Mark Pincus' Blog

Bogus comments

I'm getting a number of comments from people with fake names and email addresses. Going forward I will be deleting any comment with a fake email address or web link. If you want to comment on this blog be man or woman enough to reveal your true identity or go some where else.

Going too far

The worst part of the recent financial meltdown and market crash is that it will fuel a new round of pundits claiming this as the proof that free markets don't work.

Rather than pointing to a better solution with facts and data they will simply say this is proof that we need govt regulation.

See this month's vanity fair story 'the economy' by joseph stilglitz. He states, "a unique combination of ideology, special interest pressure, poplulist politics...sheer incompetence has brought us to our present condition."

And that 'the new populist rhetoric of the right - persuading taxpayers that ordinary people know how to spend money better than the govt does'

And...'Economic theory - and historical experience - proved long ago the need for regulation of financial markets.'

Am I missing something? If 'economic theory' proved this, maybe mr stilglitz would be kind enough to clue us in with actual references. I was under the impression that economic theory proved that free markets were the long term solution with small doses of regulation to maintain a fair and level playing field for all participants.

He goes on to say that if we would just tax the rich more would 'would provide better incentives where they count and would provide more revenue and lower deficits'. Does he mean better incentives to earn less money?

so this guy basically believes that socialism is a better system. Let's see. The govt is better at spending our money. Financial markets should be regulated. And we should incent people to be equally poor.

And he says 'throwing the poor out their homes because they can't pay their mortgages is not only tragic; its pointless'. Now who is going for the populist brain dead rhetoric? So all our problems were create by a small number of greedy wall street execs. All those people buying homes with no money down or borrowing against their equity to buy new cars. They weren't robbing peter to pay paul? They were just poor innocent victims? They shouldn't have known better? Why is it the lender's fault for giving the money? Nobody forced these people to borrow up their eyeballs.

It always seem to be the ultra liberals, especially socialists who treat 'the people' like they are naïve children. We can't expect these poor souls to realize they can't afford to borrow money. The govt's job is to protect us from our poor selves. Don't let us drive too fast or smoke or borrow too much.

We all saw this coming for a few yrs. Why didn't the govt complain while this was going on? Why wait until it all blows up to say there should have been more regulation?

Sf weekly story on tribe

I thought the sf weekly story was fair and balanced. As stated on this blog, AT and I have been working to replace darren and put tribe in a stronger place where it can be up all the time.

We appreciate the help offers from the tribe community and have engaged with some of you already.

You have all built a passionate community and we are respectful in honoring and protecting your property which we have been hosting.

We are all frustrated by the site problems and want to fix this asap.

I'm sending thanks and love out to all of you who have been supportive and understanding.

Mark

zynga is hiring (leave wall street!)

fred wilson had a great post on this so i'm copying:)

zynga is looking to hire another 70 able body engineers, game designers and producers.

we offer healthy organic home made lunch and dinner and unlimited alcohol.

email flo@zynga.com.

oh, and if you're looking to leave wall street and love games send us your resume too.

tribe update - communications, people

fyi, AT and i are working on getting direct access to the tribe company blog so we can post updates regularly there.

we've appreciated all the comments and passion around tribe and are reading all of them (which isnt easy!).

more transparency...tribe does make enough revenue from ads and user premium accounts to cover its basic costs. btw, darren has done a great job in managing this and getting the whole operation into a more affordable facility. people are right that tribe lacks the resources for new development, but i'd like to remind everyone that most users HATE change to their web utilities (when's the last time you saw craigslist change?).  people are right in pointing out that whether tribe is a for profit or non profit it has to show a profit to sustain. AT and i remain committed to this outcome and believe that is entirely doable.

patti was kind enough to send in her thoughts on how to make tribe a better service - ie. listen to the core users. my goal right now is to see tribe achieve long term sustainability first. and most important to that is to find a long term steward to take over from darren. we have received interesting notes from people who would be interested in doing way more with tribe. great. we agree that tribe can eventually be a terrific business serving the social media needs of its core users.

pls keep the comments coming and we promise to soon post updates directly on tribe. you can also find these posts on my tribe profile.

update on tribe

i'm responding here to the multiple comments coming in from tribe members.

first, regarding who's operating tribe. darren has submitted his resignation. it seems like lately it became a big job for one guy. AT and i are hoping to hire another great sys admin. the job pays $70-90k depending on the skillset. we think its a great job and hope great people apply.

regarding transparency on the business and economics. it has been thanks to the members who purchased subscriptions that tribe has managed to break even and continue. businesses dont normallly share this information but we are open to reconsidering that.

