HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

I'd speculate that knowing/discovering/finding the answer to that question is at the very core of why he built the service.

I recently watched a 2005 guest lecture[1] by Zuckerberg, it hit me then, why facebook became the success it is/was. The core insight, was the "people you may know" feature, even though that's obvious when I say it, and think about it.. It never struck me before, that, facebook could have been anything (and, was indeed very different back then) and still have succeeded because solving that problem in a seemingly more efficient way at the time then nobody chocked on it.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFFs9UgOAlE

I suspect the difference is that in the past the only way to go commercial was to work with a big corporation. Going to market with something was so hugely expensive, and required extensive marketing and distribution infrastructure, which was all internal to these big concerns. The problem was these companies expected a lot of invasive creative control and long term contracts to give access to those capabilities, which to be fair were hugely expensive to build and operate.

Nowadays all of that infrastructure exists as generic services on the internet you can throw together in a few days, with costs that scale with your needs. I recently watched a Q&A Mark Zuckerberg gave to the Harvard CS50 class in 2005 [0]. He explained that what made Facebook possible to start with was cheap hosted servers running open source software, and the ways that had changed over the previous decade. Nowadays with AWS and Google Cloud its even easier and cheaper. The same applies to physical goods now with eBay, Amazon Marketplace, Etsy, Shopify, running your own one-person media empire on Youtube, etc.

The negative connotations with "selling out" were the fact that you had to sell out creative control. You don't have to do that anymore. Dave Chappelle is rightly still sore about how he was cheated over the Chappelle Show. Nowadays you can build an audience independently, and that fact means that even if you do make a deal with big business, they know you're not as dependent on them anymore, so creatives have a much stronger hand than they used to.

So I really don't think this is down to the generation themselves, the world they live in is just different.

[0] https://youtu.be/xFFs9UgOAlE?t=935

⬐ bsenftner

It was hip hop, declaring "selling out" (specifically) to be propaganda. An entire decade and genre of music focused on this idea and the negative impacts of not selling one's work. "Getting paid" became the repeated mantra of many an artists' music. And that changed our culture.

⬐ simonh

That's actually a good point, I'm not sure how much broad influence that had but it's definitely an element.

⬐ coldtea

>I suspect the difference is that in the past the only way to go commercial was to work with a big corporation.

I'm not so sure. Even if you "hustled" with a small business, or sold stuff yourself for the money, you were considered a sell-out. Musicians weren't supposed to peddle t-shirts, for example.

⬐ f17

You could be right, insofar as in the 1990s, "selling out" was a discrete event and there was no denying that one had given creative control up. In the 2020s, the PR departments are so good at making their efforts look like things that happened organically that the difference between genuine success and packaging has blurred.

⬐ jltsiren

There was a vibrant community of independent publishers, volunteer organizations and other entities that were considered authentic. Working with them was not "selling out".

The way I remember, it was more about resisting the establishment than being against commercialization. The ideal was keeping organizations small enough that everyone would be doing "real" work. Dedicated managers and administrators were inherently suspicious. Any organization large enough to employ middle managers (managers and administrators working primarily with other managers and administrators) was part of the establishment. If you worked with them, you were selling yourself out.

⬐ simonh

>There was a vibrant community of independent publishers,....

Of course, that's always existed. By 'commercial' I meant mass market. It's always been possible to break through, in IT Apple and Microsoft both started out with two techies hacking stuff together. Richard Branson started out trying to grow Christmas trees. Those are all a very few extreme outliers compared to the tens of thousands that would only ever have a chance of making it big by reaching the mass market.

⬐ ghaff

Whether or not the odds are actually all that better today, you have a whole culture of TikTok/YouTube/Instagram/etc. would-be influencers who at least think they have a real shot and, of course, that ends up pervading a lot of the medium.

⬐ jltsiren

You were not supposed to try to break through, because that meant becoming part of the establishment. Doing cool things was what mattered. Success was tolerated when it arose organically, but it was not a positive thing in itself. People who were deliberately trying to be successful were branded mediocre and boring, because only mediocre and boring people wanted to be part of the establishment.

⬐ simonh

Realistically, that was only ever an extreme view held by a small minority even in the alternative lifestyle and arts communities.

⬐ jltsiren

I remember it more as the dominant left-wing ideology among university students, creative people and various subcultures. Extremists obviously had more extreme views, but some mild anarchism was mainstream.

Back then, people still believed in a better future, and the struggle for money was not as central as it is today. There was this belief that if everyone contributed something valuable and focused on things that were inherently important, there would be enough for everyone in the future.

People today are more militant and more focused on money, because they have lost hope.

But what happens if a company chooses truly the worst language. Like PHP?

Oh, right. That was Facebook. They ALSO ran circles around their competitors and crushed them. I hear they are worth /even more/ than Viaweb!

Great PHP story:

> Dustin was like, 'Hey, I want to help out"

> Zuckerberg told Moskovitz, "That's pretty cool. But you don't know any PHP."

