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What a stupid idea

dcurt.is

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Re: What a stupid idea

#91

Post by coldtea »

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…

Man, you have a veritable talent for liking half-baked ho-hum stuff!

I mean:

1) Google Wave -- a confused mess of a mail/im/web/social offering that didn't exactly knew what it was and solved non problems.

2) Gnome 3 -- Gnome 2 had languished for years. Why would 3 change that, especially since most of the changes planned were incremental ho-hum stuff combined with arbitrary rewrites of core technologies sure to take them years to complete?

3) Zune. Nuff said.

Re: What a stupid idea

#92

Post by larrykubin »

Ideas I thought were stupid when I first heard them:

1) eBay - people are going to buy from random people they don't know? and bid against other people they don't know? Auctions will be rigged and I won't get my stuff. Stupid.

2) Netflix - they are going to send DVD's in the mail and I am going to mail them back? And then I have to wait for it to get to me? Aren't people going to steal the DVD's and damage them? Won't it cost too much for them to make a profit? Why don't I just go to Blockbuster? Stupid.

Re: What a stupid idea

#93

Post by ibudiallo »

sgdesign wrote: post #31

Those were stupid ideas. Nobody said stupid ideas couldn't be successful. In fact, I suspect an idea's stupidity has very little impact on its success one way or another. Ideas I'd consider not stupid include self-driving cars, Google Glass, and Bitcoin. Whether or not those are good ideas is yet another discussion…

Smart ideas are very hard to implement. I always go for the stupid ideas because they also fail faster

Re: What a stupid idea

#94

Post by zobzu »

What I generally dislike with these articles is that someone quickly draw the conclusion "never criticize, always believe in the idea, even if it seems stupid at first sight"

And of course, I find that terribly wrong. The author did not hint that at all (which I appreciate), however, but I still believe many will think this.

The point is that you must carefully examine each idea before jumping to a judgement. Do not dismiss the bad points. Just think it through. It wont work every time, because you're not perfect, and because you don't have all elements/cards in your hands (unless you can see the future and read people's mind, of course). All you can do is a best guess. Obviously, the author is either very unlucky, either bad at doing the best possible guess.

Re: What a stupid idea

#95

Post by hobs »

nostromo wrote: post #37
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…

It's a bit uncharitable to call "I thought Pinterest and Vine were dumb" arrogance.

Yeah, I still think pintrest and vine are dumb, its just they have a lot of users.

Just because you think something is dumb doesn't mean it isnt a viable business model.

People sell virtual rubies to people building ruby houses all day every day, and that is dumb.

Re: What a stupid idea

#96

Post by ekianjo »

hobs wrote: post #95
nostromo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit uncharitable to call "I thought Pinterest and Vine were dumb" arrogance.

Yeah, I still think pintrest and vine are dumb, its just they have a lot of users. Just because you think something is dumb doesn't mean it isnt a viable business model. People sell virtual rubies to people building ruby houses all day every day, and that is dumb.

I had the same comment below. Does popularity make up for it being stupid in the first place? So, because someone can get rich, does it mean his idea was right?

Well, maybe in a business sense, the idea was not wrong if you could gather enough fools to back you up, but that does not make it less of a stupid idea.

Re: What a stupid idea

#98

Post by ahoyhere »

joelandren wrote: post #59
bsimpson wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It died because it denied the way human communication actually works.

Re: What a stupid idea

#100

Post by MicahWedemeyer »

sramsay wrote: post #60

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…

I worked for a time at a startup whose claim to fame was "We almost got bought by Google before they chose YouTube"

YouTube wasn't alone. They just won the lottery and nobody remembers all the others who disappeared.

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