Social Network

[jkjsooner]

I watched Social Network the other day. It was an excellent movie even if Hollywood took a few liberties.

I know there are a lot of other people on here who work in the IT field. Did you come out thinking, "I could have done that"?

In my eyes, Facebook has one feature that makes it unique and powerful - the concept of "friending." It allows you to control who you see and who sees you. More importantly, it allows you to discover old friends via searching your friends' friends. This whole concept seems completely obvious - at least after the fact.

Everything else is mostly a rehash of things that exist elsewhere.

Anyway, at least at a small-scale level it would have been so easy to create Facebook. A pretty simple database schema would set up the relationships, etc. By the time you grow large enough to worry about scallability you can hire people who specialize in adjusting the networks and software to be more scalable. The concept is so simple that you are not locked into your initial solution.

Anyway, darnit, why didn't we create Facebook? Or the safest route, why didn't we write a patent that described the concept of a "bi-directional protocol to establish a relationship between online users or entities" or some other B.S. like that.

I work in the IVR field and one guy years ago (after touch tone systems already existed) describing in very rough technical terms the use of the voice phone system to control things like databases. Guess what? He never made anything in his life and only described something that was easily just a natural progression (he neither patented IVR's nor datbases - just the two together) and he's a freakin' billionaire.

If any of you peeps have a cool simple idea, send me an IM about it. I'll let you know if it's a good idea after a few years.... ;-)

[rekamrettuB]

Everything else is mostly a rehash of things that exist elsewhere.


Yep. Very rarely is the original idea/concept person the money maker. Sometimes it's simply they don't have the resources or business sense to make it happen. More times tho it's the one that tweaks someone else's idea and hits it big.

[jkjsooner]

Yep. Very rarely is the original idea/concept person the money maker. Sometimes it's simply they don't have the resources or business sense to make it happen. More times tho it's the one that tweaks someone else's idea and hits it big.

Google is a good example of this. That brings up one point. When I look at Google I ask, "Can I do that?" The answer is clearly no. I don't know the first thing about distributed searching algorithms like that. On the surface such a large-scale search algorithm seems like an impossible task.

That's what differentiates Facebook. It is something most developers could have done. Heck, I'm not even a website developer and I could have done it.

[XingTheRubicon]

Loved the movie....and the world has no shortage of people that "could/should have created this or that."

[jumperstop]

I'm not a facebook dork like a lot of you guys out there, but I enjoyed the movie a lot. I haven't felt that suprised about how good a movie was leaving the theater since the Departed.

[Partial Qualifier]

Anyone remember the chat program called ICQ? It was a no-frills freeware chat program that had some features but basically anyone with software skills and administrator-level knowledge of network protocols could've written it in their free time over the course of a couple months.

The guys who write it sold it to AOL for $400 Million Dollars. Probably a huge, inexplicable "WTF!?" moment in AOL's business history but I remember thinking "holy crap, I need to learn VB!" when that deal went down.

[GKeeper316]

best line from the movie... "Harvard grads invent jobs for themselves, they don't try to fill existing jobs."

[badger]

best line from the movie... "Harvard grads invent jobs for themselves, they don't try to fill existing jobs."

Wasn't it like "You don't go to Harvard to get a job, you go to Harvard to create jobs" or something like that, as he was trying to convince the rowing athletic dudes that they should just create something new and not worry about what they had lost.

As for thinking that anyone could have created Facebook, well, the book title that movie was based on says it all: "The Accidental Billionaires."

[soonerbrat]

Anyone remember the chat program called ICQ? It was a no-frills freeware chat program that had some features but basically anyone with software skills and administrator-level knowledge of network protocols could've written it in their free time over the course of a couple months.

The guys who write it sold it to AOL for $400 Million Dollars. Probably a huge, inexplicable "WTF!?" moment in AOL's business history but I remember thinking "holy crap, I need to learn VB!" when that deal went down.

of course I remember ICQ. can't you leave your ICQ number here on your profile? I don't remember my icq number though.

[soonerbrat]

20429771. maybe.

[soonerbrat]

i'm like 90 % sure that's it. i haven't used it in years but I always remember numbers for some reason....phone numbers, birthdays, etc.

[jkjsooner]

As for thinking that anyone could have created Facebook, well, the book title that movie was based on says it all: "The Accidental Billionaires."

That's why it's probably safer to become a patent troll. I know, a lot easier said than done and hindsight is always 20/20...

[SanJoaquinSooner]

It was more than just creating it. It was also being very strategic about the exclusivity of it. At first, you had to have a harvard e-mail address, then they gradually started adding other ivy league schools. The film suggested adding Stanford into the network was key since Stanford is the educational heart and soul of Silicon Valley, and since Sean Parker became aware of it at that point.

It reminds me of when a developer is filling out a masterplanned community by starting with the building of million dollar homes first, then adding in the lower priced homes later. It's got million dollar status that people want, and they can get it for less than a million.

When it came to OU, it still was exclusive to .edu accounts only, and it was set up to show all OU accounts easily for beginning OU users. Same for other schools.

quite different from myspace.

Of course it lost the exclusivity factor when the .edu address requirement was dropped so that grandma can tell us about her cooking and cleaning dilemmas each day.