> "That weekend he went home, bought the book 'PERL for Dummies,' came back, and was like, 'OK, I'm ready to go,'" Zuck said, and told him, "The site's written in PHP, not PERL, dude."

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFFs9UgOAlE

⬐ thebigspacefuck

PHP seems like it would be a reasonable choice in early 2004. Ruby on Rails wasn’t out yet and LAMP was a very common stack. The competition MySpace was originally using Perl which nobody understood so they had to rewrite it in ColdFusion.

It's easy to poke fun at Mark because he's mega rich and can come off a little stiff, but he's pretty interesting to listen when he's speaking without a script.

Here's Mark when he was 21 giving a lecture at Harvard's CS50: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFFs9UgOAlE

⬐ 2OEH8eoCRo0

I like Mark but I don't personally use any Meta products.

⬐ andy_ppp

Is that because meta products use you?

⬐ 2OEH8eoCRo0

How so?

⬐ parenthesis

(With apologies to Noël Coward) Facebook is for investing in, not being on.

⬐ ilrwbwrkhv

well the problem is not that he is stiff or rich but that he is evil. 'They "trust me". Dumb Fucks.'

⬐ syspec

Honestly when I hear Zuck speak in interviews, I constantly pick up on the sense that this is someone who wants to be liked by the audience he is engaging with. You can pick up on it in the CS50 lecture (he's kinda trying to sound very anti corporate). You pick up on it in this interview

"They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks" in the context of his age, just sounds like a young adult trying to be edgy in an online chat.

⬐ arisAlexis

Aren't we all, humans

⬐ capableweb

It's also possible for be interesting at one point in their life, and as the world around them changes together with their own mind changes, they fall into the category of not being interesting anymore. Or, similarly to many crazy world leaders, they can become "interesting" in the sense of how evil and crazy they sound when they talk about their ideas.

⬐ syspec

That's a good point, people can definitely become uninteresting. I'd say he's still interesting, but more guarded which is uninteresting... If that makes sense

⬐ MMS21

https://youtu.be/xFFs9UgOAlE?t=2354

Timestamp of the zucc talking about privacy

"We care about it, because if people feel like their information isn't private, then that screws us in the longterm, too."

I agree, I don't want to sound like a Zuckerberg apologist, but it's simplistic to view the Zuckerberg and Facebook of today as we would a 19-year-old Zuckerberg and his elaborate PHP script.

As a trivial example: In 2005, when Facebook was a non-trivial company, Zuckerberg [0] guest lectured at a Harvard CS50 class. When asked if Facebook would contribute to open-source, he said that he didn't foresee it being worth the trouble (can't find the exact timestamp, so this is all IIRC with a grain of salt). Now of course, open-source is a substantial part of Facebook. Is it because Zuckerberg in the following years had a Road to Damascus experience with Richard Stallman? Maybe, but it's more likely that Facebook evolved into the type of organization where OSS became a benefit to the bottom line, and it was a decision made by people lower than Zuckerberg at that point.

Even if Zuckerberg is still as much a creep as he was in private IM messages as a 19-year-old, he's no longer the sole captain of his tiny boat. Him breaking the law means that many people end up getting in legal trouble, i.e. it doesn't really much matter what he alone thinks is moral when he has dozens of people/potential whistleblowers looking over his shoulder with greater moral concerns.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFFs9UgOAlE

The ones that are good at building something (or at least focused on it) won't be wasting their time trying to "give back" (read: find other opportunities). Zuckerberg did some very minimal "giving back" while building Facebook IIRC (the biggest being an actually useful course he visited at Harvard called CS50, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFFs9UgOAlE)

⬐ rc_bhg

Some of that is very strong on the cringe.

⬐ throwaway2016a

When I was that age (I'm actually the same age as him) I would have been "strong on the cringe too"

⬐ zappo2938

"When you started Facebook did you think it would become a full-fledged business?"

"No."

⬐ erroneousfunk

It boggles my mind how many people try to replicate Mark Zuckerberg by dropping out of college, or wearing the same thing every day, or [insert cargo cult trend of the year here]. But everyone sits around writing business plans and designing logos and hiring freelancers without actually having a product yet.

⬐ gallerdude

People like the idea of starting a business. Be their own boss, do what they want, make a lot of money. So when they design logos or make business plans, they're indulging that dream. But starting a business is difficult, and people, even subconsciously, don't like that part.

The sad part is, they don't know that they're dreaming.

⬐ nikisweeting

This was posted just a couple weeks ago and made it fairly high up the front page. I usually don't complain about reposts, but this seems excessively soon.

⬐ Kequc

If anything Facebook represents, it's the fact that no amount of technical prominence matters in the general market. You can have a product built by a single person in PHP and if it catches itself in the wind it will become a multi-billion dollar entity.

