Fishbowl (27 page)

Kevin flew back to LA with Chris, where they worked together on constructing the palotls. Then Kevin went back to Palo Alto and Chris set to work.

For the next four months, Chris flew to Palo Alto fortnightly and met Andrei and Kevin in Andrei's apartment to review the results.

James Langan wasn't involved. Neither was Ben.

30

FOUR MONTHS LATER
, over the Easter weekend, James Langan took his family to a church retreat in Colorado that they had been attending annually for six years. He came back refreshed, re-energized, at peace with himself and determined as an evangelical to do what he could to share that inner peace with the people he knew and worked with.

The mood lasted for around half an hour, which was the point at which Langan looked up to see the head of the customer service team approaching his desk.

‘James, there's something you need to see,' he said to Langan. ‘Do you mind if I use your screen?'

James pushed his chair aside and let the other man get to the keyboard. A minute or so later, the head of customer services stood back. He pointed at a post on the Sunken Wall of Atlantis. ‘That one there. Right at the top.'

James read.

‘I'm assuming someone's made some kind of mistake or it's some kind of a sick joke, but there's a shitstorm like you wouldn't believe—'

‘It's not a joke,' muttered James, staring at the words.

‘Huh?'

‘It's not a joke,' said James, abruptly getting to his feet and pushing past the other man.

He walked over to Andrei's desk. ‘You got a minute, Andrei? Let's go in there.' He pointed to a meeting room and walked off without waiting for Andrei's response.

The walls of the meeting room were made of glass. Everyone on the floor was watching.

‘Is it true?' said Langan, after he had closed the door behind Andrei.

‘Is what true?' asked Andrei.

‘There's a post in the Grotto saying we've had people working secretly on Fishbowl to promote products. Watches, apparently. The post says we've been doing exactly what we agreed not to do when Chris came up here that time.'

‘When Chris came up here that time, we didn't agree not to do anything, James. You walked out of that meeting, as I recall.'

‘And you never said anything different.'

‘You never asked.'

‘You mean you
did
it?' demanded James.

‘I'm not saying that. I'm saying you walked out of the meeting and never even asked later what we decided.'

‘That's because the idea is so repulsive that … You don't seem surprised by this.'

‘The post on the Sunken Wall? I've seen it.'

‘It went up, like, twenty minutes ago.'

‘Twenty minutes is a long time in this business.'

‘And it doesn't worry you? You didn't think you wanted to come and talk to me about it?'

‘I was trying to find out what I could.'

‘And what have you found out?'

Andrei shrugged.

James leaned closer. ‘If someone's been doing this, Andrei, I won't stand for it. I don't care who it is.
Whoever –
they're out.' James gazed at him for a moment, then stood back. ‘All right, we need a statement. I'll get Alan to draft it for you.'

‘No, I'll write it.'

‘I want to see it, Andrei. And I want our lawyers to see it. No more Mea Culpas – not unless we really have something to apologize for. Don't admit anything until we know for sure.'

‘OK.'

‘And we need to investigate this. Properly. I'll do it.' James paused. ‘I've got a pretty good idea where to start.'

An hour later Andrei showed James the statement. It was five lines long, saying that he was aware of the rumour, would ensure that it was fully investigated, and would say more when there was more to say.

‘Where's the rest?' said James.

‘I thought we should keep it low key. I don't think we should act like it's the end of the world.'

‘Do you have any idea of the shitstorm that's going on out there? Have you checked into the Grotto in the last hour?'

‘I've been writing the statement, James.'

‘This took an hour?' retorted James sarcastically. ‘Do you have any idea of the effect this is going to have on our reputation?'

‘Don't catastrophize, James.'

‘Don't
what?
'

‘We don't even know if it's true.'

‘Something doesn't have to be true to stick. And Senator McKenrick? Remember her? Wake up and smell the coffee, Andrei! This is going to drag us into the mud.' He glanced at the statement again, shaking his head. ‘You don't even condemn it.'

‘I thought you said no Mea Culpas.'

