What's that sound coming from Facebook?

BusinessWeek thinks it's the cha-ching sound coming from the cash register as developers sell their Facebook applications and head for the door. But in reality it's just the sound of thousands of ambitious geeks trying to suck from Mark Zuckerberg's teat. Seriously. Sex-deprived brainiacs beware. This Facebook App stuff has pyramid scheme written all over it. Better to become an Oracle DBA and do serious work that can change the world and make you a bundle of money.

But let me tell you about this one app called Make a Baby. I really think it has potential. Check it out. You hop on Facebook and look at people's pictures until you get a hard-on or the female equivalent. Then you hook up and make a little virtual baby that looks like the two of you. Easy, right? The best part is that you don't even need to virtually procreate with a member of the opposite sex. Man oh man. Just think of the possible combos here. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Steve Ballmer and Jonathan Schwartz. (Sorry. Bad image. Talk about some fugly offspring.) Peter Burrows and Dan Lyons. Marten Mickos and Zack Urlocker. Or maybe even Jason Maynard and Rick Sherlund. Yes. Friends, I can see the positive energy flowing as I write this. More on these couples as they develop.

BusinessWeek : Screech can learn a lot from MySpace

See here. For those too lazy to read, the article says that Facebook isn't doing all it can do to keep kids safe from sexual predators. The article cites a bunch of reputable off-duty police officers hanging out in strip clubs. Don't ask me where BusinessWeek finds these people, okay? I have no friggin idea. But anyway, according to the police officers, MySpace has some Perl script that flags profiles with words like "kill," "rape," "shoot," "gang," "Mark Zuckerberg," and "facebook." They take all the profiles that contain those words and they delete them. Facebook doesn't do that, so it's not as safe.

I know the article sounds stupid, but it's really not. And next month BusinessWeek is going to run another article about how Facebook needs to adopt MySpace's 1995-style colors and website design. The new article will also talk about how Facebook needs to let companies pose as people, let spammers create bogus profiles, and put advertisements for strip clubs at the top of every page. Then, according to the article, Facebook will be worth over $200 billion.

Kevin Rose: Digg now worth at least $1 billion

This website valuation stuff is getting out of hand. Now TechTV darling Kevin Rose says his script kiddie website called Digg is worth a cool $1 billion. According to Rose, Screech says Facebook is worth $10-$15 billion so Digg must be worth at least $1 billion. Never mind the fact that half of Digg's "registered users" submit one or two articles and then never come back. And never mind the fact that the other half of the registered users -- the ones who actually do use Digg -- are males under the age of 9 who have no purchasing power whatsoever. Their balls haven't dropped and they digg anything with the words "pwn" or "digg" or "Kevin Rose" in the title. But the fact that they digg stuff like that is a good thing according to Kevin. The web is growing up and tastes are changing and people are evolving. Don't you know? It's a new media thing. That is, until CBS or Rupert buys Digg. Then it will be an old media thing.

UPDATE: Kevin just called and thanked me for the plug. He said he's going to digg my blog in the hopes that somebody with a fat wallet will see this entry and give him a ring. He also wanted me to say that he'll throw in Revision3 and Pownce for another $3 billion. Um, yeah.

Does Mark Zuckerberg look like Screech or what?

So I'm sitting here reading these articles about Facebook and I'm thinking, Jesus Christ, Zuckerberg looks like that turd from Saved by the Bell. You know, that weird guy named Screech. (See resemblance above.) And actually, now that I think about it, they have more in common than just physical appearance. They both have $2,000 curly hair cuts that make it look like they just rolled out of bed. They both dress like people from the late '80s. They both have problems meeting and interacting with women. And neither one of them knows when to stop. In fact, I guess the only thing they don't have in common is shooting pornos. The real life Screech is the Dirty Sanchez expert. I don't think Zuckerberg has gone there yet, but you never know. The nut doesn't fall far from the tree as they say in Chicago.

Shit for Brains wants a piece of Facebook

And he wants it bad. See here. He keeps calling Zuckerberg every hour, on the hour, and tacking a million dollars onto his bid for 5% of Facebook every time he calls. A reputable source told me this morning that Shit for Brains is not handling the stress well. Apparently he's gone off the deep end and is really, really freaking the Microturds out. He's graduated from throwing chairs to throwing desks. He also lets his tongue hang out of his mouth in meetings now, and he doesn't eat anything except Sloppy Joes and Frito pies in the cafeteria. And for some reason he keeps saying that Novell is going to beat Microsoft to the Facebook investment punch.

