Social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins. Facebook is ego. Zynga is sloth. LinkedIn is greed.
Doesn’t include Twitter, which is envy? Pride? Lust?
Starting to remind me of Microsoft a decade ago, when they were trying to win on seven or eight fronts — PC O/S, IM, email, mobile phones, game systems, corporate IT, office apps, etc. — and meanwhile the web came along and screwed everything up, and gave serious advantages to others.
Now Facebook is fighting on seven fronts on so, and something is coming to upend their position at the center of today’s web: social O/S. Watch out, Zuck.
Zygna Isn’t Playing Around
Turns out that the exploding game industry isn’t all sunshine and flowers: after all, billions in revenue is at stake and that tends to not bring out the best in people.
It seems that Mark Pincus’ Zygna is a hotbed of idea theft, stealing ideas from competitors, and crushing them with the company’s reach. Just like Elvis Presley knocking off all the old ‘Race Music’ and repackaging it as rock’n’roll.
But Zygna may be reaching the end of that streak. Pincus has apparently been telling his employees to forget about innovation, and simply appropriate competitor’s game ideas:
Peter Jamison, FarmVillains
As the former senior employee who listened to Pincus rant against innovation recalls, workers at Zynga were fond of joking (albeit half-seriously) that their firm’s unofficial motto was an inversion of Google’s famous “Don’t Be Evil.”
“Zynga’s motto is ‘Do Evil,’” he says. “I would venture to say it is one of the most evil places I’ve run into, from a culture perspective and in its business approach. I’ve tried my best to make sure that friends don’t let friends work at Zynga.”
The derivative nature of Zynga’s high-grossing games isn’t just an ethical liability. While the company has recently enjoyed a spate of bullish mainstream media coverage, some industry experts say that its star could soon be on the wane. The audience for its signature application, FarmVille, has collapsed by 26 percent from its high of 84 million monthly users. As a new generation of social gamers demands more sophistication in online entertainment, some observers — including at least one of Zynga’s founders — question whether the company can adapt.
“You can’t make the cheap little viral games like you used to,” says Tom Bollich, an early Zynga investor and former lead engineer who owned more than 400,000 shares of the company in 2008, and who has now divested completely. “These games, it’s like pouring water into a bucket with holes in it. You can get a lot of people, but they don’t stick around.”
We’ll have to see if Zygna has reached some limit in its growth, but I doubt that its business practices are known to users, or that it would make any difference if they did know.
Umair Haque twittered today ‘I don’t know what these guys are so upset about. That’s what business is all about.’ with regard to this story. After all, stealing the best ideas is Silicon Valley lore, isn’t it? But maybe there are still lines that can be crossed, even when unbridled capitalism is held up as a societal good.
(via underpaidgenius)
Steve Jobs Told Me So Says Jason Calacanis
Jason Calcanis says he spoke with Steve Jobs about the Facebook flare-up. Whether he did or not, what he posted in his email newsletter is dead-on:
via email
Anyway, here is what Steve Jobs is thinking during the keynote:
Now, certainly you’ve heard about Apple’s huge data center in North Carolina. You know, the one that reportedly cost one *billion* dollars. Experts say that Apple’s data center cost roughly double what Google and Facebook spent on similar facilities.
Apple’s massive, cash-generating successes have come from soup-to-nuts services like iTunes and the iPod, the App Store and the iPhone. It’s a logical conclusion that Apple would want to take on the social and search layers next.
PING is not music service; it’s a social network precursor.
Game Center is not a game matching service; it’s a social network precursor.
The largest and most-loved Apple product line—to the tune of over 275 million units sold—is the iPod. Their second biggest revenue success is the iPhone, of course. In order to use it, you need to put in a credit card.Facebook and Twitter have users. Apple has customers.
The difference? Customers give you their credit card number.
Jason goes on to suggest that Jobs should acquire Twitter and Zygna: maybe so. He doesn’t mention Netflix, which I think is more central to his long term goal: the battle for the living room (see Social TV: The Future Of TV Is Social).
But it is clear that billions of iPod, iPhones, Mac, and iPads form an awfully large base of users to start with, if you are launching a new social network.
I remember trying to convince Adobe to roll out an instant messaging product in the late ’90s, since Adobe’s free player was on 98% of computers. They told me they didn’t want to be in that business.
Jobs clearly wants to be in the social network business, and with one giant step he has gotten pretty close to the front of the pack.
- Ping-Facebook Partnership Killed By ‘Onerous Terms,’ Steve Jobs Says (huffingtonpost.com)
- If Apple Can’t Deal With Facebook’s “Onerous” Terms For Ping, Why Is It In Apple’s Keynote Screenshots? [Apple] (gizmodo.com)
- Steve Jobs on Why Facebook Is Not Part of Apple’s New Ping Music Social Network: “Onerous Terms” (kara.allthingsd.com)
Social anthropologist, clairvoyant, postfuturist.
