jimmy wales now my [facebook] friend

What, this doesn't merit a blog entry?

Last week I wrote about a shoutout in a Valleywag (yes, Owen poked back). In it, I recounted bumping into Jimmy Wales at a party a little while back. And pinned him! (with a reddit pin)

Apparently he remembered, too, and I wasn't just having another bad trip. Say what you want about Jimmy, he's a great facebook-friender.

This should be very encouraging news to startups with their logo on 1" buttons. Those who have yet to jump on the pin bandwagon are already way behind every emo band and all the startups who want to be successful.

That VC funding isn't going to spend itself. OnceInchRound is the preferred button supplier of reddit and breadpig. I was not paid to type that, but I kinda wish I were...

valleywag teaches me a new word and proclaims our friendship all in the same article

I know you're here for the new word, which is apotheosis.

ideal: model of excellence or perfection of a kind; one having no equal

As in, Facebook's "People You May Know" feature a geek apotheosis, the headline of a recent Owen Thomas piece. Even though Y Combinator's HackerNews is banning Valleywag, I've got no beef. And when they do stuff like this, making me feel like the prettiest belle at the ball, it's hard to dislike them.

Sure, I thought Facebook was a little off when it hinted I might be friends with Jimmy Wales, but the service is barely out of beta. Other suggestions, like Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, who I met casually once at a bar, is a perfectly suited addition to my list of Facebook "friends." Thus my faith in Mark Zuckerberg's ever-improving software remains unshaken.

There you go, proof that an open bar and Mark Sugarmountain can connect people like never before.

I happened to meet Jimmy Wales briefly at a party, too -- I even gave him a reddit pin, which he wore (note to scrappy startups: begging/blackmailing Internet celebrities into wearing your schwag is perfectly acceptable. In another century, they called it "gumption"). But facebook doesn't think we should be friends. Hmpf.

BTW, Owen, I just poked you.

facebook comes ever closer to myspace-hell as i do the unthinkable -- unfriend someone

I know I'm friends with a couple facebook spammers. It's not that I'm masochistic, they just provide me with a steady source of blogging material. Until now. Well, until after this blog entry.

Lydia Palmer did the unthinkable this morning, she posted this to My Wall:For those of you who don't use facebook (how's that Friendster account treating you?) I should explain that The Wall is a place to exchange thoughtful messages about recent drunkenness, sporting events, and interpretations of Dickensian themes through the lens of the 21st century.

I also use it to show off animated .gifs I make of my friends dancing:

I really should make a YTMND out of this.

But you get the point, there is clearly a distinction between acceptable and unacceptable Wall postings. Lydia, I'm sorry I had to do this, but you've been unfriended (with a bum-wagging Pikachu saying an appropriate farewell).As word spreads across the Internet, you'll not doubt be left friendless by the end of the day. You only have yourself to blame.

Oh, and I'm also putting you on notice.

become an official "facebook fan" of reddit

As facebook slides closer toward the spam-hell that is MySpace, I'm proud to mention that we now have a reddit brand page on facebook. Hmm, maybe "proud" isn't the right word...

There's not much going on there at the moment, but with a little bit of love and attention, it could become a worthwhile destination. In the meantime, we promise not to spam you.

I consider it a pleasant alternative to the "reddit alien" account I tried to create, which was disabled for what I perceive to be xenophobic reasons. They forced me to rename "reddit alien" to "Alexis Ohanian," which ought to explain why the real me appears to be married to myself.

Now hopefully the friends of the reddit alien can just switch over to becoming "fans of reddit." Just like your favorite band, only significantly less cool.

welcome to the fakebook

Speaking of facebook, I've inadvertently friended a spammer.

(No, it's not Jason Calacanis.)

Allie Dimeco seemed like a plausible enough name, but it looks like he/she was too busy giving out free drinks (the facebook app she's spamming) to come up with an original facebook photo. Allie ganked the pic from a real girl, who even called her out on her wall. That's gotta be awkward.

Assuming these two girls are not identical twins who happen to also take identical photos, one of the two is a fake. I'm going to take Lindsay's side.As disheartening as this is, it's my first encounter with a genuine facebook spammer. Looks like it's time to start getting vigilant about facebook friendships. But how will I know if it's the real Natalie Portman trying to friend me??

I wonder how much longer until we hit a MySpace-esque critical mass of spammers...

I had a MySpace account long enough to regularly get friended by "Tiffany," a blond with glamor-shot profile pic and purportedly "awesome" webcam.

I hear she now has her own Justin.tv channel.

what reddit taught me about startups: fuck facebook, make real friends

I've already explained how fortunate we were to get that email from Kourosh back in Feb 2006, but I'm often asked how that email ever made it into my inbox.

Was it some savvy marketing? Advertising trick? PR scheme? Pure business acumen? Illicit activity?

None of them (although some days I wish my life were interesting enough to include illicit activity for the purpose of increasing business).

Through another YC startup founder, I became friends with a NYTimes reporter. She was this founder's guest to a Halloween party we threw that first Halloween. I was just sober enough to make a good impression. We hit it off and although she never wrote about reddit, she did me the much bigger favor of lending her sofa whenever I'd visit New York (I had a small rotation of very understanding friends whose sofas I slept on; I haven't forgotten their generosity -- a gentle reminder to all those friends of startup-founders-needing-a-place-to-crash).

On one of those Fung Wah journeys to NY, she introduced me to a freelance tech reporter who I met for coffee and cannoli one night in Little Italy. We became friends too, and it didn't seem right to write an article on reddit since we were friends. Understandable. But unbeknownst to me, she mentioned a cool site called reddit to one of her editors. This editor happened to work at Wired. And go figure, she was also Kourosh's wife.

So it wasn't long before the director of CondeNet biz dev was hearing from both this freelancer and his own wife that a certain social news site with an alien mascot might be worth contacting. And we know how persuasive women can be (see: MacBeth).

Then this showed up in my Gmail:

I'm a friend of [aforementioned freelancer]. I'm also the director of biz dev for CondeNet, the internet arm of Conde Nast [...] I'm intrigued with your technology and was hoping to set up a time to talk about possibly working together. I'm open the rest of the day today and Thursday, but will be traveling for a week starting Friday. Do you have time for a phone call? Also, are you based in Boston?

Go ahead and make a few new friendships (read: not facebook friends). Just don't think about these relationships through the lens of "what can you do for me?" -- not only will it doom you from the start, you'd never even guess what might happen anyway.


*Updated to add some more detail to the story. And link to a photo of Steve and me that first Halloween. He's the one dressed as Paul Graham.