I really wish the media would distinctly separate media companies from technology companies. Facebook is not a technology company. They are a media company. They make money from eyeballs on advertising no differently than CNN or FoxNews. Google claims to be a diverse technology company but they make almost all their money, despite their various products and investments, from data micro auctions that populate paid listings and advertising on their search engine. Amazon is a general retail company.

In this vain almost every company in business is a technology company. Almost every company has software developers and writes software products. I work at a bank as a software developer to further the business of the bank. Wisely, my employer clearly claims to be a bank and not a technology company.

Examples of technology companies are companies that sell technology as their end product like NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, Apple, Micron, and so forth.

Why do you think they should be classified as a media company? Is it to apply the relevant regulations?

In my eyes, Facebook is a company of software and hardware engineers. They produce software as a service. That sure sounds like a tech company.

If regulations are what you're after, new ones should be created for their specific business.

>"They produce software as a service."

No Salesforce, Box, Slack, Zendesk - these are examples of SaaS companies. Customer pay for those services, the service is the product being sold. With FB the user is the product being sold.

Who is the "user" product being sold to? A business, right? And how do they buy the product? Thru a web browser, right? How is that not SAAS?

>"Who is the "user" product being sold to? A business, right?"

Yes and you just illustrated my point. Advertisers aren't buying software from FB they're buying access to FB users.

Because the product being bought isn't software.

> With FB the user is the product being sold.

This is not strictly true. FB makes Workplace, which is a sort of Facebook for internal and cross-company collaboration (competing with Slack): https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2017/10/26/f...

You can be pedantic all you want but FB Workplace is many of the regular FB platform features repurposed without the advertising. Workplace is not their core product nor is it where the majority of their revenues or engineering efforts are concentrated.

Since they're using it internally to make facebook work, I'd say it's a core product and a lot of engineering efforts are being expended to make the company run better.

It just also happens to be something you can sell to others too.

Since you consider it a core product, what do you estimate the portion of Facebook's revenue comes from this core product in relation to the billions they receive elsewhere.

I don't know, how much do you estimate any given road contributes to the GDP of the US?

It's infrastructure that enables the rest.

What makes you think they produce software as a service? Their users aren't their customers, advertisers are.

That term refers to software applications made available in a browser. That's how I view Facebook.

That's the medium, not the product.

A company that makes radio program, and generates revenue by selling ad spots, is a media company.

A company that makes TV programming, and generates revenue by selling ad spots, is a media company. It's in the same line of business as the radio company, even though the radio company doesn't have any soundstages or camera operators.

And guess what, both of those companies stay media companies even if they start streaming sound or video in a browser instead of on the TV. That's just replacing the distribution team, a rather small part of their business by headcount. They're still media companies, because they make money by selling ad space in content.

The distinguishing feature of facebook is that it takes user-generated content, and generates revenue by selling ad space. That's the "social" in social media, it's what makes social media different from traditional media. But the other part is the same: They generate revenue by selling ad space inside the content that they manage.

No "software applications made available in a browser" is not the single defining characteristic of SaaS. SaaS is foremost a licensing and delivery model although it is often accessed via a browser it is not a prerequisite. There are SasS offerings with desktop integration points, sync clients, native iOS apps etc.

Sorry if this is an obvious question: would you call Microsoft Office 365 a software as a service? They charge per user per month I think.

Yes I would consider Microsoft Office 365 a SaaS offering. It's licensing is done via a subscription and delivery is via infrastructure managed by MS.

They aren't providing software as a "service"- they're providing user data and eyeballs as a service.

You're confusing the business model (advertising) and the medium (software).

I think we've come far enough to realize that there are many business models to the concept of software being delivered in a browser as a service. The original model was companies paying a monthly fee for a subscription. Now we have many different types of models. The point is that FB makes an application for consumers and businesses. It is delivered as a service through a browser.

The more coherent litmus test for "technology company" is the role of R&D within the organization, irrespective of line-of-business.

On the clearly non-tech company side are those which purely consume off-the-shelf products. Your neighborhood bodega probably does most of its business through computerized cash register and credit card terminal, but is unambiguously not a technology company.

