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Secret Shuts Down

techcrunch.com

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Re: Secret Shuts Down

#201

Post by prostoalex »

adamzerner wrote: post #154

Can someone explain to me why people return money to investors? Legal reasons? Altruistic reasons? Selfish reasons (maybe that keeping it would hurt their reputation and make them feel guilty)?

Reputation reasons. If the co-founders were to raise money for another venture in a few months/years, which story would click with investors better - "iterated, didn't achieve product-market fit, pulled the plug" or "wasted time and investors' money".

Each case is specific though, but at some point, if the product has no growth and key talent has left the building, even if you do have six-seven digits in the bank, new employees are not exactly knocking on your door, users are not over-running the servers, remaining employees quietly send out resumes, so what would you be spending that money on?

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#202

Post by prostoalex »

adamzerner wrote: post #174
lsc wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that depends on who controls the company, something that usually has to do with ownership percentages, something that wasn't revealed in the article. The thing is, though, even when you control the majority of the company you do have some legal and ethical obligations to the minority shareholders.

I see. Well, my point applies to any situation where someone does have the freedom to do what they want with (a large chunk of) money, and chooses to give that money to a VC, rather than, say donating it to an effective charity. Am I the only one who sees something wrong with that?

One can donate as much of their personal fortune as they please. The money on the company's bank account is shareholders'.

Spending it on any personal mission not related to core business (whether charity, space travel, new car or hookers) is a great way to get some headlines with your name attached to words fraud and embezzlement.

You can certainly try to circumvent that by paying yourself a bonus out of the company money, and then donating that to charity, but it seems even shadier and introduces wonderful tax compexities with IRS come next year.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#203

Post by fredsted »

barrkel wrote: post #147
sethbannon wrote: post #101

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.

Try this for youtube playlists: http://instadj.com

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#204

Post by j1o1h1n »

timr wrote: post #86
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…

"When Secret came out, the addiction bug bit me hard too -- it was _extremely_ compelling....Then it took a nasty turn. There was gossip, there were attacks. They didn't get too bad, but the tone changed." And all of that, from what I recall, in the course of maybe three months. It wasn't hard to predict the decline -- the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory has been around since what, 2004? Maybe the investors who dump…

1993 > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#205

Post by _pmf_ »

sethbannon wrote: post #101
nostrademons wrote: post #72

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…

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-...

LinkedIn and Google+ have all the appeal of filling out tax forms.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#206

Post by flipp3r »

barrkel wrote: post #147
sethbannon wrote: post #101

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.

Even better, Google is deprecating the OpenId login to push Google+; the new OAuth login _requires_ you to have a Google+ account. So if you use your Gmail for say StackExchange, get ready for your Google+ page!

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#207

Post by carrotleads »

overdrivetg wrote: post #200
ChuckMcM wrote: post #162

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…

One of the best posts I've read about internet communities discusses this, long but worthwhile: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/12/07/socratic-fishing-in-lak... The relevant point is the dynamic balance between "plazas" (highly accessible areas to anyone) and "warrens" (areas accessible only to an accultured in-group). "Evaporative cooling" is the phenomenon of the best contributing members "boiling off" and leaving d…

What do you mean by "we" & sulekha. I used to be a regular almost a decade back. I used to make decent comments but used to put that one snide remark. Over a period I realised that distracted from the point I was making and no longer do that.

Over a period of time I learnt to ignore trolls and baits

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#208

Post by golergka »

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…

My office had to have a special meeting about personal and sexual harassment on this app (some people decided to discuss colleagues on secret, and not their professional capacities). It started with fun prank, but ended up being really weird and awkward, and people were really hurt by the abuse.

Needless to say, I wasn't a fan of the app afterwards.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#210

Post by mechazawa »

sergiotapia wrote: post #118
nostrademons wrote: post #72

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…

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.

8chan is still quite a niche forum when compared to the sheer size of 4chan. There are a lot of *chan forums out there with varying popularities. A handy resource for comparing these is https://nnmm.nl/chanstat/. A great example is comparing the most popular board of both forums /g/ (/tech/), /pol/, /v/ and /b/. I'm quite familiar with the drama that was happening half a year ago during GG and the /pol/ purge. Blaming such events on SJWs instead of the internal conflicts that have been going on on boards/across boards for ages is narrow minded.
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