No doubt nobody cared about Facebook. It was worthless, it was badly coded, it was a webpage. When that thing reached a valuation of $1m I couldn't believe he didn't sell it. What kind of idiot would offer a million dollars for such a thing. Then it went up from there. Now I think whoever stands to gain from a sale of Facebook is a moron. It's valued at hundreds of billions. Just retire. Make another website on the side in your spare time, take as much time as you like. Do whatever you like. Let whoever dropped that much cash on a website to their devices.

At the same time I'm blown away by how many people still use that thing. Regardless of how many scandals after scandals occur.

Facebook is one of those things that makes me not understand tech anymore.

⬐ kbenson

> You can have a product built by a single person in PHP and if it catches itself in the wind it will become a multi-billion dollar entity.

I think this is both true, and doesn't really convey the whole story of what's needed. If it catches in the wind it can be successful and make some money, maybe a few million if you're extremely lucky.

To make tens of millions, you have to be lucky and aggressive, otherwise someone will copy your idea and add the aggression themselves.

To make it to billions, you need the luck, you need the aggression, and you need an extra level of luck to be at the right place at the right time to capitalize on a major change.

Facebook did it with social media. Myspace and Friendster were around too, but Facebook provided a clean interface and hit critical mass sooner.

Apple did it with the smart phone. They weren't first, but their product was better enough to distinguish itself when smart phones started really being worthwhile for the average user (while already a low billion dollar company, they jumped an order of magnitude with the iPhone).

Google did it with the search engine. They weren't the first, but they were enough better a the time that internet usage was really taking off that it catapulted them into a position of leadership in search engines, and internet starting pages.

Microsoft did it with operating systems, and was able to ride the wave of computer ownership and business needs to dominance.

In each case, I think it wasn't just the product, but also the time being just right that caused the success. In each case there were competing products prior to the market leader that weren't that technically inferior, and in some cases might have had some superior features. In each case, it's not just the timing that matter, but also that they aggressively capitalized on their fortune to expand and entrench.

> React is a library. It’s precisely the opposite philosophy of large, comprehensive frameworks like Angular and Ember. So when you select React, you’re free to choose modern best-of-breed libraries that solve your problem best. JavaScript moves fast, and React allows you to swap out small pieces of your application for better libraries instead of waiting around and hoping your framework will innovate.

Just an aside, but who would've thought that Facebook would be the one to develop around the Unix philosophy? Yes, I know that Google is a monolith, but it became a monolith over one very specific feature and mission, whereas Facebook had to accompany many kinds of user-interaction and behavior right from conception. When Zuckerberg guest lectured CS50 (more than 10 years ago), he didn't foresee FB doing open-source:

https://youtu.be/xFFs9UgOAlE?t=17m25s

Excerpt: "There's a lot of work that goes into making stuff open source. And it's on top of whether or not you want to lose the competitive advantage...there's a lot of support and licensing and all that stuff. We found that it's been annoying"

Yes, I know FB of 10 years ago is nothing like it is today, with much different people and components...didn't React arise partly/mostly from Instagram? Either way, I was encouraged to use it early on because it was purportedly being used in Instagram production. Angular 1.x wasn't in any of the big sites (other than DoubleClick?). It's nice to see it in more of Google's sites now...but honestly, how it has currently been used has left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm thinking of the Cloud/Compute Dev console. I spun up a machine, thought I shut it off, found out I was $30 in the hole at the end of the month. No big deal, I've done that with EC2 too...but the difference is that AWS's interface, ugly as it may have been, was very easy to use to shut down a machine (right-click, Terminate). I'm ashamed to say it took me about 10 minutes to do it in the Google console. Part of it is unfamiliarity, sure...but nothing interacted the way that I, as a developer, expected it to. I finally found the button or whatever that brought up the panel to show the Terminate option -- it was on the very bottom of my widescreen monitor window...which is a huge visual gap from where the instance-icon is. Maybe it's different when you have several instances spun up and your eye is naturally drawn to the bottom...

Anyway, I know overly-enthusiastic-responsive design is not something that can be blamed inherently on a framework. But it doesn't inspire enthusiasm when it is poorly dogfooded on a developer-facing UI. I mean, it's beautiful, but in all the wrong ways, with boxes of live-updated charts showing performance/activity metrics, but in no discernable hierarchy, as if someone wrapped the page container with jquery.isotope. It's something I would show my boss to make it look like I was doing something impressive but it was not great for productivity.

In contrast...the way that React was justified in its announcement had immediate appeal. The number of UI/UX things that FB and Instagram have to constantly update because of their dataflow required React's kind of overhaul, and it was easier to trust that they would not only maintain React, but design and add features only as necessary.

⬐ wstrange

Hmm, I have a different experience.

I love the Google cloud console (the new one especially) and find it vastly easier and faster than AWS.

⬐ debaserab2

> I'm ashamed to say it took me about 10 minutes to do it in the Google console. Part of it is unfamiliarity, sure...but nothing interacted the way that I, as a developer, expected it to.

You can make sloppy interfaces with any library or framework. Angular is no exception. Neither is React.

⬐ presty

facebook december 2005 (~2 years after launching):

100s of machines

400million pageviews a day

50 employees