Look, this is what happens when you get Google-envy. I warned him. I said, Steve, don't buy stuff just because you think Google might be looking at it. You'll go insane. And he just laughed and said, oh yeah Larry, whatever. But did he listen to me? Did he even stop to think about what could happen to him and Microsoft? No, he did not. And now he's all panicked and shit. He's gone into fight or flight mode and he's going to do something stupid. I just know it. That's Shit for Brains for you, though.

Honestly, Zuckerberg is the real wild card at this point. Like a virgin who flirts with everybody and knows she's going to have to give it up someday soon, Zuckerburg is waiting for the perfect conditions and the right price. He wants the biggest bang for his bling. But believe me, this guy doesn't care who he sells out to. He's just in it for the girls and the press right now. But that period passes. You can only bang so many girls and be on so many magazine covers before the shit gets old. He's almost at the point where he just wants to get his money and get out. But he's being careful about it.

Naturally, we're taking advantage of the situation. We got one of our guys to talk about how Facebook is worth a lot more than SFB thinks it is and give a lot of crazy optical illusion examples to prove it. We even got him to put this at the bottom of his blog: "Disclaimer: All opinions expressed here are personal opinions of the author(s) and do not reflect opinions of Oracle or any other person/organziation." Listen, the dude's legit. You have my word. And you can quote him on the price he came up with for Facebook. Really.

The Mark Zuckerberg flowchart

What can I say? It's been a slow day at the office. It took Safra and I like half an hour to finish up everything for the conference call tomorrow. After that I just kind of bummed around and surfed the web for a while. But then I got this great idea. Like, I had this vision, I guess. I saw Mark Zuckerberg's life flash before my eyes, and I needed to write it down in a flow chart. So I did. Just click that little image to the right and you'll see the whole thing. Enjoy.

Facebook's marketing goldmine may be crock of shite

And before the Facebook freaks get all huffy and put a bounty on my head, I'll have you know that the title is actually the Register's. See here. The story goes like this: Since Facebook's 40 million users enter a bunch of bogus numbers for things like age, height, etc., all of the trends and factoids gleaned from Facebook's data are probably bunk. Or they're just common sense things, like college students drink beer on the weekends, and Microsoft employees pick their noses at work. That sort of thing. It doesn't do anybody any good. It's kind of like how we know Oracle users are unmarried nerds who eat dinner alone and watch The Simpsons before going to bed at 11. Despite what you might think, that kind of information doesn't help us. Well, okay. It does a little bit. I mean, we know that we should use sexy women in our advertising and sponsor speed dating events. But that's it.

So what's next for Mark Zuckerberg? Why, more investments, of course. While announcing the new fbFund last night, Zuckerberg said that Facebook is "just looking for innovative and disruptive things." Which makes perfect sense, when you think about it. When the demographic numbers don't add up, just go and virtually knee your friends in the nuts. Sounds like fun. You know, I hope somebody goes and creates a virtual nose-picking application that lets you flick boogers on your friends. The Microsoft people would have a field day with that.

In case you're wondering, no, I didn't write this

This graduation speech I supposedly delivered at Yale a couple years ago has been floating around the Internet for a while now. Listen, people. It's a fake. A phony. And it was probably a cockeyed scheme to extort money out of yours truly. I mean, I know it sounds a little like something I would say to thousands of wide-eyed graduates. But come on. I'd never actually deliver a graduation speech like this. What I'd really talk about is how graduates can delay the inevitable onslaught of the grueling 9-5 workday by coming to Oracle. I'd tell them that working for Oracle is like prolonging the magic. With our strong fraternity culture and K.E.G. lunch program, we have everything recovering alcoholics need to succeed.

BTW, people seem to think I blow a gasket when I see stuff like this. I don't. Honestly, I laugh my ass off. Because to tell you the truth I would love to deliver a speech like this. Unfortunately, I can't have people running around pretending to be me. We're suing the dude who wrote this, and we're also pressing charges. Turns out his name is Mark Zuckerberg. He is, coincidently, also a college dropout.

Oh, great. Now Facebook "saves lives."

See here. This dude's friend was beat down for wearing the wrong gang colors in downtown Atlanta. Turns out he shouldn't have been wearing a Twins cap near the Braves stadium. Who knew? Punks stole his camera, cell phone, and car keys. But thank God for his Facebook profile. It had all of his friend's phone numbers. If that hadn't been there, he might have had to... uh, remember his friend's numbers? Seriously, people. This Facebook stuff is out of control.

Two questions. First, how much did Zuckerberg pay to plant this article? And second, how reliable can Facebook be if it uses MySQL? I mean, really.