[StoopTroup]

Macros and algorithms give me wood.

[MR2-Sooner86]

I wouldn't call Facebook the first of anything really. Facebook was just able to evolve their business model to put them on top. MySpace was out before Facebook and for years was beating them but didn't change their business model and look where it got them.

When you think about it, how many businesses start out like that?

Sam Walton started out by buying one store.
Steve Jobs built the first Apple in a garage.
Bill Gates dropped out of college to help start Microsoft with another guy.
The first Google server was in a garage of a friend.
Youtube was a couple of friends wanting to share some videos between one another.

[jkjsooner]

It was more than just creating it. It was also being very strategic about the exclusivity of it. At first, you had to have a harvard e-mail address, then they gradually started adding other ivy league schools. The film suggested adding Stanford into the network was key since Stanford is the educational heart and soul of Silicon Valley, and since Sean Parker became aware of it at that point.

It reminds me of when a developer is filling out a masterplanned community by starting with the building of million dollar homes first, then adding in the lower priced homes later. It's got million dollar status that people want, and they can get it for less than a million.

When it came to OU, it still was exclusive to .edu accounts only, and it was set up to show all OU accounts easily for beginning OU users. Same for other schools.

quite different from myspace.

Of course it lost the exclusivity factor when the .edu address requirement was dropped so that grandma can tell us about her cooking and cleaning dilemmas each day.

Yep, I got that from the movie.

Other than the exclusive marketing philosophy (which in reality may or may not have been entirely intentional), I think the concept of a friend relationship (based on a request and positive response) is the most powerful feature in Facebook. I'm guessing some other sites had a similar feature but I don't think Myspace did. Myspace seemed to be more about creating your own personal website which hardly draws the 30+ crowd in.

The friendship structure allowed someone who had been out of high school for 20-40 years to reconnect with old friends. To reconnect from X to Y, all you had to do is friend someone who happened to friend someone who happen to have friended Y. That may not be what sucked in the students at Harvard and Stanford but it is what sucked in mom, pop, grandma, and grandpa.

[Taxman71]

Google is a good example of this. That brings up one point. When I look at Google I ask, "Can I do that?" The answer is clearly no. I don't know the first thing about distributed searching algorithms like that. On the surface such a large-scale search algorithm seems like an impossible task.

That's what differentiates Facebook. It is something most developers could have done. Heck, I'm not even a website developer and I could have done it.

When Google first burst on the scene, I was like "great, it is just like Dogpile search only faster....".

[JohnnyMack]

When Google first burst on the scene, I was like "great, it is just like Dogpile search only faster....".

I still use askjeeves.com

[badger]

I wouldn't call Facebook the first of anything really. Facebook was just able to evolve their business model to put them on top. MySpace was out before Facebook and for years was beating them but didn't change their business model and look where it got them.


I just ROFL's during American Idol this past week, when they were talking about myspace on it. Now why, do pray tell, would Idol, in trying to remain relevant and outdated, mention an irrelevant and outdated site like Myspace?

(hint: both are owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp)

It must just kill Fox to have two once-popular, outdated and irrelevant things on their hands that have been (or soon will be) overtaken by and new, better thing (Facebook and Simon's new X-Factor show). At least with the case of X-Factor, they'll still reap the rewards of its success as it will air on Fox.

[sperry]

Exclusive marketing is what did it. Myspace was full of society's lowest common denominator, while Facebook started out being the "it" thing among students at the nations best universities in 2004. People liked being on Facebook because you wouldn't be hassled by the riff-raff. Meanwhile, since it was selective, obviously everyone else wanted in. By the time they let all the common trash (and older educated people) onto the site, it already had some real functionality, other than just a picture and the ability to poke and add friends, which was all it was at first.

[StoopTroup]

Never tie your zipline to your chimney.

[bluedogok]

Anyone remember the chat program called ICQ? It was a no-frills freeware chat program that had some features but basically anyone with software skills and administrator-level knowledge of network protocols could've written it in their free time over the course of a couple months.

The guys who write it sold it to AOL for $400 Million Dollars. Probably a huge, inexplicable "WTF!?" moment in AOL's business history but I remember thinking "holy crap, I need to learn VB!" when that deal went down.
AOL had a lot of those moments once dial-up internet started winding down.
It is also example #1 of what happens when a corporation buys something they know nothing about. Example #2 could be Yahoo buying Broadcast.com for $5.04 billion making Mark Cuban even richer and buying GeoCities, etc. Example #3 could be News Corp. buying Myspace.

[Blue]

Decent flik. I didn't care for some of the cheesy dialogue, but I'm not a fan of Aaron Sorkin. It felt like an episode of Dawsons Creek at times with the vocab and fast talking. All in all worth watching though.

[SanJoaquinSooner]

Decent flik. I didn't care for some of the cheesy dialogue, but I'm not a fan of Aaron Sorkin. It felt like an episode of Dawsons Creek at times with the vocab and fast talking. All in all worth watching though.

Know what you mean about all that vocab and fast talking. Need to go to the menu, select Languages, and click on Okie.

[Sooner5030]

So You Want to Close Your Facebook Account

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