Dalton Caldwell met with Facebook executives to demo a new iOS app he was building on Facebook Platform. The meeting turned into an “it’d be a shame if anything were to happen to your venture” affair:
Mark, I don’t believe that the humans working at Facebook or Twitter want to do the wrong thing. The problem is, employees at Facebook and Twitter are watching your stock price fall, and that is causing them to freak out. Your company, and Twitter, have demonstrably proven that they are willing to screw with users and 3rd-party developer ecosystems, all in the name of ad-revenue. Once you start down the slippery-slope of messing with developers and users, I don’t have any confidence you will stop.
After years of explosive growth and nurturing an infectious culture of free in their users, Facebook and Twitter are now in a state of farcical panic, desperate to do anything to grow up and bring in revenue, just like real companies. Apparently, “anything” means no bridge is immune from being set ablaze.