‘Condemn it,' said James. ‘Say that Fishbowl unequivocally would condemn such activity if we find that it has taken place. Say that as part of our response to this, even if no such activity is proven, we'll do everything we can to put in place safeguards to ensure that it can't in the future. Go back and add that.'

Andrei didn't move.

‘Do you want me to do it? Do you want me to type that out—?'

They were interrupted by Alan Mendes, Fishbowl's head of communications, who told them they had already had their first interview requests and wanted to know if they had a line and who was going to do the talking.

‘No one's talking,' said Andrei. ‘I'm about to issue a statement.'

‘Is it ready?' asked Mendes.

Wordlessly, James passed it to him and watched as Mendes scanned the lines.

‘Andrei's going to condemn it,' said James. ‘He's going to add that we're going to take measures to minimize the risk that anyone could do it in the future.'

‘Well, that would help.'

‘I'm not adding anything,' said Andrei. ‘That's the statement, Alan. Send it to the lawyers and tell them I'm going to post it in an hour.'

James stared at him.

‘That's the statement. That's it.' Andrei left the statement with Mendes and walked out of the room.

James took his eyes off Andrei and looked at Mendes. ‘Send it to the lawyers,' he muttered, through clenched teeth.

Mendes left. James stayed behind in the meeting room, fuming. He felt humiliated, excluded, isolated. Something was going on, he was sure of it. He felt radically and irreversibly undermined. He was so angry he literally didn't know what to do. He closed his eyes and tried to pray, for patience, for understanding, for anything, but his rage was so intense that he couldn't do it. That was the worst of it, he told himself, what this had done to his inner state of mind. He had arrived that morning full of the peace of Christ's grace, and now he was filled with anger, fury, hate.

On the other side of the sixth floor Andrei sat down and opened his screen to the Grotto. A monumental shitstorm was in progress. The fanatics, the cynics, the idiots and the conspiracy theorists were out in force. Many of all persuasions seemed to be saying that the rumour was no surprise because social networks had been exploiting their users for years, probably in this very way.

Andrei was struck by that. They already thought Fishbowl was doing this – and yet they used the service? What was wrong with them? People might be yelling and screaming all they liked, but
if they really believed what they were saying, and they had been using Fishbowl despite that all this time, were they going to stop now just because their fears had been confirmed?

At around four in the afternoon, Chris walked into the office.

James had been calling him every quarter of an hour and had had all his calls go to voicemail, which had merely enraged him even more. He confronted Chris directly on the open floor of the office.

‘I just want to know,' he said. ‘Yes or no?'

‘Yes,' said Chris, staring him in the eye.

James watched him for a moment. Then he turned and marched across the office to Andrei. He pointed at the meeting room again.

‘I don't believe you didn't know,' he said to Andrei, when the door had closed. ‘Tell me right now that you didn't know. Look me in the eye and tell me.'

‘I'm not saying I didn't know,' said Andrei.

‘And Kevin and Ben?'

Andrei gave a slight shrug. Kevin, of course, had been involved in the experiment from its inception. Ben hadn't taken part in the fortnightly meetings in Andrei's apartment. In fact, after he had told Andrei he was opposed to the idea, Andrei had never explicitly told him that he had agreed for Chris to go ahead. When Ben had become aware of the post in the Grotto that morning, however, he hadn't been surprised. He realized that he had guessed it was happening all along.

‘What would have happened if it didn't happen to leak?' demanded James.

Andrei didn't reply.

‘You can't run a business like this! You go off with Chris to Yao's and I don't know what you're plotting! It's him or me, Andrei. Chris is finished with this company. He's got his shares, he's still an investor, but we don't see him – or I'm gone. What's it going to be?'

Andrei glanced through the glass wall at Chris, who was sitting on the edge of Kevin's desk. Chris was someone who had ideas. James was just a guy who knew how to run a business. And Andrei had had his doubts about him ever since his outburst over the Mea Culpa statement.

He looked back silently at him.

James waited a moment longer for an answer. Then he nodded. ‘Fine. I'm out of here. If this is the kind of business you want to build, you go ahead and do that. Count me out.'

