Copy and sell – what society learns from StudiVZ and Facebook?
Just one month ago, the Chinese facebook clone Xiaoei was bought by Facebook. Now StudiVZ looks like it’s being bought by facebook. Soon Facebook will be bought by Yahoo for their network Yahoo 360? And Yahoo? Bought by Google’s Orkut?
This is the 21st century method of a pyramid scheme: copy another person’s idea then sell it to them. The others are probably not poor either, since they have also copied their idea and are just waiting to sell it to somebody else. In the end somebody owns all social networks in the world. I wonder who?.
Of course, this also works in the real world: Der Rüdnitzer describes the case of his fight for the trees on an alley near his house. Apparently a pro-tree group has started collecting signatures, a contra-tree group has also started collecting signatures – but with very little information regarding the case. Apparently they only asked: “Do you want a new street?” – they did not ask “Do you want a new street and have the trees cut down?”
November 16th, 2006 at 19:21
I think your readers would love this. I was the first sr. software engineer at Facebook, and have written a book about my experiences there called “Inside Facebook,” which in the past few weeks has already sold hundreds of copies.
TechCrunch, Mashable and GigaOM readers found my material very interesting, my data shows. So I think your readers too would enjoy whatever editorial coverage or review you can create for this book, Inside Facebook. I’d be happy to email you a full review copy, and talk with you any time.
My IM is karelbaloun (aim) or reply. My marketing team can also help you craft your story, and at http://www.fbbook.com we also have a fancy press kit, if you’re into that.
The book is on sale at FBbook.com for $12.00 USD for the downloadable PDF version, and there are also free pages and other samples.
After TechCrunch, we had 100K pageviews in a single day. Since we offered the entire book through an html viewer, a full third of readers who saw page #2, immediately went on and clicked “next” dozens of times to read every page.
Our first major review was on GigaOM on Oct. 13, here:
http://gigaom.com/2006/10/13/former-facebook-engineer-spills-beans-moralizes/
And more positive coverage on Techcrunch on October 26, with over 50 overwhelmingly positive reader comments:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/25/inside-facebook-read-it-for-free/
Given that Facebook has been consistently in the news recently, this story should drive good traffic for you.
Just last week, my article “Why Zuckerberg Won’t Accept Just $1 Billion from Yahoo” was on Mashable.com, here
http://mashable.com/2006/10/27/why-zuckerberg-wont-accept-just-1-billion-from-yahoo/
I will personally monitor responses to any coverage you post, and will participate in the conversation.
I really want to be next on your blog, and will of course do all that I can to drive traffic to your site.
-K
kbaloun@gmail.com