veyron

"At the end of the day it's best to have everyone in the company (post-deal) feeling like they got a good deal. Kinda like a partner/wife - you never want to feel like you're the one that's trading down in the relationship."

By definition someone is trading down. If the valuation is low, the company and its people lose out on potential money. The FB approach (extreme valuation), while discouraging most people, at least maximized value for those that liquidated at the IPO.

They have cemented their position. They can, at this stage, suffer down time without too much concern (hell, even twitter was down recently)

Someone (I'm looking at you, gandi.net) should give a "GoDaddy is Down" discount for domain registration. I'm ready to migrate the domains I didn't change during the SOPA fiasco ...

How would you envision a desktop trackpad that doesn't converge on the design of the apple magic trackpad?

"Far greater than 65.5% of my household accesses Facebook and/or Twitter."

In my social circles, Facebook/Twitter usage clocks in at about 15%, so the numbers of the survey were at least minimally surprising ...

I wrote "65.5% of US Internet population", not "65.5% of US Residents".

That also means 65.5% of US Internet population is using Facebook or Twitter, a mind boggling statistic

(not a kindle owner) Can someone with a kindle explain exactly how the ads work and why they would be offensive? From what I heard they just show up when you aren't using the device.

"which was something the recruiters hide pretty well."

The recruiters actively sell the idea that pedigree matters.

"They are attempting to create an artificial scarcity that promotes their idea of what a good dev is."

No. They are catering to a group of people who specifically care about pedigree. They are trying to replace the role of the recruiters who do the same thing.

"but I think they douched it up by focusing on the wrong things (school and company affiliation). "

They focused on the right thing. The target audience isn't the startup that cares about getting the best people, just the ones with the best pedigrees. This would be perfect in finance.

It's adverse selection: the type of people who would use this service are probably not the people you want working for your startup. The really successful people would be picked off in other ways (not actively recruiting) so you are left with the B and C players (which ironically are a dime a dozen)