‘James, I don't want you to leave. I really hope you'll reconsider. We have to be prepared to think broadly about Deep—'

James had walked out. He marched across the floor and went to his desk, pulled out a drawer, swept his personal effects into it and headed for the exit.

‘Every step into the future leaves behind those who want to live in the past,' called out Chris as James went past him.

James stopped, his back to Chris.

‘You never really got it, did you, James? We made a mistake with you. You're not really a Fishbowl kind of guy.'

James put down the drawer on the nearest desk. He stepped back to Chris.

‘I'm a Christian,' he said.

‘What does that mean?'

‘This.' James drew back his fist and socked him in the jaw.

Chris staggered back. James turned around again and picked up his drawer.

Kevin laughed. ‘James! Dude! Stakhanovite!'

31

THE DEPARTURE OF
James Langan as Fishbowl COO didn't pass unnoticed, partly because of James himself. The Christian inner peace of which he had been forcibly stripped that morning showed no sign of returning by the time he got home with his drawerful of personal effects, and he signed off the day by posting a spiteful, ill-tempered blog announcing his resignation. Although he stayed carefully within the bounds of his confidentiality agreement, he made it abundantly clear that he had departed because of unhappiness at certain activities that had taken place within the company. Coming on the day that the rumour of secret marketing activity within Fishbowl had surfaced, and Andrei's less than ringing rebuttal, it wasn't too hard to add two and two together and get four. Most of the analysts who tracked what Fishbowl was doing – and there were a lot of them – were pretty good at basic math.

By the next morning, the shitstorm had spread far beyond the Grotto. TV news reports carried stories of the rumour and verbatim texts of Andrei's Grotto post. Alan Mendes was almost constantly on the phone, as were the other people in his team. He wanted Andrei to make a stronger statement than the one he had issued the previous day. Ideally, a denial. If that wasn't possible because Andrei's investigation was still under way, then at least a strong condemnation and a promise to get rid of whoever had been responsible

Andrei called him into a meeting with Chris, Kevin and Ben. Andrei also called in Louise Steinberg, James's number two, who
had become de facto COO when James had walked out. There were certain truths they needed to know.

Andrei told them that he couldn't issue a denial or a pledge to act because there was some truth in the rumour. He said that an experiment had been in progress over the past few months, with watches, as the rumour suggested. He didn't tell them about anything else that Chris had been doing.

‘So what happens now?' said Louise.

‘We wait to see what happens – if the furore dies down.'

‘And if it doesn't?' asked Louise.

‘Then we admit that it happened, issue a condemnation, like Alan has been asking for, and stop.'

‘And one of us loses a hell of a lot of money,' added Kevin with a grin.

‘Look, James left over this,' said Andrei to Louise and Alan. ‘You have the right to do that as well. I don't want to lose you, but if this isn't OK with you guys, you can go. I don't know what the situation is with your stock options, whether you've been here long enough to retain them, but actually, I don't care. You can keep them. I don't want you to stay for the wrong reasons. To me this isn't about money. It's about Deep Connectedness and about being brave enough to explore it in all its forms. I need people here who are excited by that and are honest enough, brave enough, to want to stay on that journey wherever it leads. That's what we're doing here. If you stay, I want you to stay because you want to be part of that, not for a bunch of stock options.'

Alan and Louise glanced at each other.

‘Anyway, what do you think?' asked Andrei. ‘Are we going to see mass defections?'

‘To where?' asked Alan rhetorically. ‘Worldspace?'

‘We've already got a dozen School pages that have been set up against this thing,' said Louise.

‘That's not defection,' said Chris. ‘That's loyalty.'

‘I think we're taking a huge risk. Can we do this kind of thing? Is it legit?'

‘We're a private company,' said Chris. ‘Everyone who holds a voting share is sitting in this room. We can do anything that's within the law.'

‘And this is?' said Louise. ‘Do we know that?'

‘We've had advice.'