Then there's a vast middle ground where the company engages consultants and maybe a small in-house IT cost center to integrate and operate off-the-shelf products. Some of the more sophisticated players have unique enough requirements that they start to commission their own technology (or at least customizations to their existing SAP, Oracle, etc). This could be done internally or through contractors, but not as a core competency. Emphasis is on meeting requirements as specified by the business and at the lowest cost. Most banks would fit in this category. People who operate the line of business run the company; IT are support staff who occasionally automate the even-lower-status support staff.

Then there are companies whose core competency is R&D, whose technology teams proactively develop and augment products on their own initiative, whose leadership views R&D as an investment/competitive advantage/core of the business rather than as a cost of doing business. This tends to reflect in the social status and compensation of engineers. Engineers (and product and design engineering management) run the company; everyone else is support staff for whatever drudgery engineering hasn't automated yet. This is what we say when we mean "technology company."

But the only way to be a pure technology company is to license your tech to others to commercialize, and even then, by your logic, that would make you a patent licensing company. Most tech companies have a line of business. It could be advertising, entertainment, retail, transportation, trading... anything under the sun. The difference is how they go about it.

I will rephrase then. Is Facebook primarily a technology company or a media company?

I don't think they're a media company. A media company would have some expertise in selecting and/or producing content.

The closest Facebook gets to this is feed ranking, but that has no real resemblance to anything a traditional media company does.

I don't think being a company that makes money by advertising makes you a media company. Google Search makes money from advertising, but is even more clearly not a media company.

This line becomes blurry ... Google also sells hardware devices, Amazon as well... Microsoft as well ...Advertising is a big market and it looks like that everyone tries to get a chunk of it...even TV manufacturers (with their App stores etc). Now it's quite common to develop a device that runs only some DRM software(i.e. various TV sticks, coffee machines, music players).

Google "sells hardware", yes, but Google makes somewhere in the realm of 99% of it's money on advertising. The fact that they technically have other businesses doesn't change who they are. You wouldn't call Google an ISP, yet Google also has both Fiber and Google Fi.

Google is an ad company... with hobbies.

(Microsoft is almost certainly a "software company" even though they sometimes make hardware, and while Apple does make it's own software, it is indisputably a "hardware company".)

> but Google makes somewhere in the realm of 99% of it's money on advertising

almost 15% of google's revenue in q4 2017 was hardware/cloud/subscriptions. there's possibly a bump in hardware since it's q4, but 'in the realm of 99%' is not close at all. and this is trending upwards.

(yes yes, googler here)

Thanks for the correction! 84% of statistics are made up on the spot, and I'll admit, I didn't check current numbers before this comment. Mind you, I don't think the percentage significantly changes the value of my point.

I do wonder if that statistic will change enough for advertising not to be the core of Google's business though.

I think you make a good point, but actually AWS is where Amazon makes most of their profit. Can they call themselves a technology company?

Google and their cloud offerings are a little different. For the most part Google is an advertising company with expensive hobbies but it's always possible they'll figure out how to add another 800lb gorilla to their portfolio.

Now don't start calling NVIDIA and Intel tech companies. Aren't they just an 'Electronics retailer' like Best Buy and Fry's ? I mean they make money from selling CPUs and GPUs. If you say they are tech companies, then you'd call Best Buy and Fry's tech companies as well, given they sell technology as their end product.

In all seriousness, does it really matter if Facebook is a tech company vs a media company? Their primary focus and energy spent is on tech, so let's just call it what it is. I don't see the glamour in being labelled a tech company.

There's no such thing as a "tech" company in the first place. Technology is intangible knowledge, techniques, strategies, and information. Every single company on the planet uses technology as a means to an end, that end describes the actual type of business.

Every company is a technology company now (or soon will be if they want to survive). It's a meaningless label.

How is Apple a technology company when their main business is selling consumer electronics?

After working for a bespoke semiconductor foundry, I can’t help but be annoyed that “technology” == software.

It irks me when I see people say things like "life was so much better before all this technology".

