavishness with OPM(other people's money) is a fundamental mistake of many startups.

Still, the competition will run into the same business model issues all "free" things do. Something, somewhere has to pay the power bill or the narrow minded Neanderthals at the power company will shut you off.

Facebook isn't a public company, all stock sales have been private placements so its hard to track insider trading and what the current market cap might be. I'm betting a lot of the proletariat are getting kinda nervous and jerky right now about that valuation;many came onboard with the promise of stock options; options that could become worthless overnight with a large enough user exodus.

posted by Purp at 05:59 PM

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