‘Like I said, if you're not comfortable, Louise, you can leave,' said Andrei. ‘You too, Alan. This is a challenge to my thinking, but that's what I want Fishbowl to be. A place where our thinking is challenged. Every single person in this company needs to be totally cool with that. If it's too uncomfortable for you, I understand. No hard feelings. You'll keep your stock options. You'll have to abide by your non-disclosure clause, that's all.'

There was silence for a moment, then Alan shrugged. ‘I don't know, this is kind of interesting. What do we do next?'

‘You can see why I can't issue the kind of statement you want,' said Andrei.

‘Then I guess you'll have to admit it. You can't keep evading it.'

‘Everyone in the company is confused,' said Louise. ‘They're talking. Fifty people must have seen the way James left yesterday and …' She nodded towards Chris and his bruised face. ‘They need to know what's going on.'

Andrei looked out of the glass walls of the meeting room and saw dozens of pairs of eyes quickly averted.

‘We've got to get a meeting room where not everyone can fucking see everything we say,' muttered Chris. ‘Any of those guys lip read out there?'

‘Probably,' said Kevin.

‘I'm serious, Andrei,' said Louise. ‘You've got to talk to them.'

That afternoon, Andrei gave an all-hands talk in the office, standing next to the aquarium in front of the 400 and some Fishbowl employees who now inhabited the office on Embarcadero, with a videolink to the Fishbowl offices that had recently been set up in New York and London.

It wasn't a situation in which Andrei instinctively felt comfortable. His natural connection was with the tech guys but he knew that in front of him more than two-thirds of the people were commercial. His anxiety level was also raised by the fact that he was not going to be telling the truth – or at least not the whole truth. Six or seven people might just about be able to keep things confidential, but hundreds wouldn't. Someone would talk, whether inadvertently or otherwise. And the stakes were even higher because the response of Fishbowl's people was just as much a part of the experiment as the response of Fishbowl's users. For the moment it looked as if Alan and Louise were staying, but they only knew about one of Chris's experiments. There were still two more to be announced. If highly talented, creative people – the kind of people Fishbowl had increasingly been able to attract – didn't want to work for a company that provided that form of Deep Connectedness, then it wasn't viable, whether users wanted it or not. Fishbowl's employees had just as much opportunity to put an end to this as did its users.

First, Andrei addressed the topic of James Langan's departure. He attributed it to differences that had been developing between them for some time, particularly over the speed of Fishbowl's possible IPO. He admitted that James was also concerned by the rumour of a new kind of marketing but had chosen not to stick around to investigate it. Technically, that was true. Second, Andrei addressed the rumour itself. He said that, as he had said in his Grotto posting, it needed to be fully investigated, but that whatever came out of the investigation, every necessary action would be taken to protect Fishbowl's reputation and position it even more strongly for success, and if anyone had any thoughts on that, he wanted to hear from them personally, either then or any time in the future. Then he took questions.

The first one, naturally, was what he would do if the rumour about the selling of watches proved to be true.

Andrei had rehearsed his answer to this question with Alan, but still he hesitated. Anything he said now would be remembered
by the entire company. He had to lay the groundwork for events that were going to follow, not put himself in a position of having to change direction later, and certainly not say anything that could eventually be interpreted as a lie.

‘That would depend,' he said. ‘It would depend on how our users respond.'

‘I don't understand what that means, Andrei,' said the questioner.

‘I think everyone's assuming that if this has really happened, then our users are going to be unhappy about it,' said Andrei carefully. ‘I'm not sure if that's true. All I'm saying is, if it has happened, then rather than guessing what they want, let's see how they respond. I'm not going to lay down any kind of law about what they do or don't want, what they can or can't have. Fishbowl has succeeded because we've never done that. We've always been willing to listen, to adapt, and not tell people what they can and can't do. I think that's one of our great strengths. So let's do the investigation, and if we see that it's happened, let's see what our users say.'

‘Our users are already saying a hell of a lot.'

‘Let's see what they say when the facts are known.' Andrei caught Louise's eye and saw her watching him solemnly. ‘And let's remember, the most vocal users are not necessarily the most representative. Let's be careful to understand what all our users are saying.'

There was silence as people took this in.

