Good, and good riddance. Anyone who invested in Secret is a fucking moron. You can't monetize anonymous messaging, and no established company would buy technology they could build in an afternoon hackathon for the cost of a couple cases of Red Bull. If you need proof, 4chan's run at a loss for over a decade. Any investor in a VC fund that invested in Secret should sue their fund for mismanagement of money.
Secret Shuts Down
71–80 of 253 posts
Re: Secret Shuts Down
#72This shutdown - and some of the comments here that indicate how nasty Secret had become before it died - is quite interesting in light of the conversation surrounding Google's Real Names Only policy.
Secret cofounders David Byttow and Chris Bader-Wechseler were both veterans of Google+. Byttow, in particular, I recall being quite well-respected as someone who got shit done, quietly and efficiently, by the rest of the G+ team. I didn't know him personally, but I had a few professional dealings with him where I found him to be a straight-shooter that was remarkably effective and helpful. When I heard of the product concept for Secret, my first thought was "Woah, somebody's finally decided to take the other side of the stupid Real Names policy and build a social network that's completely anonymous."
Apparently that doesn't work either, and when you do that, people hate you just as much.
My take-away from this is that social software is remarkably hard, and that whatever you do, people will hate you. The social sites that survive - like Reddit, Flickr, and Facebook - are those that very carefully balance everyone's competing desires, making just enough changes to keep everyone slightly disgruntled but not enough to leave the site. The ones that die - like Secret, G+, LiveJournal - are the ones that either do nothing to moderate or that introduce heavy-handed blanket policies. (4chan, as always, remains inexplicable; somehow it is still going strong despite being a cesspool. Maybe that's the whole point of it, though, to be the Internet's honey pot of bad behavior.)
Re: Secret Shuts Down
#73This shutdown - and some of the comments here that indicate how nasty Secret had become before it died - is quite interesting in light of the conversation surrounding Google's Real Names Only policy. Secret cofounders David Byttow and Chris Bader-Wechseler were both veterans of Google+. Byttow, in particular, I recall being quite well-respected as someone who got shit done, quietly and efficiently, by the rest of the…
4chan isn't a cesspool though, that's just an image they project to push away people who would respond to such pushing (approximately, the olds).
(There are certainly parts of it that are risky clicks though)
Re: Secret Shuts Down
#74I just opened secret for the first time in months(years?), and the first post was a very explicit dick pic... Seems like an appropriate send off.
Re: Secret Shuts Down
#75Can we speculate as to the timing of this with the DoD marriage with VC firms and investment groups in Silicon Valley, or is that too conspiratorial?
Re: Secret Shuts Down
#76This shutdown - and some of the comments here that indicate how nasty Secret had become before it died - is quite interesting in light of the conversation surrounding Google's Real Names Only policy. Secret cofounders David Byttow and Chris Bader-Wechseler were both veterans of Google+. Byttow, in particular, I recall being quite well-respected as someone who got shit done, quietly and efficiently, by the rest of the…
4chan isn't a cesspool though, that's just an image they project to push away people who would respond to such pushing (approximately, the olds). (There are certainly parts of it that are risky clicks though)
Usually when people say "4chan" I assume they mean /b/.
Re: Secret Shuts Down
#77Can we not link to TC please and use https://medium.com/secret-den/sunset-bc18450478d5 the official link?
Re: Secret Shuts Down
#78This is going to be used as a case study of why not to let founders take cash off the table in early rounds for years to come.
Founders acting in their own self-interest? That sounds like capitalism in action to me.
Re: Secret Shuts Down
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> http://i.imgur.com/jNXw5PZ.png Here was the intended use of the $25M: "The funding will be used to implement two new features, a Facebook login and the ability to follow posts on a certain topic" . This is what is wrong with Silicon Valley today. An afternoon project for a single developer gets $25M from investors. Please, someone give me just $10M....I've already implemented Facebook login for my apps.
Oh yea? I'll do it for $9M.
I'm certain that if you can build a product that generates a huge buzz and gets millions of people to sign up that you will have absolutely no trouble raising that kind of money.
So go for it!
Re: Secret Shuts Down
#80"Secret will hand its remaining cash back to investors" Minus the $6M the founders took off the table? If they keep it.. if ever there were a case for blacklisting founders, this is it. It is definitely NOT cool to pull a move like that. You want to cash out early a little because you've been boostrapping, ok, but if you then bail on the company and shut it down within a year, then you start to look like a fraud who…
Founders acting in their own self-interest? That sounds like capitalism in action to me.