My History with Facebook.com
In what is perhaps the most indelible scene in the movie The Social Network, Justin Timberlake’s character, Sean Parker, meets Mark Zuckerberg in a fancy restaurant and schmoozes him with tales of his Napster days.
Yet most interestingly, before he leaves, he makes what is described as his “greatest contribution.” He advises Zuck to drop the “the” and change it to just “Facebook.”
And this is the part where I come in, for my memory can sometimes be shady, but I do remember perusing the listings on Ebay and coming across kind of a cool domain name for sale, Facebook.com.
I hadn’t heard of “The Facebook” at the time, I simply liked the domain – it had my usual wishlist of attributes: generic, brandable, positive.
But it was listed for $50,000, too high in my opinion, and I did not bid. Nobody did.
So after the auction I contacted the owner and offered him about half…which he accepted.
We moved along to escrow but just before depositing the funds, I got an email from the seller explaining that he had an offer well beyond the initial fifty thousand.
Wouldn’t tell me what that offer was but from what I gathered, I guesstimate it was between $150-$250k. All I knew at the time was that $50k was already too much and I bowed out without a counter offer.
Of course, wouldn’t be too long before Facebook came roaring along and I realized what had happened: I had witnessed the moment ‘TheFacebook.com” became “Facebook.com.”
Few weeks, even days sooner, and I might have grabbed the name and the windfall – and more perhaps.
But it didn’t happen, owner sold it to them and history became what it is today.
So that’s it, I have no consolation for my role, only this story and the hope that someday Justin Timberlake will call, take me to dinner.
Truly, Yahoo is Awful
Besides IM and email, why else would someone use Yahoo?
In fact, isn’t Yahoo’s incompetence the reason we “google” and not “search” anymore?
Need an example? Look no further than their own news. And this has happened to me at least three other times…notice something missing?
Scroll down and read the comments and you get a further idea, in microcosm, of everything that is wrong with the site, the company, the service. Many are hilarious.
Plus, one should note this piece has been posted for days – and has yet to be addressed, fixed, whatever.
Am I surprised? No, Yahoo is a business stuck in the past, like a real time ‘wayback’ machine to the days of dial-up and half-assed websites.
For if Yahoo is to survive, then it must evolve in some genuinely productive fashion.
It’s not good enough to be different or unique anymore, it has to be better.
Is Yahoo better than the alternatives? No, it’s just plain awful.
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Death of the PC…Coming Soon
Okay, so how many years have we been hearing about the pending death of the PC? Ten? And how many more years will we have to hear it?
Here is another.
For still, after all these years and all the prognostications of demise, I sit here, writing this and reading those stories on a…PC.
In fact, my PC has expanded over the ages to now include three monitors. So if the PC is dying, then I am heading in the wrong direction, like the caveman who refused conversion to fire.
For as great as mobile is, I haven’t found a way to be truly productive on a tiny screen – I have a fat, uh…index finger.
But hype, and not reality, is the name of the journalism game – they want the negativity. And so, the PC cannot just evolve, it must die a horrible death at the hands of a smartphone…Suri, I knew it! Never trusted that biatch!
Still though, every office I go to or visit or am a client of, has PC’s all over! Did they not get the memo? Or Tweet?
Oh sure, the PC as we know it will disappear but this idea that it will be gone entirely, replaced wholly by mobile, is down right ignorant. And soft, it’s soft thinking.
Chances instead are that the PC will evolve further, be integrated deeper – means that ‘box’ under your desk will disappear, like into, say, a laptop or network, but the function and sphere will remain – yes, even if it’s in your basement or on your TV or, yeah, your gaming console.
Bottom line is, don’t believe every dire prognostication you hear or read or sniff, for the truth is likely somewhere in between.
In fact, have you heard the one about how we all love 3D TV and will be buying them in droves…soon?