Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Secret Shuts Down

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 253 posts

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#211

Post by rjaco31 »

hackuser wrote: post #186
barrkel wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's pretty hard to find as much content as Youtube elsewhere, from experience all the youtube-wannabe websites have tremendously less content. Or do you have a link?

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#212

Post by BillyParadise »

ameister14 wrote: post #156
Giorgi wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, except 4chan is not what it used to be, main user base abandoned the ship long ago.

well, I don't think you can say that's because of the caustic nature of the site or because of how it's now moderated more strictly

...or maybe the members grew up?

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#213

Post by rjaco31 »

denzil_correa wrote: post #81
danso wrote: post #11

I would've never understood the appeal of these anonymous apps over something like Reddit (in which you can be as anonymous as you'd like) if I hadn't had a job on campus, where YikYak is well-frequented, and a far better source of breaking trivial news (i.e. what is all that yelling outside about?) than anything else...using YikYak periodically has made me realize again how easy it is to underestimate the appeal of…

> I would've never understood the appeal of these anonymous apps over something like Reddit Recently, we did some analysis (sensitivity, type, potential audience and linguistic characterists) on the content posted on anonymous social media like Whisper [0]. Most of the posts were about Confessions, Relationships, Meetup and QnA/Advice. [0] http://socialnetworks.mpi-sws.org/papers/anonymity_shades.pd...

I'm not sure I understood your point. You have all of this on reddit.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#214

Post by denzil_correa »

notahacker wrote: post #100
denzil_correa wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't monetize anonymous messaging I have always been curious about this part. What are the reasons you think one can not monetize anonymous messaging?

You can slap ads on anything. But the chance of slapping enough ads on a service to earn a multiple of a £130M valuation is pretty slim at the best of times, and when it's part of a trend of new "social" apps whose distinguishing feature is that they don't have network effects or targeting... VCs backing startups whose primary hope of a major return is to get enough eyeballs to make Facebook nervous enough to buy the…

> it's part of a trend of new "social" apps whose distinguishing feature is that they don't have network effects or targeting...

May I indulge in a bit more? In these anonymous social apps, it is made explicitly clear that you are anonymous but traceable. It means that the service can identify your unique mobile device identity as it wishes to. You are ONLY anonymous in the eyes of the users of the app; in terms of the service provider there is NO difference.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#215

Post by denzil_correa »

rjaco31 wrote: post #213
denzil_correa wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would've never understood the appeal of these anonymous apps over something like Reddit Recently, we did some analysis (sensitivity, type, potential audience and linguistic characterists) on the content posted on anonymous social media like Whisper [0]. Most of the posts were about Confessions, Relationships, Meetup and QnA/Advice. [0] http://socialnetworks.mpi-sws.org/papers/anonymity_shades.pd...

I'm not sure I understood your point. You have all of this on reddit.

In Reddit, you are pseudonymous - users do convert pseudonymity to anonymity by the usage of throwaway accounts. In case of anonymous media apps, the concept of anonymity is embedded. For example, on reddit - there can be ONLY one "Barack_Obama" on Whisper there could be thousands of them because there is no unique username. In addition, you could view profile of a pseudo-identity on Reddit. On anonymous social media, there is no profile information.

The key difference between anonymous vs non-anonymous (or pseudonymous) media is lack of unique identities and/or profile information.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#216

Post by pjc50 »

petercooper wrote: post #64
sharkweek wrote: post #3

For the curious, pulled their deal history from PitchBook: Secret raised their B last July at a post valuation just over 130M ( http://i.imgur.com/jNXw5PZ.png ). They had some major investors backing them up, and then the hype train just... stopped. I remember so many people being so high on it when it launched, with several friends all raving about how fun/addicting it was, then just poof it disappeared from convers…

I remember so many people being so high on it when it launched, with several friends all raving about how fun/addicting it was, then just poof it disappeared from conversation. Pure speculation, but I think trolls/frauds took it over. I say this as a Secret troll myself. I knew the odds of the data (linked to my FB account) becoming public was too high to post real secrets, so I used to just experiment with what got…

Did it always have the FB login? Could that have been what killed it?

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#217

Post by bostonvaulter2 »

derefr wrote: post #153
maxerickson wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I would phrase it as, "the default/most-well-known subforums of any forum will be garbage once the site reaches critical mass, being diluted by new members too quickly to keep their character. A proliferation of smaller subforums with their own effective communities will displace the sense that the site has any worthwhile/coherent community taken as a whole." Applies equally to 4chan and Reddit.

One name for this is Eternal September: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#218

Post by DanielBMarkham »

nlh wrote: post #55

This has been a fascinating story to watch unfold (and experience as a user.) When Secret came out, the addiction bug bit me hard too -- it was _extremely_ compelling. I posted. My friends posted. Everyone was checking Secret obsessively. People were "communicating" with their exes (or so they thought), people were guessing who was posting what. It was fun. It was interesting. It pulled some emotional heartstrings (I…

I was also a user, and experienced many of these same things.

Makes you wonder if they didn't spread their net too wide too quickly. Perhaps "Gay Secret for the SF area" might have taken off -- and given the team the chance to tweak/nail the experience.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#219

Post by raverbashing »

jackgavigan wrote: post #188
lnanek2 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A lot of VCs funded Color, so I don't see why

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#220

Post by blumkvist »

billmalarky wrote: post #127
smt88 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Box paid 7 figures for the Box.com domain name, so I wouldn't say that raising money to buy domains is dead yet.

Box bought box.com roughly 6 years after they launched, they were already wildly successful (as box.net).

Has box had a profitable quarter yet?
Post reply on HN