You mean like agriculture? Writing? Stone tools? :-)

What definition of "technology" are you using?

I disagree that iPhones are simply "consumer electronics ".

This is a diversion from the important point the parent was making

I've begun to wonder if the double standards and hypocrisy are a symptom of our industry where a college education isn't required and maintaining ethics isn't really encouraged.

Sure you might spell out what you're doing in your TOS, but if your advertising sells a different story and you let people believe that instead, is that behavior ethical? I don't think so.

For some people, however, this might feel acceptable.

It is a bit of a shame because of we can't act ethically ourselves, I fear clumsy regulations will be created to correct us. We should have done better with the power we had.

If professional ethicists are no more ethical than other philosophers I think we can lay to rest any hope that education in ethics effects behaviour.

Ethicists’ and Nonethicists’ Responsiveness to Student E‐mails: Relationships Among Expressed Normative Attitude, Self‐Described Behavior, and Empirically Observed Behavior https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/meta.120

How does college education have anything to do with living ethically?

College provides (and usually requires) courses specifically focused on topics like business ethics, philosophy of law, environmental philosophy, environmental ethics... How much any one person takes these courses to heart is up to them, but college provides an exposure that wouldn't otherwise be required.

I'm not trying to say that everyone needs college, especially not with the costs it takes. I'm only trying to question what it is about our industry that seems to make unethical behavior so acceptable.

I believe that almost anyone can learn to code if they're interested, but self-teaching doesn't necessarily show you why you shouldn't use that to overpowered others.

I know of ethics courses. Obviously there are moral implications for actions in many professions which aren't readily apparent.

A few courses are not going to fix these problems by a long shot.

Peter Thiel, went to Stanford and got not only his BA there, but also a JD. Alex Karp has a JD from Stanford. Harvard MBAs care about one thing (hint: it isn't you). Construction and large infrastructure projects are rife with corruption. Our political system is corrupt. Barack Obama didn't stand up to the status quo of institutional behavior. Doctors prescribe opioids to white trash and speed to kids. Prosecutors are "tough on crime" solely for their own career advancement. The Milgram and Stanford prison experiments... This isn't confined to tech, or people without higher education.

I heavily question the assumption that learning philosophy or ethics courses will make one more ethical. I think being required to do something makes it less likely to take it heart in my experience.

Yes it would be delicious irony if the downfall of Facebook happened because of the very technology and data collection that they created.

The only threats are advertisers pulling out or users leaving. Most people like Facebook for staying in touch.

Sad but true. Most wouldn't choose to work on this sort of garbage but it is what seems to make money.

How is Thiel’s Gawker funding in conflict with Palantir.

These seem like very different things. Palantir is a massive investigation software tool like many other BI/Analytics tools. Palantir doesn’t collect data, but use data others collect. It’s like complaining because Excel is used to analyze the Facebook data.

Gawker encroached his privacy, but Palantir was built to do exactly that to the public, at scale.

Are you sure? Palantir doesn’t encroach privacy more than R or SAS or any of the other myriad analytics software.

Are there examples of Palantir collecting data? Or violating user privacy?

They work directly with the government to enable them to do so. I’m not faulting them directly, just pointing out why the link can be made.

I think Palantir is mostly a joke, overpaid consultants selling subpar technology backed by slick salespeople and PowerPoints. Like IBM.

Palantir won't work w/o any of the data. Facebook would work w/o the invention of a spreadsheet. I mean, they could just program their own.

I’d be more surprised if people working for a company like Facebook weren’t raging hypocrites. Other than stratospheric levels of cognitive dissonance, hypocrisy or just not giving a shit is the only way someone could work for them. In my experience far more people are hypocrites than truly callous and uncaring.

Peter Thiel though, seems like less of a hypocrite and more like someone who just says and does whatever he thinks is personally advantageous, and screw everyone who isn’t Peter a Thiel.

There is the possibility that they well and truly believe that living inside a panoptikon that also manipulates us to manufacture desire for products and consent for political goals is the best of all possible worlds.

Or they are in it for the money and are lacking in ethical integrity.