According to Google, Minecraft made $23M up to 2011.
2011? In 2011 Minecraft was a very new product compared to where it is now. What Microsoft was purchasing there was a pre-existing virtual world software that already many kids were familiar and comfortable with. It's a world where there's no significant level of concern about inappropriate avatars, and nobody really cares. It's a world focused on construction and design, not on killing off everyone else so that you can be the last survivor. As VR gets better over the next decade, it would be entirely feasible for something based on a Minecraft like world to be a solid base for corporate and educational markets.
No, I mean expecting that a game of this type that has more than doubled in revenue for the past two years to continue to be profitable makes sense. As it turns out, this was an excellent bet, as their next quarters saw revenue increases in the hundreds of millions.
Two years later, they continued to increase sales of the game, selling about 20 million copies in 2016.
He started X.com. The founders of PayPal were forced by their VCs to merge the two companies, because X.com had a massive cash position, and a banking license.
This isn't just basic cookie tracking. They have an actual profile on you, without your consent, with the people who have you in their address book and even potentially your purchasing habits, from the data they purchase from data brokers like Datalogix. They maintain this profile on you separately from other users, and they make immediate use of it if you create an account.
Unfortunately, as long as consumers can't be uniformly and universally trusted, there's but a market and a compelling, morally-acceptable use case for consumer tracking and reporting in that regard. So if what Facebook doesn't differ from consumer reporting in some other way, I don't see a compelling argument to toss it for the same reason I don't see a compelling argument to toss, say, return fraud tracking.
> Using data about a user with their consent seems perfectly fine. The fiction where this consent can be granted in perpetuity is not.
Not only that, but I think there is considerable trouble in interpreting consent when users cannot demonstrate or articulate a thorough understanding of exactly what such consent and data usage entails.
You sign up for those when you get a credit card. You don't sign up for Facebook, they just start tracking you. You don't even have to go online for it to happen. They'll do it from your friend's profiles. It's quite different.
> You sign up for those when you get a credit card
That is incorrect. Credit agencies create shadow profiles too, they call them 'thin files'. I have had to code around those situations.
Like Facebook they suck-up every scrap of data they can get from their sources. They absolutely do not throw away any of it just because you don't have a credit card ( else they'd omit half of Europe ).
... but I think you answered the relevant question, which is that you consider opt-in to having your behavior tracked (even when that behavior interacts with third parties, e.g. visiting someone's website or buying a product from someone's company) morally key. I think the CFPB document I linked above indicates that this is not a universally-accepted principle.
Is there any real evidence of "shadow profiles" or are people just speculating due to confirmation bias? If you give millions of mutual friend recommendations there's bound to be a few that hit.
I have on my phone Facebook app and Facebook Lite, on Lite I have a fake account that I intended to use to like other things (see beyond my bubble) short story -never used account.
I receive push notification from Lite app to connect to new friends. People suggested are from my real account friend list and between the 2 accounts we don't have mutual accounts. I've visited my parents and suggestion to be friend with them pop up.
I don't think we have reason to believe the CEO is deeply familiar with all the strategies FB uses for session unification and user tracking. It's a fast-moving field with a lot of technical detail that a CEO doesn't actually need to keep day-to-day tabs on.
3) Run down the 4 minute clock each representative had to ask questions by talking as much as possible so as to avoid a meaningful exchange.
Representative Marsha Blackburn was the only one that actually called him out on this BS:
BLACKBURN: And where does privacy rank as a corporate value for Facebook?
ZUCKERBERG: Congresswoman, giving people control of their information and how they want to set their privacy is foundational to the whole service. It's not just a — kind of an add-on feature, something we have to...
BLACKBURN: Okay.
ZUCKERBERG: ... comply with.
BLACKBURN: Well...
ZUCKERBERG: The reality is, if you have a photo — if you just think about this in your day-to-day life...
BLACKBURN: No, I can't let you filibuster right now.
I agree. They claim that the Boz memo was effectively a straw man argument. However, after reading the memo in total and the fact that they subsequently deleted it does not give the appearance of impropriety to that claim. As an organization I don't believe Facebook had any corporate values outlining their position either.
Not sure why this has been posted here. The app is nearly abandoned and dead at this point.
I know we all want alternatives to the status quo, but you're not going to find it among a bunch of copycat services that haven't solved any of the fundamental problems causing us so much trouble today.
So much of VC funding is just about being in the right place at the right time. A lot of these guys seem like geniuses because of winning bets, but that's because nobody talks about their flops.