in general, we have kept tribe going because of YOU, the passionate community. it is NOT a great business, but that's not the point. the vc investors are long gone. we are not operating it in the hopes that it will be a major hit like facebook or myspace. we are open to the idea of making it officially a non profit, however there is a lender that is still owed some money and they would have to agree.

there's been a lot of talk about the fact that 'i have moved on'. yes. that's true. tribe stopped being a full time ceo gig for me about 3 or 4 years ago. i am passionately building zynga as a social gaming company that can offer (hopefully) innovative games across all social networks.

we remain committed to seeing tribe persist. we realize how much investment you the community have in this site, in your blogs and photos and tribes. we take this responsibility very seriously and consider it our duty to safely steward your web community.

i think we should organize a bar night and get everyone together to talk about it all. AT and i can try to answer questions and hear everyone's ideas.

user response on keeping tribe alive

we have received some great supportive comments regarding ways to keep tribe alive. i wanted to repost one here from shannon

Hi Mark, I don't know how closely you follow tribe, or if you have enough to hang out there. But you have a very dedicated user base. Last year at this time, we were willing to put up money to maintain our community, and we followed through. We are just as dedicated, and just as willing to see things continue. It seems as if, from Darren's various posts, that tribe was at least self-sustaining if not profitable, between user subscriptions and ad revenue. Tribe has growth potential. There's still huge word-of-mouth interest, and it has a serious following. It's not going to become the next Facebook--nor should it be. Your users are on average older, more intelligent, and more independent-minded than the average social network user. People are buying, selling, trading, looking for and finding jobs, developing professional communities of scholars, writers and artists--all pretty much on their own. It is working. But it needs technical support--not a huge team, just a couple of people with the time and expertise to maintain and upgrade it. Many users have volunteered to help. My suggestion? Actively solicit the assistance that's being offered. Make an announcement, run an ad, whatever it takes. You _will_ get a response, and tribe _can_ thrive. But please don't just let it go to hell. It's too important to too many of us. Best, -Shannon

Obama critiques

I have recently gotten a few positive notes from people (rare indeed!) appreciating criticism from an obama supporter.

I have to say that it is scary to witness the level of rabid blind support for obama. Many other O supporters have confided the same odd feeling of being in a cheering crowd and missing any content. Any time large groups stop questioning leaders and worse squash those few that do, we risk moving to dangerous extremes.

Today it seems uncool to question why obama has no coherent economic or tax policies. The nytimes mag story on 'obamanomics' failed to name one logical policy. Instead the author gushed about how young and hip the new candidate was.

Why is it that I cannot find one major media outlet doing a deep dive on the whole concept of 'just taxation' - taxing the rich not to raise govt revs but to better equalize income disparities. I'm having the same out of body experience as 7 yrs ago when we actually engaged in a dialog about what kinds of torture were ok and when. Nuts! Where was the outcry from pulpits to press that we would have zero tolerance. Google and read the arguments on this blog.

Today we talk about taxing the rich and equalizing incomes as if it too is a normal 'moral' idea. Is there a proven history around this policy as there is with reagan's supply side economics?

At the risk of being the heretic (sp?), I will state what is painfully obvious and not discussed. There is no proof that raising taxes will help the poor. Even the IRS reports that increasing cap gains tax will decrease govt revs.

Lately, I've asked people whether they would prefer a system that generated greater wealth for all but came with a greater spread from richest to poorest. Surprisingly, all have said no. They'd prefer less wealth with more equality. Well, why not just move to a socialist country? Who are you helping? Shouldn't we be trying to provide the greatest std of living to the most?

I've also pointed out that the majority of our country wants to be 'rich'. Nobody tunes into 'who wants to be equally poor?'.

Why is it that every election forces us to vote with our wallet or our conscience? Crazy old white men who won't fuck with our economy or raging liberals who mistake our desire for better social policies to be a mandate for socialism.

When will someone start a viable third party that offers the libertarian values so much of us truly believe in? When will someone democratize democracy?

Keeping tribe alive

This is a shout out to the tribe community. I want you to know that we are getting your messages and you're not abandoned.

Darren has been working to move the site to a new colo and it went down as a result. Its mostly back up.

Some of you have offered help and we could use it!

Email darren@tribe.net.

Telluride film picks

Another solid crop this year. Here's my picks/reviews

* slumdog millionaire - coming out in october. Awesome. Don't miss. * flame and citron - great foreign flick about danish resistance in wwII. * adam resurrected - awesome. Jeff goldblum's best performance. Will be a cult classic. * good the bad and the weird. Great korean take on old spaghetti western.