Uncrunched

In 2010 the relationship between Facebook and Zynga became strained over Facebook’s demand that Zynga use Facebook Credits (and swallow Facebook’s 30% fee) for games. The relationship became so strained that Zynga was preparing to launch its own network outside of Facebook.

Like the 1962 U.S. standoff with the Soviet Union over the Cuban Missile Crisis. If things went to war both sides would lose big. But neither side wanted to back down.

Eventually Zynga did back down, swallowed the fee, and went on to its IPO.

I was reporting on the strain at the time, with sources close to both companies. But there was information I was never able to get my hands on. Emails back and forth, supposedly, that were alarming, entertaining, or just plain threatening, depending on your point of view. I tried hard, and failed, to obtain those emails.

Lawyers could get their hands on those documents, though, as part of a lawsuit. And they’d likely become public if that happened. That’s why this Facebook Credits lawsuit is more than just a little bit interesting to me. It’s mostly just historical curiosity at this point, but I’d like to know how close they were to firing the nukes.

We’ve all sat next to people having loud plane phone conversations before takeoff. But I rarely hear people yelling extremely sensitive corporate information around a group of absolute strangers. Both happened to me last night.

The guy who stood in line behind me, and eventually sat next to me, spent about ten minutes on the phone while we boarded the plane and up until takeoff. He went into a lot of detail about how the COO, Daniel, had to go. Because, apparently, Daniel keeps sweeping bad stuff under the rug.

I’m calling the guy on the phone/plane “Moe” for this post to keep things straight. He was talking to a guy I’ll call Larry, who I guessed was either the CEO or a director of the company.

There’s a new guy coming in, I’ll call him Curly, who’s either taking the CEO spot or Daniel’s spot. Moe was concerned that Curly would get spooked by Daniel’s firing, which was the main point of the conversation.

Since every name was repeated to me over and over I know the actual names of this COO getting fired (sorry Daniel, but you have to deal with this bad stuff, not just ignore it), as well as Larry, Moe and Curly.

So just to be clear on who’s doing what – Moe was talking loudly on the plane to Larry and was concerned that Curly, who’s yet to join the team, might be upset that Daniel is going to get fired.

Because I’m able to use Google I also now know the name of the company involved. I could have figured it out on the plane by firing up a conversation, but I wanted to challenge myself to figuring it out on my own.

I’m not going to just out all of this information here, but I probably would have a year ago. Or at least given Daniel a call to let him know that he’s out and Curly is taking his place. He’s completely out of the loop, unlike everyone on my flight.

A whole lot of amazing people have left TechCrunch in the last several months. I’m sad to hear that the next to go is Jason Kincaid (his personal blog is here), who is leaving without firm plans for his next job.

I first met Jason in 2008 via Mark Hendrickson who was working at TechCrunch at the time. Like many of the writers we hired it was a very quick interview. He was just out of UCLA with a biology degree and was thinking of freelancing with the Economist. I hired him on the spot under a 30 day trial period, which I used as a sort of extended interview period with many new writers. Within days we’d hired him full time and since then he’s been part of the foundation team at the site. He was definitely a keeper.

One of my favorite Kincaid memories was when he discovered a new “fax” feature on Facebook that the company had launched just for TechCrunch writers hoping that we noticed it. Jason did.

But I also remember the many, many big stories he scooped. Here’s just the most recent one. Another example – He broke the story about Apple banning the Google Voice app from iOS, which led to a FCC investigation. There are countless other examples of his diligent and brilliant work.

Jason has the rare ability in a writer to both break big stories on his own, as well as write strong opinion articles on the topics of the day. Younger writers (who were often older than him) looked to him for leadership and guidance. He could have quite easily run TechCrunch entirely after we left.

As much as old tech empires continue to criticize the work of sites like TechCrunch, they were constantly trying to hire Jason away from us. I once sent an email to Damon Darlin, the tech editor at the NY Times, asking him curtly to please stop trying to raid our writing team. He was at the time aggressively pursuing Kincaid. Many others also tried to steal him away.

It’s a big loss for TechCrunch to lose Jason now. Whatever he does next, it will be amazing.

Image from down the avenue.

Update: Kincaid’s farewell post.

Update 2: Paul Carr writes about Jason on Pando Daily.

Update 3: TechCrunch’s post on Jason.

“Cats were pulled out of kennel cages, injected in the chest cavity and then dropped on the floor to die.”

I don’t understand how there’s any question that this person should be prosecuted:

Yet, a former HCAC employee told Harris County officials and Fox 26 news that, while working at Harris County animal control, she found a live Chow in a freezer. Apparently, after a HCAC employee attempted to kill him, he was put in a freezer. It is believed that he had been in the freezer for at least 24 hours but the dog had managed to claw his way out of the trash bag and survived. It is clear that not one employee of HCAC bothered to confirm the cessation of vital signs on this dog, as required by state law, before placing in him a garbage bag and throwing him in a freezer.

