At the very least, let’s stop be surprised by it.

I think by petty, he may have meant the small-minded and spiteful definition of the word.

So, uh, by using “Schmuckerberg” and “The Twinklevoss Turds” you pretty much fit into the petty category.

Just sayin’.

Schmuckerberg is a schmuck because he continues to pretend he cares about users and their privacy while the whole time bending them over for a good, old-fashioned buttfucking.

The Twinklevoss Turds are turds because they’re nothing but over-privileged assholes who weren’t happy with getting more than enough compensation for their insignificant contribution.

Thanks for your two line, wisdom-packed contribution to the discussion.

I don’t know that you have a high enough vantage point to be calling someone else petty.

Companies came to Facebook, adding another revenue stream for FB (in the form of bought ads that are seen by people who have not ‘liked’ their page), signed up and spent THEIR COMPANY RESOURCES paying an employee to fill their FB profile with content. Content that benefits Facebook. These companies signed up with certain understandings, namely that they could communicate directly with people who engaged with their brand on FB.

Yes, I’m sure this change is well within the legality of FB’s T&Cs. But legal doesn’t equal fair. Had the litany of companies that spent their own resources paying someone to manage FB known that one day they would have to pay for access to customers who had already registered for updates then I’m sure most of them would’ve just bought Google adwords for the equivalent value of the salaries they had to pay employees to manage their FB profile. Changing the rules half-way through the game is, in anyone’s book, unfair.

Having explained why FB’s moves are unfair, it’s pretty easy to see why they are also stupid. Companies will realise that Twitter is a much better way to communicate with their fans without being asked to cough up cash or their first-born son. Companies will soon realise their cash is better spent on Google adwords and FB’s share value will continue it’s plummet to single figures. I don’t know why you’re infatuated with FB to such a degree that you’re willing to blind yourself to their endless stream of dickish moves.

[Edit: Apparently this is only true for friends. It looks like the only settings for Pages is Opt-In/Opt-Out.]

We have a ready solution. It’s called RSS. I’m working on my first novel (and I hope to get at least one pair of eyes at BoingBoing on it, but that’s a big thing to ask and I don’t have anything to share yet), but I fully intend on using my own blog/RSS as my primary form of publishing, with echoing on social networks (this means I’m going to have to finally sign up for Facebook, ick) and interaction as secondary means of reaching conversations.

Facebook isn’t a platform in a true sense. It’s a limited platform in that you’re playing on their playground. Don’t be surprised when your business model becomes part of Facebook’s monetization model and you become second priority on their site. Twitter’s demonstrated the same thing with its massive API policy overhaul this year. You’re either going to get bought or crushed into irrelevancy in the long run, and you can’t be sure which you’ll get first.

Raise your hand, those who didn’t see this coming.

EDIT: A-a-a-and now everything works. Weird.

How many times do “publishers” on the web have to learn the same lesson.

STOP GENERATING FREE CONTENT FOR OTHER PEOPLES BUSINESSES!

I learned this lesson early on with MoG. 

You sign a deal with the devil and get burnt every time you do this.  Also lets stop blaming businesses for acting like businesses. 

But then I thought about it in terms of Twitter: if I actually wanted to follow some company on Twitter, I would be rather annoyed if Twitter started randomly preventing 95% of their tweets from being seen by their followers unless they coughed up more money.

Is that analogy accurate? It seems a little hazy to me because I already expect that I am only seeing a small percentage of things happening in my facebook feed — as far as I know, not everything a friend does appears on my feed, does it? So my basic understanding of facebook is always that I’m seeing some random bits of jetsam that float by in the vast river of information, and so I wouldn’t even expect to see 100% of a company’s messages.