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Rap Genius: Impish Ivy Leaguers Raise Millions for Internet Decoder Ring

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Re: Rap Genius: Impish Ivy Leaguers Raise Millions for Internet Decoder Ring

#11

Post by Zikes »

ahmadss wrote: post #5
hnwh wrote: post #2

Congrats to the team and all, seriously... but $15m investment in rap lyrics? When research on machines that could eradicate cancer struggle for crumbs? http://www.kanziuscancerresearch.org/ WTF SV?

Think beyond the rap content and consider it to be a text annotation content engine. The applications/use cases span beyond rap. this reminds me of what stackoverflow has done - verticalized Q&A sites based on what they validated/proved with stackoverflow itself.

It's already being used on such documents as the Bill of Rights, if I recall.

Re: Rap Genius: Impish Ivy Leaguers Raise Millions for Internet Decoder Ring

#12

Post by [deleted] »

mrkurt wrote: post #10
moocow01 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets see how they do on their investment before calling people naive and brash. Id suggest some "market research" on whether consumers want better cures for cancer or rather text annotation for rap songs

There's no better market research than selling things.

[deleted]

Re: Rap Genius: Impish Ivy Leaguers Raise Millions for Internet Decoder Ring

#14

Post by pemulis »

Let me start by saying that I like Rap Genius and use it pretty frequently. They've done a great job creating an annotation system for rap lyrics, and I think that it could scale well to other genres of music and certain kinds of poetry. Their public personas may or may not hurt adoption outside of the hip-hop community, but it's too early to tell[1].

I think a bigger challenge will be overcoming the natural constraints of the format. If the goal is to become the Internet Talmud, they will need deeper levels of commentary. You can see the strain when you look at the Rap Genius page for Ben Horowitz's latest essay[2]. The annotations were split evenly between useful links, jokes (which were decent, admittedly), and fairly pointless "explanations" that just repeat what the essay said in a way that's drier and harder to understand. A better set of annotations would consist of comments from other domain experts either agreeing with Ben's conclusions and adding more evidence, or disagreeing and explaining why[3]. There could also be factual notes explaining the context (digging into the history of Opsware, for instance). But Ben's essay is written in plain language and doesn't rely on many external references, so the Spot the Allusion style of annotation doesn't really work there.

To take a couple of examples from poetry, Spot the Allusion goes a long way towards explaining poems like The Wasteland[4]. But how would Rap Genius go about annotating William Carlos Williams? Well, we can actually look and see. If you look at The Red Wheelbarrow[5], you can see the format breaking down. There is no one true exegesis of a line from that poem, but Rap Genius isn't built to handle the kind of commentary the poem needs.

I'm sure this has already crossed their minds, so I'm interested in seeing how they deal with the problem.

--

[1] For me, at least, it comes across as unnatural posturing and rubs me the wrong way. That's just my gut reaction. I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually led to a backlash within the rap community, too.

[2] http://rapgenius.com/B-horowitz-making-yourself-a-ceo-lyrics

[3] The comments wouldn't have to come from the experts themselves; amateurs could add links to things they've written and said elsewhere.

[4] http://rapgenius.com/Ts-eliot-the-waste-land-lyrics

[5] http://rapgenius.com/William-carlos-williams-the-red-wheelba...

Re: Rap Genius: Impish Ivy Leaguers Raise Millions for Internet Decoder Ring

#15

Post by bksenior »

flipside wrote: post #8

Successful crowdsourcing is about identifying a community with passion that can be channeled into useful work. Hats off to Rap Genius to nailing this for annotations.

Eh, not to be negative but their hardest work is still ahead. This reminds me an awful lot of Quora early days. Hyper growth because they tapped into a chatty community with both passion and technical knowledge. They even got some fringe no-tech questions answered (both Quora and RG) in spaces that were universally debated and ubiquitous.

Unfortunately when they (Quora) started to try to scale new verticals the growth rate was significantly reduced and panic set in on both the leadership front as well as the investment front. The act of debating is what drives annotation, not the act of annotating itself.

I'm not saying that the can't do it, in-fact they seem like some ballin' ass hustlers, but they have in fact not yet solidified a product to market fit that can scale universally.

Re: Rap Genius: Impish Ivy Leaguers Raise Millions for Internet Decoder Ring

#16

Post by mgummelt »

bksenior wrote: post #15
flipside wrote: post #8

Successful crowdsourcing is about identifying a community with passion that can be channeled into useful work. Hats off to Rap Genius to nailing this for annotations.

Eh, not to be negative but their hardest work is still ahead. This reminds me an awful lot of Quora early days. Hyper growth because they tapped into a chatty community with both passion and technical knowledge. They even got some fringe no-tech questions answered (both Quora and RG) in spaces that were universally debated and ubiquitous. Unfortunately when they (Quora) started to try to scale new verticals the growt…

Did Quora actually have hyper growth in the early days?

Re: Rap Genius: Impish Ivy Leaguers Raise Millions for Internet Decoder Ring

#17

Post by numair »

Sometimes people will make investments that truly, really, make no sense. In order to appear smart, and to fit in with people they want to befriend (and with whom they want to work or do deals), others will give you very long-winded explanations of why you simply don't get it, this time is different, etc. In the end, common sense prevails.

