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Secret Shuts Down

techcrunch.com

181–190 of 253 posts

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#181

This 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…

> My take-away from this is that social software is > remarkably hard, ... Agreed > and that whatever you do, people will hate you. Disagree. I think it is remarkably difficult to create a functional community, and it is impossible to do that if you don't understand how communities work. In particular, successful communities often have places where similar members can congregate and effectively shun people who don't…

A clique, a subreddit, a treehouse, a coffeehouse, a salon, a third place, a safe space, inside the magic circle...

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#182

This 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…

> My take-away from this is that social software is > remarkably hard, ... Agreed > and that whatever you do, people will hate you. Disagree. I think it is remarkably difficult to create a functional community, and it is impossible to do that if you don't understand how communities work. In particular, successful communities often have places where similar members can congregate and effectively shun people who don't…

I wonder if anybody has made a 'choose your own community' site. You choose how many people you're given access to (say, 100, 10K, 100K, 1M+) and the only information you get is from those who are nearest to you in location and interests (based on an adjustable scoring algorithm) and anybody you've previously conversed with.

Smaller communities could make for more specialized content, and everybody living on the edge of a bubble means theres plenty of opportunity for valuing middleman-style culture sharing (AKA reposts.)

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#183
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that seems like an astonishingly unlikely situation.

Maybe. It's just that I hear of stories that talk about founders giving money back to the investors as if it were admirable. Admirable implies that a decision was made. But maybe I'm just misinterpreting.

removed regrettable bit - but he or she is right about the options; ethically and legally, they could have continued to try to make it work, or they could shut down the company, sell the assets and distribute the proceeds to the creditors and then the owners of the company (the investors)

Really, one could ethically do either one of those things; it's just that depending on the situation and your perspective, well, probably one or the other is the better choice.

Now you seem to be arguing that the choice between continuing to run a company or not is not one that has an 'admirable' option. And maybe from you point of view, it doesn't really matter.

There's a stadium down the way from my house. when the football player makes a home run or whatever, well, personally, I don't see how that matters; I don't care, and I'm mildly pissed that I'm going to have to pay for the bonds to build the eyesore. But even so? I don't go to football forms and tell people that the large man getting the ball in the hole or whatever isn't an admirable achievement. It's the game those people want to play, and that's fine.

I personally find business really interesting, really in a similar way to the football fan. Most of this stuff doesn't really matter. Some of it does, but even that stuff doesn't matter as much as people say it does.

To me? the decision to give the money back to the founders, rather than shitting the money away when you know you have been beaten, is admirable because investors seem to select for overconfidence; quitting before you've spent every cent implies that you were able to project that overconfidence to the investors, but that you were able to remain a rational person.

I mean, it's not world peace, sure, but it implies some attributes which within the context of the business game are pretty important.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#184
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that seems like an astonishingly unlikely situation.

Maybe. It's just that I hear of stories that talk about founders giving money back to the investors as if it were admirable. Admirable implies that a decision was made. But maybe I'm just misinterpreting.

They decided to call time and close up shop with money still in the bank (which has to be returned to the investors unless some other agreement with them is made, the founders can't just run off with it and donate it to the cat society), rather than keeping on running the company until they couldn't pay the bills anymore.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#185

This 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…

Seems like a big success to me. The founders each took 3 million cash off the table on investment and now are closing up the company. Corporations are just a vehicle to make money after all, they got their pay day and ran.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure it's wise to call G+ a "dead" social network. According to recent research by Pew, it's more popular than Twitter and just as popular as LinkedIn. http://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/section-2-social-media-...

It's currently impossible to create a Youtube playlist without a G+ profile. Every time I want to create a new playlist, I create a new G+ profile, then delete it immediately afterwards. It is tedious. I'm sure many other people, when faced with roadblocks like these, create a do-nothing profile but don't bother deleting afterwards.

> I'm sure many other people, when faced with roadblocks like these, create a do-nothing profile but don't bother deleting afterwards.

Or don't use playlists and find other websites.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#187
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. It's just that I hear of stories that talk about founders giving money back to the investors as if it were admirable. Admirable implies that a decision was made. But maybe I'm just misinterpreting.

removed regrettable bit - but he or she is right about the options; ethically and legally, they could have continued to try to make it work, or they could shut down the company, sell the assets and distribute the proceeds to the creditors and then the owners of the company (the investors) Really, one could ethically do either one of those things; it's just that depending on the situation and your perspective, well, p…

> ovechtrick is an ass for responding to me rather than you

It does seem odd that he/she did that, but maybe it was just a mistake.

Anyway, thank you + others - I understand now. I now see that donating to others wasn't an option, and that the choice was between a) running the company into the ground or b) returning the money to investors. Given that, I'm inclined to agree that b) is the admirable choice. And probably also the selfishly strategic one too.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#188

This 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…

Seems like a big success to me. The founders each took 3 million cash off the table on investment and now are closing up the company. Corporations are just a vehicle to make money after all, they got their pay day and ran.

Question is, will any VC want to fund them again in the future?

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4Chan is not going strong, in fact a large majority of their core users have migrated to 8Chan because of Moot's brainwashing by SJW.

That was certainly a really bad move—Obviously people were very pissed off.

The kind of people who deserve to be pissed off.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#190
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My take-away from this is that social software is > remarkably hard, ... Agreed > and that whatever you do, people will hate you. Disagree. I think it is remarkably difficult to create a functional community, and it is impossible to do that if you don't understand how communities work. In particular, successful communities often have places where similar members can congregate and effectively shun people who don't…

I wonder if anybody has made a 'choose your own community' site. You choose how many people you're given access to (say, 100, 10K, 100K, 1M+) and the only information you get is from those who are nearest to you in location and interests (based on an adjustable scoring algorithm) and anybody you've previously conversed with. Smaller communities could make for more specialized content, and everybody living on the edge…

Subreddits, right?
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