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I Hope This Bubble Kills The App

adamconrad.posterous.com

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Re: I Hope This Bubble Kills The App

#11

Post by praptak »

aspir wrote: post #4

My thoughts exactly. Doesn't anyone want to innovate, or "change the world" anymore? If someone's going to go through all of the labor to make a copy of groupon or an iFart app or a twitter API mashup just for the cash, they should just write a Forex trading algorithm. They'll make more money that way, and their models will be infinitely more computationally unique than any consumer copycat.

"If someone's going to go through all of the labor to make a copy of groupon or an iFart app or a twitter API mashup just for the cash, they should just write a Forex trading algorithm."

You mean writing one that makes money? That's infinitely harder than the examples you provided.

Quite a lot of smart guys put nontrivial effort into that. You need to be as good as them, preferably even a little better. Good luck.

Re: I Hope This Bubble Kills The App

#12

Post by Cherian_Abraham »

So does that mean that people should stop working on the problem domain that is "social and sharing" ? I would say, not quite. But the "Me too" herd mentality is not helping, not just in terms of the amount of capital that is thrown at it, but talent that could have been better spent elsewhere now toils away in making another Groupon clone because he has tunnel vision.

We are working in the domain of contextual discovery and there are a number of juicy problems right there. Determining what is useful to you so that we can deliver that alone, based on where you are, why you are there and who you are with. Thats a meaty problem to solve. One of them, at least.

Re: I Hope This Bubble Kills The App

#13

Post by sabat »

There is no stock market bubble.

News flash: coupons are still boring and I don’t want to give out my email address to a service I don’t even know I’ll benefit from. So now we have an App Store that serves nothing but candy, and we all love candy don’t we?

The OP is not the intended audience for most/all of the apps he's talking about. I don't think he understands that.

There are apps and companies that seem to be absolutely superfluous -- how many Groupon clones do we need? (Do we even really need Groupon?)

But the market will decide that. Not us nerds.

Re: I Hope This Bubble Kills The App

#14

Post by acconrad »

Cherian_Abraham wrote: post #12

So does that mean that people should stop working on the problem domain that is "social and sharing" ? I would say, not quite. But the "Me too" herd mentality is not helping, not just in terms of the amount of capital that is thrown at it, but talent that could have been better spent elsewhere now toils away in making another Groupon clone because he has tunnel vision. We are working in the domain of contextual disco…

I never said that. I said that there are real problems worth solving, and not all of them are in the social space. There is still plenty of value to be added to the social landscape, just don't forget the domains that aren't the bees knees at the moment.

Re: I Hope This Bubble Kills The App

#15

Post by billybob »

acconrad wrote: post #8
thetrumanshow wrote: post #3

Ahem: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/... :) Just sayin'. But, to your point, yes I would welcome a world where all the ultra low-fi junk would disappear and where there was less noise in the app marketplace... like 2003, except with today's consumer awareness. But the exact opposite will happen. Right now, our peers are building tools to allow ever lower-fidelity apps to enter the marketp…

Ha loved that article. As long as you're in caloric deficit, you will lose weight :-p

True, but you could die of scurvey.

Re: I Hope This Bubble Kills The App

#17

Post by cgrusden »

acconrad wrote: post #2

DISCLAIMER: for the record, this is a rant I wrote at 3 am so please don't take it too seriously. I'm mostly sharing it so you can have a good laugh, because apparently a few people thought it was funny and said I should share it.

Haha, I laughed so hard I pee'd a lil.

This is something that keeps me up at night. It gives me anxiety to think that more and more useless apps are not only being developed, but funded. What the fuck. The thing is, building something today that solves a problem, isn't going to make you a "rockstar" if it's not sexy and social :(

Re: I Hope This Bubble Kills The App

#19

Post by emilis_info »

acconrad wrote: post #2

DISCLAIMER: for the record, this is a rant I wrote at 3 am so please don't take it too seriously. I'm mostly sharing it so you can have a good laugh, because apparently a few people thought it was funny and said I should share it.

Your post inspired me. Thank you.

I didn't expect much at first from the title and from the rant part.

Re: I Hope This Bubble Kills The App

#20

Post by jpadvo »

thetrumanshow wrote: post #3

Ahem: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/... :) Just sayin'. But, to your point, yes I would welcome a world where all the ultra low-fi junk would disappear and where there was less noise in the app marketplace... like 2003, except with today's consumer awareness. But the exact opposite will happen. Right now, our peers are building tools to allow ever lower-fidelity apps to enter the marketp…

Personally, I think democratizing technology is a really, really good thing. Sure, we have to suffer through things like Comic Sans abuse and crappy apps, but that is a minuscule price to pay for increasing the creative freedom of humanity.

That's fundamentally why we build new tools -- to increase the freedom of people to impact the world.

[Edit: Just read the article you linked. Losing 27 pounds by eating twinkies? Priceless. :) ]

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