This is what happens when you're a butthead

First you go to college. You get drunk at freshmen toast, sleep with a couple hot co-eds, pledge the fraternity with the highest women to geek ratio, watch meteor showers while stoned on the roof of the SUB, and laugh at jock jokes so hard that beer comes out of your nose. Then you take a couple computer science classes and think, gee, I should create a music application and make some money. So you do that. But you get kinda bored, because what you really want to do is meet women and find out who's banging who in the dorms. Then you think, gee, I should create a website that lets people create profiles and link to other people and then I could make some serious payola. So you do that. And then, before you know it, you're in the New York Times and you're rubbing elbows with big wig venture capitalists. You drop out and start up. You have a fast car, strong entrepreneurial spirit, and a girl on each arm. Nobody can stop you now.

Except yourself.

Look, Zucker. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you bet wrong. You fucked up. You refused to sell your cheap Friendster-imitation website for $1 billion, and now you're flushing your brand name down the toilet with all of these stupid developer applications. And no, you don't have a networking utility. What you have is a PHP/MySQL site that my cats could code blindfolded.

I can't believe I'm about to say this, but here goes. I'm willing to buy Facebook, Zucker. And I'm thinking $20 million is a fair price. Honestly, that's probably too much since you don't even run Oracle databases. But give me a call, bro. We'll talk.

But MySQL is a four letter word

So, a bunch of people are writing in and complaining about how I use MySQL like it's a four letter word or something. Apparently they think the open source database is really great and cool and awesome because companies like YouTube, Flickr, Yahoo, and Facebook use it. And it must be great if Facebook uses it, right? Because Facebook is, like, so cutting edge here in the Valley. They have that new "developer platform" that allows people to create "applications" that let you virtually bitch-slap people and somehow enable your dog to log into your account and update it. Or something. And they don't think I should have called Marten Mickos a butthead.

Okay. You people are right about me calling Marten a butthead. I made a mistake, and I apologize for that. In fact, I should have used a much stronger derogatory term, but I didn't, because children under the age of 13 read my blog and I want to be the bigger man. Marten loves to rag on me in interviews like this. Well, guess what, Mickos? I'm not stooping to your level.

And for those of you who think that MySQL is a great database, I have only the cold knife of pity. Using MySQL is like trying to do Calculus with a third-grade math book. When you're doing real work, you need real software -- software like Oracle. Of course, we don't give it to just anybody. That would be like giving a Calculus textbook to a third-grade student. Grow up, and then come to us. Everybody does in the end, even the MySQL puritans.

No, I'm the CEO, bitch

I love these kids who drive out here from Boston or Nashville or wherever and think they're hot shit. They have a couple girlfriends and daddy's BMW and big ideas about changing the world. And the best part is that they all think they're original. Like thousands of other guys before them didn't do exactly the same thing exactly the same way, right? Yeah. Cracks me up.

So anyway, this guy comes in to see me yesterday afternoon. I see him walking down the hall with two girls on each arm. He's not wearing any shirt or shoes, and his shorts are ripped all to shreds. Oh, and he's carrying a surfboard, too. And his hair is all curly and greasy and sticking up like the guy's in Napoleon Dynamite. So I'm about to call Oracle Homeland Security, because the guy looks like a real flake and a freak and I'm not sure who let him in or why he's walking towards my office.

And then he says, hey Larry. How's it going? I'm Mark. Remember me? And I'm like, Mark? Mark who? And he says, Mark Zuckerberg. You know. The Facebook guy. Then he drops one of his trademark "I'm CEO...Bitch" business cards on my desk, and I swear to god all of the girls with him gasp like they've just seen Matt Damon or something. And I just sit there, because I'm not really sure what else to do. And then he says, look, I'd like some free complementary Oracle databases to store pictures of all the drunk girls in bikinis and guys hitting bongs and all the other beautiful people who have decided to use Facebook. It's a really great business opportunity for you and Oracle, Larry. Like, you know, Facebook will be using your databases. And then all the girls gasp again.

And I'm just sitting there trying not to laugh, right? I finally say, gee, Mark. That's a really nice offer, but I think we're going to have to pass this time. And if you ever come into my office and spout shit like this again, I'm going to have to cut your funding. And then he rolls his eyes and says, you don't fund me Larry. And I'm like, uhhh, that's what you think, kid. Who do you think owns the venture capitalists who own you? I do, you little turd. And then he just laughs and walks out.

You better be careful, Zucker. Because you're going to lose your street cred if you keep talking like that. God, some people have a lot of nerve. I would can that kid right now if I didn't look at girls on Facebook like twenty times a day.