#hackercup2011′s Zuckerberg hack
p2pnet view P2P | Advertising:- “Let the hacking begin: If Facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn’t Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way? Why not transform Facebook into a ’social business’ the way Nobel Price winner Muhammad Yunus described it? http://bit.ly/fs6rT3 What do you think? #hackercup2011″.
That was the message posted on the hacked profile of Mark Zuckerberg, owner of social advertising site Fa$ebook, who’s never seen a piece of user data he doesn’t covet for re-sale purposes.
Says the Wikipedia item referred to by #hackercup2011 >>>
A social business is a non-loss, non-dividend company designed to address a social objective. The profits are used to expand the company’s reach and improve the product/service. This model has grown from the work of Muhammad Yunus and others.
Social business is a cause-driven business. In a social business, the investors/owners can gradually recoup the money invested, but cannot take any dividend beyond that point. Purpose of the investment is purely to achieve one or more social objectives through the operation of the company, no personal monetary gain is desired by the investors. The company must cover all costs and make revenue, at the same time achieve the social objective, such as, healthcare for the poor, housing for the poor, financial services for the poor, nutrition for malnourished children, providing safe drinking water, introducing renewable energy, etc. in a business way.
The impact of the business on people or environment, rather than the amount of profit made in a given period measures the success of social business. Sustainability of the company indicates that it is running as a business. The objective of the company is to achieve social goals.
You’d think that’s be appropriate, wouldn’t you? After all, according to Zark Muckerberg, Fa$ebook is all about delivering a service to the people.
But he prefers to climb into bed with the likes of Goldman Sachs, the huge banking firm specialising in legal thievery, and Alisher Usmanov who, said Valleywag in 2009, is “good at seducing the softies in California’s tech community: An investment firm he backs lead a $180 million investment in Zynga, the gaming company that trafficked in scammy ads”.
The Valleywa post continues >>>
The investment firm, Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies, led a broader group of investors in putting money into San Francisco-based Zynga, according to the New York Times. It’s DST’s second Silicon Valley conquest, following two investments in Facebook earlier this year that totaled $300 million and that allowed the social network to cash out employee equity.
Usmanov (pictured), who reportedly owns 32 percent of DST, comes with the sort of unsavory press clippings worthy of a long-survivng [sic] oligarch in anarchic, organized-crime-ridden Russia: He’s been accused by a former British ambassador of being a “gangster and racketeer” and of close ties to mafia drug trafficking and, as we’ve reported previously, controversially tried to censor bloggers who linked to news of the accusations.
Then there was this, last year: After Usmanov bought a chunk of mobile phone operator Megafon through a holding company and from a fund called IPOC, a former Megafon shareholder said he had been physically coerced into selling his Megafon holdings to IPOC; he later disappeared from his bloodstained vacation home in Latvia.
Zynga is used to dealing in the dark fringes of the markets; it made loads of ad revenue off scammers who deceptively sold “learning CD” and SMS subscriptions to gamers trying to earn virtual currency and now faces a class action lawsuit. Now, despite all the company’s talk about reforming its way back into the light, it is, in a way, going deeper into the shadows. Zynga CEO Mark Pincus once bragged about “doing every horrible thing just to get revenues right away.” Let’s hope, for his sake, he’s not making such a recklessly calculated move now.
And now Fa$ebook, the source of Zynga’s fame and with which Zuckerberg recently organised a five-year partnership, is doing what all corporations of its ilk do: it’s looking after its shareholders and investors.
Screw the people it depends on.
Still happy with your Fa$ebook account?
Good one, #hackercup2011.
Stay tuned.
Alisher Usmanov - Psssst. Wanna buy shares in Facebook?, January 18, 2011
Valleywag – Alisher Usmanov: The Scary Russian Oligarch Seducing Silicon Valley, December 16, 2009
five-year partnership – Facebook, Zynga, 5-year partnership, May 19, 2010
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
World War III will be a global information war with no division between civilian & military participation ~ Marshall McLuhan
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