Instagram. I still don't get it. Vanity filters sure, there were dozens and there must now be hundreds of such apps, but a separate social network just for that?
This! And twitter, and snapchat.
Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
41–50 of 90 posts
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter is mostly made up of abandoned/inactive accounts, and it hasn't turned a profit. Despite popularity, I don't think it qualifies as a success.
As of this writing, Twitter's market capitalization is over $23 billion. That's a success by any sensible definition. If you know something the market doesn't, there's any easy way to put your money where your mouth is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_(finance)
That is actually not a bad idea. A business with poor underlying fundamentals must either improve, or lose market cap. I'll have to give some serious thought to shorting twitter.
EDIT: It may be too late. It has already had major drops in the last quarter, and is down almost 50% off its highs from 2014.
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#43What about the opposite, something that seemed like genius but turned out to be a terrible, terrible idea? Secret, for example.
P2P filesharing. I loved the idea of this when it was all the rage c. 1999-2003. Cut out the big corporations, cut out the ISPs, no need for servers, just people sharing data with each other directly. Only problem was: it was slow, unreliable, hard to get started with, and the RIAA would sue you for it. I do find it interesting how so many prominent companies grew out of ideas or founders that were deeply connected t…
It actually wasn't hard to get started with at all. The likes of eDonkey/eMule, LimeWire, Kazaa and Napster all became hugely popular (and some remain popular in certain jurisdictions) precisely because of how trivial they were to use.
Then, you already mentioned BitTorrent. P2P filesharing wasn't a terrible idea at all, and BitTorrent is evidence.
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#44Twitter. To this day, I find it idiotic. I thought society reached rock bottom when politics started using it to convey their message (is there anything sadder than a political agenda that can be expressed in 140 characters?)
I too thought it was idiotic. Now I realize that because brevity is the soul of wit is the reason it succeeds. Sometimes less is more and the pearls of wisdom of society at large certainly qualify.
I don't know if that's the reason. More that 140 characters are easy to send and read on a smartphone.
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#45Not really a start up, but I thought Wikipedia was an extraordinarily dumb idea at first. An encyclopedia that anyone can edit - what could possibly go wrong? I completely missed the value of having decent moderator tools (which no site had back in the early 2000's), and a passionate group of moderators who cared very deeply about the integrity of the site.
There have been a lot of startups over the past decade centred around the sharing economy that have helped to prove that humans can be civil in these situations where one might think that we would default to nefarious activity - Airbnb, Local Motion, etc. to name a few.
Humanity is continuing to prove itself as capable of dealing with each other harmoniously and we are seeing great businesses emerge that are benefitting the masses as a result.
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#46I thought the YO app, was stupid and pointless till I realized it was used to warn Israeli citizens of missile strikes! Now that app is everywhere and seems to have mastered the concept "notification-is-the-message" philosophy.
YO is stupid and pointless, and i'm honestly shocked if it even still exists.
I guess there's a market for anything.
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
P2P filesharing. I loved the idea of this when it was all the rage c. 1999-2003. Cut out the big corporations, cut out the ISPs, no need for servers, just people sharing data with each other directly. Only problem was: it was slow, unreliable, hard to get started with, and the RIAA would sue you for it. I do find it interesting how so many prominent companies grew out of ideas or founders that were deeply connected t…
It actually wasn't hard to get started with at all. The likes of eDonkey/eMule, LimeWire, Kazaa and Napster all became hugely popular (and some remain popular in certain jurisdictions) precisely because of how trivial they were to use. Then, you already mentioned BitTorrent. P2P filesharing wasn't a terrible idea at all, and BitTorrent is evidence.
It's all relative to the alternatives. P2P was easy by desktop app standards, but concurrently with its development, the web started taking over. With webapps, you didn't need to download a program, you didn't need to deal with your firewall settings (consumer firewalls were just starting to become popular during this time period as well), you didn't need to configure upload/download rates or servers - you just clicked on a link and got a file.
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#48Google. Who would ever want (or need for that matter) to search for something on the internet. You should already know the phone numbers of your favorite BBS by heart.
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also thought it was going to be a fad. What is interesting is that everything people use Facebook for day-to-day existed back in 2005. We used email for sharing life updates, various tools for photo sharing, AOL Instant Messenger for chatting, mailing lists for groups, email and evite for organizing events, etc. The novelty of Facebook was profile browsing and poking each other. And if Facebook had just remained th…
It's better to think of and use Facebook as a placeholder for identity and not a platform for expression.
This statement makes me feel nauseous.
Re: Ask HN: Whats the worst startup idea you've heard, which turned out to be genius?
#50My mate had a university assignment several years back to come up with an online business idea. His idea was to set up an online "home delivery" service for restaurants (including those that don't do home delivery but do take-away). He got a shitty mark because the lecturer thought the idea was "stupid".
Since we are talking about genius ideas, where is the idea now? (Apologies if this was supposed to be obvious and I did not get it).