This story almost had a happy ending because, after finding the dog alive in the freezer, a HCAC employee offered to adopt him. But, this almost happy ending became horrific when we learned that, after surviving an attempt to kill him by injecting him with poison and after surving in a trash bag in a freezer for 24 hours, Dawn Blackmar ordered him killed (again). Instead of adopting the dog out to the person who offered and giving him a chance at life, Blackmar chose to have him killed. Blackmar’s behavior, although shockingly not illegal, is outrageous and should be unacceptable, especially as Director of a so-called “shelter”.

What can you do? Adopt a pet, never buy one, and support your local Humane Society.

The only comment I really have on this story by Dan Lyons about Robert Scoble supposedly creating a new venture fund is this – If he got it wrong and has already publicly apologized on Google+, why in the heck hasn’t he at least added an update to the original article?

Because to do so would be to admit that process journalism actually exists. Real Journalists never get things wrong because they’re “real journalists.” So the apology, if it must happen, never gets anywhere near the original article.

I also find it fairly awesome that this entire cycle of stories was originally spawned by Dan Lyons defending Nick Bilton’s article that, well, apologies just aren’t good enough when you’ve done something wrong.

As an aside, this article by Dan Primack is one of the best things I’ve read about the true conflicts of interest faced by tech writers.

The old press is still having the same conversation about the new press: objectivity! Here’s the latest by the L.A. Times, titled Are Silicon Valley tech bloggers truly objective?

This can (and has) gone on and on and on.

I argue that there’s no such thing as objectivity, and that transparency is a much higher standard to aspire to.

My clearly stated goals on this site: Transparency, Truth and Bias.

Not objectivity. The opposite of objectivity.

The other side argues that this isn’t objective writing as defined by journalism schools and therefore wrong. The argument is ridiculous (more on why below). But since there’s this appearance of ethical lapse, it has legs with readers.

But the core argument, that readers need to be protected from biased but transparent blog posts assumes that (1) readers are idiots, and (2) that the traditional press can somehow cover tech properly.

The real question isn’t about whether I can keep writing what I want to write (I do have certain constitutional rights).

It’s really about whether the community should or shouldn’t want me to write.

Here’s what I think –

1. Readers are not idiots, and even if they were the traditional press is in no way capable of “protecting” them from their idiocy. Because of no. 2 below.

2. The traditional tech press understands very little about technology, or startups, or venture capital. Their coverage is therefore pretty awful.

3. Much of the complaining about my writing is driven by competitors who clearly have their own financial conflict of interest in complaining about me.

4. Why not just drop it? I was already fired by AOL. Is their position really that I need to stop blogging on a completely personal site as well?

5. How do they propose to accomplish that? Social ostracism? Presumably, since there’s no one left to “fire” me.

6. And finally, why in the world would the community not want the opinions of insiders on the tech topics of the day?

I remember the days when the only way to get your message out was to filter it through the press, and it wasn’t very informative. Now there’s direct communication by people who have real knowledge about issues.

In the end this debate feels like it’s more about the insecurities of the old tech people than it is about “objective journalism.”

What process can get us more quickly to “truth” than if the people who have a stake in the matter express their opinions, and then everyone else draws conclusions based on those opinions?

And I can’t figure out why more journalists don’t say to themselves, “wait, carried to its logical conclusion, all I’m asking for is censorship.”

crazy town.

When I started TechCrunch in 2005 there was no question that Palo Alto was the center of the tech universe. San Francisco was really pretty and a nice place to see the symphony, but all the startup action was in and around Stanford University in Palo Alto.

TechCrunch eventually moved away from Palo Alto and set up shop in the southern part of San Francisco. That decision was partially due to the fact that many of the writers wanted to live in the city, but also because San Francisco leases were far cheaper than Palo Alto. Still, it felt odd to be in SF.

Just about everything important in tech seemed to happen around Palo Alto. I remember making fun of Loic and Geraldine, who run the immensely popular LeWeb conference, when they moved to San Francisco. “Just don’t expect me to come visit very often,” I remember telling him.

Even a few years ago larger companies like Google had lots of employees in San Francisco, but it always felt like a satellite office (because it was). There were SF based companies like Salesforce, too, but they were the exception.

Real tech stuff happened in and around Palo Alto. Where Google, Yahoo and everyone else was headquartered. When employees left to start their own companies they generally started them there. And so other startups made sure they were there, too.

Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, where all the venture money was (and mostly still is) had its own gravitational pull, too.

The venture capital is still down there. As is Google and Yahoo, and now Facebook. Y Combinator is in Mountain View, even further south. In many ways nothing has changed.

Something has changed, though. Not only are maturing startups like Twitter and Zynga based completely in San Francisco, but it feels like most of the new startups are basing themselves there, too.

Part of it might be these free shuttles all the big companies run down to Palo Alto every day. Thousands of employees working in and around Palo Alto can now easily live in San Francisco and take advantage of free transportation with WiFi. Now when they leave and start companies, they do it closer to home. Back in the old days living in San Francisco meant a grueling commute back and forth every day. These shuttles have probably led to many people moving to SF that otherwise wouldn’t.

There’s nothing scientific about these observations. But I take a lot of meetings as an investor (as I did as a writer). And over the last several months the vast majority of these meetings are in San Francisco, not Palo Alto.

