Today Facebook’s vice president of product marketing, Chamath Palihapitiya, a former venture capitalist (Mayfield Fund) and once the head of AOL’s AIM division, spent a few moments on stage at TieCon, where he proceeded to describe Facebook in a rather unusual manner. According to a quote published in a piece by Stephanie Olsen of CNET News, Palihapitiya seemed to start off well enough, but gaffed thereaft, so to speak:
“We view ourselves as a technology company at our core. We're the cable company creating the pipes, and what they carry is social information and engagement information about people.”
Okay, I’m positive he means well. Obviously. But his talking points could’ve used some extra editing, for sure. Facebook, akin to a cable company? Creating plumbing for Web users? Wow. Alaska Senator Ted Stevens might as well raise his red flag and declare plagiarism here and now.
Looking at the summary of the man’s presentation at TieCon provided by CNET, it would seem in Facebook’s best interest to not generalize its role in networking as much as its marketing rep at the conference allowed. Yes, in its most basic form, it is a social platform. (Dime a dozen, right?) But it’s a valuable piece of kit in and of itself. Billion-dollar kind of valuable, even. (Of course, $15b is a fantasy, but I’d say it’s got $1-3b worth of pop at the moment.) So, yes, by all means, Facebook’s representative can harp on about the proverbial social stack and various elements that make up our communicative Web 2.0-enriched experiences. But it seems Palihaptiya, in relaying his sermon, tried to tear down the barriers to entry for developers so much so that Facebook essentially took the guise of a commodity, or a service provider devoted to maintaining the cables whilst third-parties run (almost) free.