‘So are you saying, Andrei,' asked someone on the videolink from the New York office, ‘that if the users said, “Actually, we like this,” then we'd let this keep happening?'

‘Who are we to say we shouldn't?'

‘So if they say, “We love being duped by people we think are our friends but are actually just cold-hearted salesmen,” that's OK?'

There was a smattering of laughter in the crowd.

Andrei caught Louise's eye once more. ‘First of all, I don't think anyone's been duping anyone. Let's investigate and see
what's been said about these watches, but if it's all been factual, then the question of duping doesn't come up.'

‘It's still duping someone to make you think they're a friend.'

‘OK, let's not argue about the words. Friend, acquaintance, online contact, whatever. I think you have a serious point. Let's say people say, “You know what, we like this. This is a form of Deep Connectedness that we like, between us and various companies, and we like the fact that it happens in a way that is kind of natural, like you're talking to your friend.” And, by the way, it's not only companies who could use this, it's NGOs, it's civic organizations …'

‘But it's companies as well.'

‘Hear me out. I'm not saying people
will
say they want this, but I'm saying if they do, are we saying we shouldn't give it to them? Are you saying we should exercise some kind of censorship over what they can and can't have? That Andrei Koss should stand here and say, “No, you can't have that, because I don't think you should”?'

‘What if they say, give us child pornography?'

‘Now I think you're going a little far. Would that make the world worse? Definitely. And I don't think the majority of our users, or any kind of significant group at all, are going to be asking for that. Not to mention the fact that it's illegal. Let's keep this in perspective. All I'm saying is we need to find out what our users want. But let me ask you this. We have Sponsored Baits, right? Some people don't click on them just because they're sponsored. So they're excluding themselves from information that they may very well want to have.'

‘Don't they have a right to choose?'

‘Absolutely. Yes. But Sponsored Baits are the only time we ask anyone to state a motive. Why do we do that? Lot's of other stuff is going on out there with all kinds of motives that aren't declared, including commercial activities. So if we're going to be consistent, I'm not sure that companies paying to use our service should be the only ones who have to declare their motive. And you know
what? Like I said, companies who
aren't
paying us are doing stuff all the time themselves – viral marketing, using our network. We all know that.' He paused. ‘Look, the point is, I'm not the final authority on Deep Connectedness. Neither are you, and neither is anybody in this room. I don't know all the forms it can take. I try to have a broad conceptualization. That's my principle. I'm prepared to be challenged and think fresh. It's a constant journey of discovery and if we think there's a new form of Deep Connectedness that we can support, then it's our obligation to find out if our users want it, and not just assume that we know. And anyway, before we jump to any conclusions, let's see what the investigation shows.'

A week later, in a post to the Grotto, Andrei announced that there had indeed been some activity of the type alleged, apparently involving high-value timepieces. He said that a review of the data showed that statements made in the course of this activity regarding the products had been purely factual in nature and didn't involve any misrepresentation that he was aware of. He added that a number of people who had bought the watches in question had been contacted and were perfectly satisfied with their purchases. Now this had been discovered, he wrote, he would wait to see whether the user community wanted this kind of activity to continue before taking any further steps.

The user community reacted with uproar. Hundreds of thousands of e-signatures appeared on petitions set up by outraged Fishbowl users. The announcement made prime time news. Mike Sweetman, locked in battle with Fishbowl over his users and beset by allegations of monopoly behaviour, demanded a probe into Fishbowl's marketing practices. The Santa Clara district attorney announced that she was opening an investigation into potential charges of fraud and mis-selling against the company. In Washington, unknown to Andrei, the cyber crime division of the FBI opened a file on Fishbowl.

The number of names on petitions rose. After three days, Alan Mendes told Andrei he thought the verdict was clear. ‘You said
you wanted to hear what the users thought. I think they've spoken.'

‘I'll issue a statement.'

‘Good,' said Mendes.

Steeling himself to push the experiment to its limit, Andrei issued a statement reiterating that the activity had taken place amongst buyers of extremely high-value watches who could be expected to have the ability to exercise independent judgement and that no misrepresentation had been involved.