Baron VC

I caved into curiosity and happened on an invite to i’m in like with you. I was curious about it despite the unfortunate name or more because the unfortunate name. It begs the question, “what makes it so different?” and “how do they keep the buzz?”. Usually I try to avoid Flash-heavy sites like movie pages. They bog down the browser and try to force you into an ugly custom interface. I think that’s why Google Maps appeals to geeks more than Yahoo Maps because Google goes brute force trying to make things work cross browser with AJAX which is enough to earn geek respect. But I digress…

I really can’t say anything new or witty about IILY. Like other’s have said, it is like Ebay for flirting. You basically have to woo and win the right to flirt with the obsession of your choice with points. You can make flirting games where you pose a question or offer a prize.

They’ve got a bunch of camera toys to capture you on video with a sprinkling of visual effects like glitters and flames to make it interesting. Think Photobooth on the mac.

Chatting with a friend, I think the general consensus is that it probably doesn’t have enough broad appeal outside the geek set. Of course, trying to woo women from behind a glass cage will eventually lure geek men into it like a honey trap but still, IILY needs to find a sweet spot for the general user if they plan on keeping it “by invite only” as they say.

Having said that, IILY is a shock to the system on so many levels because it brings you an immediate jolt of “fun” from the first moments you log in. It’s a flirting game with probably one of the best Flash interfaces out there very tastefully done. They are onto something good but still a long way to go. Like any dating or flirting site, you need something to keep people coming back.

Like any other such site the odds favor attractive young women. How do you make it less onerous for the women who get bombarded by digital advances from all the creepy crawlies while not setting the bar too high for the creepy crawlies themselves? It’s a difficult question but IILY does have one thing going for it in this department: fresh meat.

I’d be interested to see how IILY unfolds. From the bidding wars I’ve seen and participated in, it might even have a good revenue source from the get go if they can figure out a good way to exchange points for cash.

I’ve read a good chunk of Inside Facebook thanks to Mashable’s free promotion. It’s a great insider’s look into one of the fastest growing social networks by a former senior engineer. The book is fascinating because it captures the author’s experience at the best moment, immediately after the party comes to an end. It’s written by an insider who’s been an outsider from the day he joined as a 30-something engineer that was clueless about the true power of the product he was working on under a boss roughly two thirds his age. To be perfectly blunt, the writing style of the book is a bit amateurish and the author tries to cram too many half-digested lessons in entrepreneurship into the narrative. But perhaps, that’s part of the charm and genuineness of the book, an ordinary engineer at the right place at the right time swept up into one of the most amazing periods in a company’s history. It’s probably the most revealing and best look we’ll ever get of what it was like to be at Facebook in the early days and a story that none of the more key members of the team would not be able to tell because they lack the detached perspective.

To be fair, despite the heavily promotional nature of the site, you can tell that the author still cares deeply about the company he was with. Almost like a jilted lover who wishes well from the bottom of their hearts.

I found a lot of interesting bits in this book and it was a fascinating read. Here are some of the things I walked away with.

The Facebook Founder is fearless

Mark Zuckerberg developed Facebook like no other can. Young, brilliant, and not dumbed down into submission by a college education, Mark put Facebook onto a good start by taking a no holds barred approach from Facebook’s inception. In the early stages he scraped Harvard student data and spammed friends (I use the word spam loosely). He was even brought before Harvard’s administration for these breeches but unlike most, Mark never looked back.

Fast and Loose Coding

The site had over 2.5 million members at the time, and well over a billion pageviews per month. Yet there was no source control and code changes were all made as root.

That pretty much sums up how fearless they were coding the application. Of course, they did later migrate to source control (programs to keep track of changes you make to an application’s source code) but they were also adventurous in moving to PHP5 when it was released. Facebook mainly hired on youth and brilliance rather than experience and qualifications. Facebook also gave them enough space to run free with their ideas and see their code make a dramatic impact on the community.

That’s not to say their code sucked. In fact, it was most likely the opposite. What they lacked in standard source management practices was adequately compensated for by the technical excellence of their engineers.

Conclusion

I think it all comes down to the fact that Facebook was built for the very audience they cater to and by fearless and brilliant engineers who weren’t bogged down by “real world experience” to guide them in what they could or couldn’t do. They went against all textbook notions of how to develop and market a traditional tech startup while staying true to the spirit of truly successful startups before them like Microsoft and Google.

Would I buy this book? I probably would if I didn’t have this promo but a smaller excerpt. The juicy bits were a priceless read and this will be the only book you will get it from for some time to come.

Facebook is really doing some exciting things as evidenced by their personal feeds (which made pageviews sky rocket) and opening their API like no other platform instead of dancing a murky tango with third-party developers like MySpace. Yet at the end of the day it will always be people and only about people on the inside and outside. Facebook certainly has potential to be the social backbone that other social apps launch off of. I can only hope that Facebook continues to attract genuine talent that genuinely care like the author of this book.

Free Access to Inside Facebook