It's entertaining watching all of the VCs who have made a major bet on crypto, who are now doubling down on what looks more like an overheated casino losing steam. Fred Wilson might end up watching the tide go out on this one. Maybe people will finally remember that he was part of Twitter's clueless board, the one that didn't think it was important to buy Instagram?
>, but that's because nobody talks about their flops.
The KPCB flops in "green tech, clean energy, etc" were widely reported.[1] Also, the VC firm DFJ and Tim Draper in particular were laughingstocks for investing in the Theranos scam because they didn't do proper due diligence.
>Fred Wilson [...] was part of Twitter's clueless board, the one that didn't think it was important to buy Instagram?
Is there a source that says it was Fred Wilson who blocked the acquisition of Instagram?
The story I read was that both Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook were courting Instagram at the same time.
Jack offered ~$500 million (all in Twitter stock).
Mark offered ~$736 million ($300 million of that in cash).
Basically, Facebook had the more enticing offer.
In 2012, Twitter wasn't generating any profits and didn't have any excess money in the bank to include any cash component to their bid.
On the other hand, Facebook was already profitable for 3 years and had ~$4 billion in cash in the bank even before the IPO in May 2012. Having a stock that was backed by real profits and a war chest of cash lets Facebook make more attractive acquisition offers.
Do you have any sources for the DFJ/Theranos backlash? I've wondered if that would hit them, so I'd love to read more if you're aware of any good journalism on that specific investment by DFJ.
This comment could benefit from a little more research. Sure, being a successful venture investor is about being in the right place at the right time, but USV is one of the best out there. Fred Wilson has written extensively about his flops and misses (they passed repeatedly on Airbnb for example), and has also written extensively about the dynamics of investing across risky-enough ideas that there are a lot of failures in a successful portfolio. Sure, Twitter has made a lot of ridiculous decisions, but as an early-stage investment, it returned the fund.
My take is that, while there is skill involved in picking venture investments, success in the field has more to do with social skills, status, and wealth than it does with skill. Only the richest have access to the deal flow of the best entrepreneurs.
The success metric in VC is financial return (IRR or cash proceeds / cash invested). % of investments that succeed or fail is not really that important. The VC model is based on finding a few really big investments at the cost of many that don't work out. Something like 60% of VC returns come from less than 10% of deals
Sure, but when vetting a baseball player you check the batting average; when handicapping a horse you check the races they've lost for conditions they can't handle as well; when comparing Halo player stats you check the kill/death ratio.
Vetting a VC only by wins is missing quite a bit of information, presumably. It can at the very least tell you about potential blind spots and some idea how much actual skill may be involved versus luck or even "a broken clock is right twice a day" scattershot portfolios.
I think the analogy breaks down somewhat due to the relative scale of their misses vs. hits. A batter can only get so many runs with one hit, but a good investment can make all of the misses look like rounding errors.
A batter can help win a series, especially the World Series, and make all their losses look uninteresting. But you still are going to at least check their batting average if you are looking to trade them.
A horse can win a major stakes race, such as the Kentucky Derby, and bring in a massive purse (and eventual stud rights) that makes any losses look like warmup rounds. But before heading to the betting window you are still going to check if they've lost any big rainy races if it's raining on Derby Day.
A Halo player can win a championship or tournament and no one will question any losses they've had. But you still are going to want some idea of their kill/death efficiency before scouting them for your team in the next deathmatch.
And batting .300 is considered good -- high rate of failure doesn't necessarily mean something is bad. The metric VCs are judged on is financial return. If they invest in one company that gets them 200x return and 20 that lost all money, they've still done well at their job
I'm only arguing that the stats matter if you are trying to compare VCs, establish baselines of VC ability. I'm sure that they might be skewed, but that doesn't mean they aren't potentially valuable information.
That .300 is considered good today based on the current environment of the sport and in comparison among peer groups. That same .300 looks shabby in a previous era or in particular sub-leagues or among particular types of batters (your benchmark for designated hitters might be higher given their only focus is hits, for instance).
Maybe it wasn't important at the time. Instagram only became wildly popular after they introduced stories, which they didn't have at the time, did they?
I think OP's larger point stands -- it might've played our differently had Twitter acquired instagram. Maybe they would've done what they did with Vine.
Experian et al do not have a two-way channel they can use to run psychological experiments based on your usage data and communications with others. Facebook can, and does.
These hearings are just the tip of the iceberg. You're like the guy saying Bitcoin has hit its peak at $100.
