The online social connection service Friendster is feeling the heat from its users, now that their new CEO, Scott Sassa (formerly of NBC), apparently gave the word to fire respected software engineer Joyce Park. The reason? Park is a blogger. To quote Park:
It’s especially ironic because Friendster, of course, is a company that is all about getting people to reveal information about themselves…
The posts in question, as far as I can tell, don’t really reveal much of anything at all that I would say warrant a termination, but that’s just me.
Perhaps Friendster sees blogging as a threat, considering news passes among linked bloggers like wildfire. Most certainly this bit of news has already caused a significant backlash, as Friendster users aren’t happy about this development and are now organizing a boycott, asking people to cancel their accounts.
You’ll also note that, unlike the general style of other posts in this blog, Friendster hasn’t been linked (as is customary on first mention). That’s deliberate. This site doesn’t reward fascist behavior with so much as a link.
Isn’t the real issue whether or not she was blogging outside the terms of her NDA agreement ? And whether that is valid or not…well wasn’t that up to her when she signed the thing ? I mean come on.
First off, no one but Park and Friendster know if an NDA was signed. However, there’s already been quite a bit of discussion about this on other blogs, including the fact the Friendster in and of itself released quite a bit of info about its development before Park said much of anything about it. You can’t really claim something is secret if you’ve already spilled the beans.
Also, I can pretty much say that since it appears that Friendster was developing using PHP – the exact same stuff that powers this site – it would be hard for them to say that such development was “propietary” or a “trade secret.” You can’t really develop on an open source platform and expect your product to be fully proprietary, especially when such licenses demand open development.
There’s already plenty of banter going on about this over here, so I think I’m going to close comments on this entry. Anyone ehow wants to debate this should probably go over there.