A couple weeks ago I posted on the oddness of Facebook being honored for its business acumen.  At the time I made the point that Facebook had made some impressive technical achievements but had not yet proven itself as a viable business and certainly didn't deserve to be honored as such. 

After thinking on it for a couple weeks I came to the conclusion that the business community just gets enamored with tech companies.  Something about the creation of new business models makes them abandon any rational analysis of a company's actual performance or future chances of success.

That theory is what's on my mind after reading the news that Marc Andreessen has joined the board of Facebook (as reported by Techcrunch)...

Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, Opsware and Ning and the former CTO of AOL, is adding a new notch in his belt: he has joined the board of directors of Facebook, two sources close to the company confirmed to us (speculation about Andreessen possibly joining the Facebook board started last month on the Boomtown blog). The company should be announcing it shortly, perhaps this week.

I have a lot of respect for Marc Andreessen from the technology perspective and the guy is a master at selling companies for more than their probably worth.  But a business man who builds for the long term he is not. 

In fact, Netscape's downfall was largely due to the fact that he and Jim Clark squandered their resources at the same time they were taunting the biggest, most aggressive company in the IT industry.  The end result of which was to take a company that was already profitable and on its way to long term success and effectively bury it.

That makes Mr. Andreessen seem like an odd fit given Facebook's insistence that it's in this for the long term. 

Even more bizarre is the fact that he's founder, chairman, and a full time employee of Ning which is a direct competitor to Facebook.  This isn't like Eric Schmidt of Google joining the board of Apple even though both companies make Cell. phone technology.  Facebook does one thing, Ning does one thing and they're both the same thing.  Its ridiculous.

I bring all this up to again point out the bizarre nature of Silicon Valley funding.  No company in any other industry would dream of pulling a move like this particularly when they had no profits and no viable plan to eventually turn a profit. 

Addendum: I stick by what I said in the post above but in thinking it over I wanted to add a couple things. First, Andreessen was 22 when Netscape was founded and only 28 when it was acquired by AOL so it’s a little unfair to hold a lot of what happened at Netscape against him. Second, though he’s famous for turning huge profits on companies that aren’t that successful it should also be mentioned that he makes more of an effort than most to stay involved in those companies. He stayed on after Netscape was acquired by AOL and he remained chairman while Loudcloud/Opsware was changing hands.  That should all count for something.

Microsoft's David Treadwell put up a preview of the new Windows Live Platform that will be introduced at the Mix '08 conference.  There's too much to quote but you can read the post here.  I'm planning to withhold judgement until I see the actual release but I did want to put a quick post up to describe my overall feeling about Microsoft's these days.

Back in 1997 the browser war was in full swing.  Version 3.0 of each browser had just come out the year before and both Microsoft and Netscape were readying massive upgrades in their 4.0 products.  At the time people were so fixated on the grudge match between the two companies that I think something got lost in the shuffle. 

Microsoft was actually the good guy. 

One of the long forgotten ironies of the 90s browser war was that Internet Explorer was by far the more standards compliant browser.  Netscape was throwing in proprietary technology everywhere while Microsoft was submitting everything to standards bodies.  I don't mean this as a shot at Netscape or even praise for Microsoft, they were both acting according to their position in the market.  But it is interesting that Microsoft got little credit for doing all the right things.

Now we have another grudge match between Microsoft and Google and while its not exactly the same (Google's a lot more open than Netscape was) I can't help but feel Microsoft is the more open of the two. 

Sure they want to control the plumbing but who doesn't?  Beyond that, someone's going to have to do it.  Why shouldn't Microsoft have my contact information if they're willing to give it back to me anytime I ask?  Why shouldn't I also give them my photos if they're willing to standardize all their API's around AtomPub?

There are people who simply won't accept that Microsoft can do any good.  But anyone else has to admit that Microsoft is moving in the right direction and deserves a little credit for it.  Maybe even a little trust...