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What a stupid idea

dcurt.is

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Re: What a stupid idea

#51

Post by biolime »

greghinch wrote: post #32

Ha, I still think Vine and Pinterest are stupid ideas. But, Pinterest at least has done a good job at making lazy, vapid, narcissism easy, and there's certainly demand for that. Not sure how you monetize it (is Pinterest?), but they have a lot of users. I'm not sure Vine is yet a "success". I don't see a lot of activity there yet. My (completely biased and limited) litmus test for social apps is to see how many of my…

While I can't speak for your personal experiences I've noticed that Vine is becoming increasingly popular with my High School classmates (I'm a sophomore). Many of my friends I wouldn't necessarily consider "techie" found Vine and are enjoying it. Maybe age is playing a role in its adoption?

Re: What a stupid idea

#52

Post by bsimpson »

tikhonj wrote: post #47

Amusingly, I've had the opposite problem: I see some things, think they are the best ideas ever and then watch them fizzle away. Perhaps the largest example of this would be Wave. When I first heard about Google Wave, I was incredibly impressed and immediately signed up for the beta. I really did think it would replace email and IM--it was an elegant solution that did both, at the same time. I then played around with…

The examples you listed died because of marketing, more than technology.

Wave was essentially a social network that your friends couldn't get invites for if they wanted. It was a hugely hyped ghost-town. Wave was a tech preview because it was ungodly slow and made some questionable UX decisions (like badly reimplementing the scroll bar) - Google would have been embarrassed to call it a fully-fledged product. At the same time, they hyped it up like one, which led many people to pass judgement on it too soon, while the ones who wanted to use it either couldn't get access or didn't know anyone who had access to write to.

webOS, from everything I've heard, was quite good. Unfortunately, the history of Palm didn't leave them enough resources to grow it organically - it was a high pressure do-or-die launch with rushed hardware that was universally panned. They didn't have enough resources to wait for good hardware to pair with it. They also banked on Verizon covering the marketing budget, but Verizon famously used Motorola's Milestone to launch the DROID brand instead. (There's a really interesting article from the Verge about it.)

I don't know enough about Linux or Zune to comment on those, but you got excited about webOS and Wave because you saw the promise of the vision. The execution is what bungled both.

Re: What a stupid idea

#53

Post by geoffc »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #23
ChuckMcM wrote: post #17

In 1978 I thought Bill Gates trying to sell BASIC interpreters for what was 90% of the cost of the computer to run them was a pretty stupid idea :-) That said, one of my VC friends defines an Entrepreneur as someone who can take a stupid idea and make it successful. Sort of an homage to the whole idea that they can see something you cannot. These days when I'm confronted by this sort of proposal I ask the person maki…

I thought bottled water was idiotic "Who's gonna pay that for water ? ! ? Gone in six months." And phone sex lines. "1.99$ first minute, $.99 each additional minute? Please!" In six months their rates doubled. Business models can be hard to judge.

This one hits home. 25 years ago I zigged into the water filtration business when I should have zagged in the bottled water business. I had the choice and never saw that businesses would pay so much to have water trucked to them. Doh!

Re: What a stupid idea

#55

Post by smalter »

rexreed wrote: post #19

A few points, some already cited here: * Survivor bias ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_bias ) is yielding a self-selection in the positive results. I'm sure there are plenty of stupid ideas that went nowhere. Probably as much as "Great" ideas that went nowhere. So, I think saying that his opinion that something was stupid is a counter-indicator of its degree of success doesn't have much merit. * Second, an i…

The article isn't about Dustin being right or wrong, it's about the regrettable way he treated a fellow enterprising young person who was trying to start something.

It's really easy to dismiss and poke holes in peoples' ideas. The funny thing is that you usually walk away from that feeling pretty smart and full of yourself because you're mostly right.

Then you find out that you called it all wrong. And if you're introspective, you'll realize that you weren't just wrong in your thinking in the moment, you'll remember that you are actually a flawed, small person who knows very very little.

Early on, when I knew even less than I know now, I had a conversation with a guy named Gary Chou who then worked at USV. He's a model for me on how to treat a green person starting out. He didn't seem to be trying to answer the question, "does this suck?" or "can this be a $100M ARR business?" When we talked about what I was working on, he really sought to find out what was interesting about it, how people were using it, and what it could mean and become.

Re: What a stupid idea

#57

Post by greghinch »

biolime wrote: post #51
greghinch wrote: post #32

Ha, I still think Vine and Pinterest are stupid ideas. But, Pinterest at least has done a good job at making lazy, vapid, narcissism easy, and there's certainly demand for that. Not sure how you monetize it (is Pinterest?), but they have a lot of users. I'm not sure Vine is yet a "success". I don't see a lot of activity there yet. My (completely biased and limited) litmus test for social apps is to see how many of my…

While I can't speak for your personal experiences I've noticed that Vine is becoming increasingly popular with my High School classmates (I'm a sophomore). Many of my friends I wouldn't necessarily consider "techie" found Vine and are enjoying it. Maybe age is playing a role in its adoption?

That is entirely possible. I think it still comes down to how much work it is for the payoff, but perhaps the payoff is bigger as a high school student where these things can have more of an effect on social status than they do to the late 20s/early 30s set*

* I hope that doesn't come off as too condescending to HS students, I certainly don't mean it to be!

Re: What a stupid idea

#58

Post by chc »

greghinch wrote: post #43
jeffgreco wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lazy, vapid, narcissism Care to elaborate? My interpretation of Pinterest is really "visual social bookmarking."

Sure. The main use of Pinterest is to show your friends and everyone else what good taste you have. "Look at this collection of bridal dresses I like!" "Check out all these vacation spots I want to go to!" If you just wanted to collect photos of these things to give yourself ideas, you wouldn't need to share it with everyone. So you have an easy way to show everyone how cool all the stuff you like is, and by extensio…

I can't help but feel this is just an uncharitable way to describe sharing ideas in general. My fiancee and I have gotten a lot of good use out of other people's good taste on Pinterest — we've found outfits to steal for the wedding, decorating ideas and lots of tasty recipes. How is this any more vulgar than sharing ideas in any other context?

Re: What a stupid idea

#59

Post by joelandren »

bsimpson wrote: post #52
tikhonj wrote: post #47

Amusingly, I've had the opposite problem: I see some things, think they are the best ideas ever and then watch them fizzle away. Perhaps the largest example of this would be Wave. When I first heard about Google Wave, I was incredibly impressed and immediately signed up for the beta. I really did think it would replace email and IM--it was an elegant solution that did both, at the same time. I then played around with…

The examples you listed died because of marketing, more than technology. Wave was essentially a social network that your friends couldn't get invites for if they wanted. It was a hugely hyped ghost-town. Wave was a tech preview because it was ungodly slow and made some questionable UX decisions (like badly reimplementing the scroll bar) - Google would have been embarrassed to call it a fully-fledged product. At the s…

Google Wave didn't die because of marketing.

It died because it was sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.

Re: What a stupid idea

#60

Post by sramsay »

I more often experience the facepalm of watching an uncomplicated idea turn into a global sensation.

It's 2005 (hardly the distant technological past), and someone gets the idea for a site where you can store and watch videos. This is not some kind of radical technological innovation. This is not something beyond the ambit of current capabilities. This is not some brazen insight into the future. This is a site. Where you store videos. And watch them.

This, of course, is YouTube -- a site that was eventually sold to Google for $1.6 billion dollars.

facepalm

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