71–80 of 231 posts
The idea that people were going to push around 500k images (Flickr) or even more insane, videos was crazy when it first started happening. Remember how long it took to download QuickTime or RealPlayer videos, and how bad the quality was? Now people are streaming HD music videos on our PHONES just to listen to it while they drive to work. They don't even watch the video.
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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 am often reminded of the 2001 me. When I was new developer building java web applications and full of vigor with no real responsibilities or expenses.
I was dead set on this idea to build a site where people could post links, pictures, text or whatever and it would be voted and categorically managed by the user community.
I shopped the idea and prototype around to people in my limited network and it was unanimous that no one would ever want to invest time into this concept. Discouraged, I scrapped the idea and accepted a position as the first non-partner employee at a consulting start-up that quickly imploded.
Years later reddit moves to the forefront of the internet with striking resemblance to my original plan.
My fault because I did not stick to my guns. The idea that my application could have been half as popular as reddit is unlikely but it taught me a lesson, sometimes you've got to trust your gut, even if the people you trust cannot see your vision.
At the time, they were in the depths of their existential struggle. The "party" consisted of a few guys, a couple of liters of soda, and a few half-empty bottles of booze.
I remember talking to Joe and Brian, and hearing their pitch, and thinking: "oh, so it's like couchsurfing, but for pay....good luck with that, guys".
Oops.
A well-written humblebrag.
It reads that way a little but as a front-end dev I've had sit-downs with a few founders trying to hire me and in some cases I thought their ideas were stupid. It didn't seem like they wanted my opinion on their idea as much as they wanted to get me excited about the future they are trying to create. Turns out one of them succeeded in a sense.
There are so many things that seemed like a stupid idea to me: - Seinfeld: Who is this guy, really? - Frasier: Come on, a spinoff? (So, I didn't realize spinoffs were a thing) - Twitter: Haiku and vanity plates for the Internet. - Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream: Salty Caramel, you've got to be kidding me. I don't want salty ice cream. - Arrested Development: Wait, Jason Bateman. He was so bland on The Hogan Family. - Ther…
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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.
They explain on their website: "Our reasons for passing on these investments varied. In some cases, we were making a conscious act of generosity to another, younger venture firm, down on their luck, who we felt could really use a billion dollars in gains. In other cases, our partners had already run out of spaces on the year's Schedule D and feared that another entry would require them to attach a separate sheet."
The whole web page is filled with similar, painfully funny explanations: http://www.bvp.com/portfolio/antiportfolio
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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!
I think that it's exactly the right kind of condescending to high school students. An environment where something like Vine can significantly effect your popularity is probably so toxic that only scum can breathe in it.