Most of the "contrarian" bets out there weren't really contrarian at all; you simply didn't have enough information to understand what was going on. AH's deal for Skype, for example -- you didn't have an understanding of the psychology of dealmakers at eBay or Microsoft to know what would happen (and, to be honest, I find it strange and distasteful that they are so proud of an investment in which they screwed over all of the portfolio company's employees so severely). Investment managers, all of them, have no imagination whatsoever; a good deal is one in which you simply have a lot more information than anyone else, and are thus able to engage in high-stakes information arbitrage.

Sometimes investment managers forget they are just that, investment managers. They want to be cool, they want to be the man in the ring, they want to be the creative artist. That's where they screw up. Phil Falcone's disastrous bet on LightSquared is an excellent example of a really smart guy shooting himself in the balls in this manner.

RapGenius is one of these investments. And anyone who has been around the block longer than a couple years is fully aware of it. Whether they are willing to piss off AH and state this publicly, however, remains to be seen. Very few people have ever truly called out KP on Segway, or Sequoia on Color, for example. It pays to remain quiet.

As for me, I'm just hoping smart young kids will stop trying to analyze this deal, and others like it, in the hopes of finding or "discovering" any sort of logic in what they see. Don't waste your time. Don't base any of your own ideas on what you see happening. Just focus on what you're doing, and ignore all of this nonsense. Yeah, these guys raised $15 million. No, they aren't role models; no, their business doesn't actually make sense within the context of the deal; and no, you shouldn't try to emulate any of this crap.

Oh, and this article has it all wrong. It isn't at all difficult to get close to people in the entertainment industry. They are all watching their businesses getting disrupted by young technologists, so they have an obsession with getting to know all of the young technologists they can. You used to collect cars or jewelry -- now you collect smart kids with startups. I can't wait for the next big rap song that has someone bragging about how "I got way more startups than you."

Call me a hater, I don't care. I'm just being honest.

Re: Rap Genius: Impish Ivy Leaguers Raise Millions for Internet Decoder Ring

#18

Post by flipside »

bksenior wrote: post #15
flipside wrote: post #8

Successful crowdsourcing is about identifying a community with passion that can be channeled into useful work. Hats off to Rap Genius to nailing this for annotations.

Eh, not to be negative but their hardest work is still ahead. This reminds me an awful lot of Quora early days. Hyper growth because they tapped into a chatty community with both passion and technical knowledge. They even got some fringe no-tech questions answered (both Quora and RG) in spaces that were universally debated and ubiquitous. Unfortunately when they (Quora) started to try to scale new verticals the growt…

Rap Genius's stated plans are to be more like Stack Exchange than Quora. Each vertical will have it's own separate community and site so things will be more focused. As long as they're smart about picking verticals where they can get past critical mass, they'll be fine.

Quora on the other hand has been pursuing the one-size-fits-all approach which conflicts with the diversity that comes with increasing popularity.

Re: Rap Genius: Impish Ivy Leaguers Raise Millions for Internet Decoder Ring

#19

Post by pemulis »

numair wrote: post #17

Sometimes people will make investments that truly, really, make no sense. In order to appear smart, and to fit in with people they want to befriend (and with whom they want to work or do deals), others will give you very long-winded explanations of why you simply don't get it, this time is different, etc. In the end, common sense prevails. Most of the "contrarian" bets out there weren't really contrarian at all; you…

I don't know about that. A universal annotation platform that reached its full potential could basically eat the entire Internet. You can see hints of that in the founders' public interviews, when they say they want all of Business Insider's articles annotated on Rap Genius, for instance. The area is fraught with copyright concerns, and who knows if Rap Genius is the company to pull it off, but anything with that sort of growth potential is worth watching.

[Edit] Here's the most interesting quote from the Business Insider interview:

"Some books are in the public domain, like Moby Dick. Then there are some books that aren't in the public domain. And when people start to annotate these things, they create something new so people aren't just coming for the book anymore. They come for the meaning."

That would be a huge expansion of fair use. If they can make this argument successfully in court, everything ever written would suddenly be on the table, and they would be well positioned to gobble it up.

Re: Rap Genius: Impish Ivy Leaguers Raise Millions for Internet Decoder Ring

#20

Post by johnrob »

pemulis wrote: post #19
numair wrote: post #17

Sometimes people will make investments that truly, really, make no sense. In order to appear smart, and to fit in with people they want to befriend (and with whom they want to work or do deals), others will give you very long-winded explanations of why you simply don't get it, this time is different, etc. In the end, common sense prevails. Most of the "contrarian" bets out there weren't really contrarian at all; you…

I don't know about that. A universal annotation platform that reached its full potential could basically eat the entire Internet. You can see hints of that in the founders' public interviews, when they say they want all of Business Insider's articles annotated on Rap Genius, for instance. The area is fraught with copyright concerns, and who knows if Rap Genius is the company to pull it off, but anything with that sor…

If they pulled that off it would mean the government effectively repealed the notion of copyright (I could read any book I wanted to on rapgenius). I'm not sure how likely that is.
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