I used both Gowalla and Foursquare when they launched. The reason I stopped using Gowalla was that they were pushing game features that distracted from simply keeping a check-in record of places you visited. Being a Foursquare mayor is simple and makes intuitive sense (you are mayor because you like a place and go there a lot), but Gowalla was sending you on what were essentially scavenger hunts, pushing you to visit places in order to complete a map or theme that they had created.
"Game-ification" was/is a popular app strategy but not everyone wants to make everything they do into a scored game. Sometimes you just want to record and/or communicate.
Meh. Facebook likes to keep employees on "emergency drill" mode-- keeps people engaged. This sounds like the usual exploit, but with the addition of an FBI-agent email to add drama.
The issues raised here are perhaps invisible to the average male programmer, but they are important. Scaling a site isn't just about keeping the site up, it's about communicating with users, receiving and processing feedback, and being emotionally aware regarding product and workplace dynamics. Often women tech workers do this work at a vastly less rewarded rate than men working at the same startup.
When I worked in Palo Alto and lived in SF, the daily commute felt tolerable for three days of the week and then became intolerable for the last two days of the week. After quitting my job and getting a trailer to travel the country, I figured out that a solution to the commute would have been to buy a trailer/van while in SV and park it permanently in one of the huge lots at work and overnight there when I didn't feel like driving back to SF. Like vans, some trailers, like Airstreams or vintage "canned hams", don't depreciate if taken care of.
"Game-ification" was/is a popular app strategy but not everyone wants to make everything they do into a scored game. Sometimes you just want to record and/or communicate.