We’re fairly indifferent on where we meet people. I live in Seattle, MG Siegler is in San Francisco and Pat Gallager is in Palo Alto. AOL lets us use their offices in Palo Alto and San Francisco, and the team tends to form up in different places on different days.

Most people, though, just want to meet in San Francisco.

Specifically, most meetings are in SOMA. And a huge percentage of those meetings, especially the informal ones, are at the Creamery in San Francisco.

If I walk into the Creamery and don’t see someone I know it’s notable. If it’s a slow afternoon in San Francisco, talking a walk to the Creamery will almost always result in something interesting happening. I think CrunchFund has probably closed (meaning the verbal agreement part) more deals there than anywhere else.

Part of why I like the bay area is because so many people there are in tech that it’s the center of all conversation. Even a few years ago San Francisco didn’t feel like part of the party. Somehow it stole the show.

I fondly remember the days I would head down to the local Blockbuster to rent a few movies. Those days are clearly over, I eventually just started buying movies on demand from Comcast.

I’ve learned over time, though, to keep my laptop or phone handy while picking out those movies. Comcast gives a little bit of information about the movies, but nothing from users or professional critics. Since they occasionally push sub par stuff onto their lists, presumably because they’re being paid to promote it, it’s worth it to check it out on IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic.

Not only do I dodge a full bullets, but a good third of the time I just get preoccupied browsing the Internet and I never bother downloading a movie.

Now, I just use Apple TV. I didn’t get around to buying one until late last year, and I only bought it so that I could mirror my iPad on my TV through AirPlay (so that I could look up movie reviews, lol). Long story short, I realized yesterday that I’m now using Apple TV for 90% of my TV time, switching to cable for the occasional look at the news.

And I’ve done that almost entirely because Apple has Rotten Tomatoes reviews available to view when you want to rent a movie.

It’s such a small thing, but it makes it worth the slightly higher wait times for download and the slightly higher price they charge over Comcast. It’s details like that, that make products great and able to compete on more than price.

Of course, sometimes you have to be your own man. I’m watching The Rum Diary no matter what Rotten Tomatoes says about it.

Most of us have memories as kids of raising hell around the house. My mother, being the nurturing and kind person that she is, had little real recourse. Except the one thing. And it didn’t even matter if she said it every day, it worked.

“Wait until dad gets home, you’re in big trouble.”

Gulp.

Dad was really good at exactly two things. Making big 1960’s era mainframe computers work at scale was one of them. Scaring the daylights out of me with a spanking was another. He was the enforcer. If there was some sort of dispute in the house, the last thing you wanted was dad getting involved after work.

Well, dad just showed up. And he’s looking for Apple, the guy that’s handing out people’s contact information to anyone who asks for it. Who’s probably upstairs in his room practicing his innocent face and preparing his “but my friends stole the data even though the users trusted me with it” story. Along with the “hey, we ganged up and beat the crap out of that 4 year old over this, it’s all fine now” story.

And dad’s kinda pissed off right now because the kids just made him look like a moron over SOPA. Dad wants some payback.

This incident raises questions about whether Apple’s iOS app developer policies and practices may fall short when it comes to protecting the information of iPhone users and their contacts.

The tech journalists don’t seem all that eager to look at the dozens of social mobile apps that still download your address book information from your phone (because they haven’t been able to push their update yet). As I’ve said over and over, the fact that Path did this was annoying, but in my opinion not that big of a deal. Still, the company has been eviscerated.

At some point the press, or someone, will go to the trouble of looking at all the apps and figuring out who’s doing this. I’ll just kick things off by pointing out that one of the most popular social apps, Foursquare, is definitely part of this party.

The surface evidence is clear – I created a new foursquare account on my iPhone and it immediately told me that 402 of my contacts were on Foursquare and suggested I connect with them.

There are theoretical (but highly unlikely) ways Foursquare could connect me with them without uploading my contacts, but it’s highly unlikely. So a developer I know went to the trouble to proxy the iPhone through Charles Proxy to sniff the traffic. It showed a substantial amount of data being uploaded to Foursquare from the phone immediately before the screen above was shown with contact information. We perused that data, and it included email addresses and phone numbers for everyone in the phone contacts.

Does this excuse Path? No. But unlike Foursquare and others, (the relatively tiny) Path was proactively changing this before the press hit, which is why their updated app was available and approved the day after the initial stories. That means Path is significantly less evil than Foursquare. And Foursquare is, in my opinion, not evil at all.

Even if they’re also trying to kill Egyptian dissidents like Path.

My recommendation to Foursquare is exactly the same as it was for Path – just nuke all the data and move on. Just because everyone else does this doesn’t mean Foursquare and Path (two apps I love) should.

Who’s next? Let’s just pull the bandaid off and get this over with. And let’s point the blame where it should be pointed, or at least where it will do some good – at the platform which permits this. That would be Apple.

It would be awesome if the tech press changed the focus from “Path is evil” to “this needs to be fixed by Apple.” That would be one option. The other would be to just continue to scream uninformed invectives at anyone who’s trying to have an actual conversation about the issue.

Disclosure: CrunchFund is not an investor in Foursquare, but we’d sure love to be. That’s probably some kind of conflict of interest.