When Jack (Dorsey) met Mark (Zuckerberg)

No matter what Jack Dorsey (CEO, Twitter) says, he is going to come under criticism. While some of it is justified, but a lot of hyperventilation in the media is because the press is in a compensatory mode. After having championed Facebook, Twitter and others as saviors, a decade later everyone is waking up with a bit of a hangover.

Occasionally, though you come across a piece that is worth your attention, I enjoyed the Rolling Stone interview with Jack, and he was as open as a chief executive of a publicly traded company can be, about himself, his company and well, social media in general.

The article asked (a few) difficult questions, and got some decent answers. Could Rolling Stones magazine be more aggressive in its questioning? Of course, it could be — but remember we are living in the golden age of access journalism. That said, given that


What’s wrong with Zuck’s photo?

Over on Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg, as he normally does (or more accurately as his social media team does) shared a photo with his wife, Priscilla Chen, celebrating the arrival of 2019, and wishing his followers good tidings. But something isn’t right with the photo. It seems that his glass seems to be taller than hers, even though the width of the glass seems similar.

His fingers look a tad weird, as pointed out by Steven Goh, who noted that his “his forefinger on his left hand is disproportionately large 2 his pinky.” One of my favorite writers, Taylor Lorenz thinks Zuckerberg’s face looks too “face-tuned.” Anyone with additional thoughts can share them on Twitter.


Facebook’s Second Life

“Once it was clear how bad it was and how mismatched they were, everybody had this awakening: We have made some mistakes, but these guys know even less,” an anonymous executive told Nicholas Thompson, editor in chief of Wired who reported on Facebook’s internal reaction to Mark Zuckerberg’s visit to Washington D.C., which was (as my readers know) a predictable bit of pantomime and theater.



First $100 Billion (decline) is the hardest

After a brief few months sinking below its IPO price, Facebook has lived a charmed life on the capital markets. The stock has risen like a majestic Himalayan peak, hitting a whopping $193 a share, giving it s valuation of $560 billion. That was on February 1, 2018, long before the Cambridge Analytica revelations and the rise of the #deleteFacebook meme.

While there might not be people deleting the service — I mean what else will a world filled with boredom, polarization and cat photos going to do — but the Wall Street has taken a big bite out of its market capitalization. Facebook closed at $157.20 a share this week, with a market cap of $457 billion, down roughly $100 billion from the peak of $560 billion.


Fake News is spam

In the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections, I was invited to a television panel hosted by BBC around fake news. It was a wide-ranging deliberation, but my argument was that Facebook (and Mark Zuckerberg) were shying away from what was their responsibility as platform owners. My contention was that fake news was like spam on email platforms, and it was the responsibility of Facebook to fix their platform. This was a technology problem, I argued because the network acts like anabolic steroids when spreading the fake news (and its various variants.) Given the sheer amount of data intelligence and resources at its disposal, to me, that was a dereliction of duty, a problem that has been a feature (not a bug) at Facebook. 


Why Facebook will never do subscriptions

It was a week where the media finally started pushing Facebook around data, privacy and its lackadaisical approach to it all. And despite all the sound and fury, we will soon move on, and nothing really will change. And the reason for that is money — or rather how it makes money. Data and engagements are the foundation on which Facebook’s empire of near monopolistic micro-advertising stands, as I explained in my previous essay. In order for the system to work, like a hungry monster, it needs more data, more usage. The busier the feed, more advertisers will have to pay to find ways to get the attention of the users.


The #1 reason Facebook won’t ever change

Facebook’s (much deserved) media nightmare continued this week when it came under criticism for spamming members who signed up for two-factor authentication. This was followed by charges that its Protect VPN software (based on its Onava CDN) was essentially corporate spyware. The collective outrage over Facebook and its actions might result in a lot of talk, but it won’t really change Facebook, its ethos, and its ethics. Let me explain!