221–230 of 369 posts
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It's not even just the emotions. The money isn't real until it settles.
And you owe taxes on it, regardless. I heard some sob stories from the brokers at Charles Schwab after Enron went under - energy traders who had borrowed heavily (on margin) against positions that were now worthless. Oy.
This $27.8 billion dollar valuation tells me that somewhere along the line, my job and lifestyle have caused me to detach from a significant chunk of society. I've never used Snap or their platform. I don't even really know what the benefit of their service. I am curious if I'm in the minority or if there's lots of developers like me who aren't able to comprehend these valuations.
You are not alone. I have been struck with amazement at the rise of apps like Snap, Twitter, and Instragram. They have captivated an entire generation, leaving me on the sideline. As a developer, I suppose I'm not the most social being on the planet, but it does concern me that I have become "detached" from everyone else. I spoke with an Uber driver the other day whos 14 year old son has 700,000 instragram followers…
I have a highly engaging, challenging job that pays well. I'm a holder of an advanced degree, regularly read long-form books, and am engaged and will be married soon.
Frankly I think I'm pretty typical a lot of people on HN, and developers in general. I don't consume much media, though. I entirely checked out from facebook and haven't looked back.
When I think about who the heaviest users of facebook and snapchat are, I think of people who have boring jobs that don't require their full attention: working retail in a mall, gym attendants, hotel workers, basically anyone working a minimum wage, customer-facing job with a lot of time to kill. These people tend to be young, but they also tend to be less educated and not earn that much.
Looking at my own life, I remember thinking how backward the rich were when I was young, they were late to the internet and some still don't even use email (I think Buffett does this?) It's ironic that as developers have risen in prominence and income, we may be excluding ourselves from using the very mass-market products we ourselves create. It's weird. Are we drug dealers?
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Welcome to the future. The economy's mostly driven by incredibly invasive advertising, normalized spyware, and kids sending each other naked pics. It's far worse than any 80s film ever imagined.
The "economy" is much, much larger than a few social networking apps.
You need to stop and see the big picture here. facebook is basically as powerful as the entire TV industry combined, with all the power concentrated in a single company. The NYT recently reported that the average US facebook user spends 50 minutes/day on facebook. And people are watching less and less TV all the time.
I'm not saying this is a good thing, quite the opposite, but I think it seems dishonest not to acknowledge what a huge effect these companies have had on every level of our society, from how people talk to friends, how politicians communicate with the electorate, how people decide what to buy, etc.
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But they don't bundle SMS and 'HoIP' any more, and aren't they killing it in favour of Duo & Allo? But with ~~poor~~ no marketing, and no web UI...
You can use Hangouts for SMS and 'HoIP' still, but they made it a lot more difficult. I'm really not the target demographic for messaging applications, but I am baffled by how Google has handled Hangouts (which seemed to be incredibly popular and worked better 10 years ago - I'm avoiding the name changes over the years because I was able to use the same account continuously), Allo and Duo (I have never tried either a…
I think duo is the right idea, where making a video call should be just as easy as making a phone call, but so far every time I've tried to use has been met with "install what? can't we just facetime?"
Santa Monica and Venice are going to get even more expensive in 6 months.
I feel like I was asleep for 50 years and I just woke up and I have no idea how society works.
Don't they make a little sexting app? What happened!
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You are not alone. I have been struck with amazement at the rise of apps like Snap, Twitter, and Instragram. They have captivated an entire generation, leaving me on the sideline. As a developer, I suppose I'm not the most social being on the planet, but it does concern me that I have become "detached" from everyone else. I spoke with an Uber driver the other day whos 14 year old son has 700,000 instragram followers…
How does he sell the advertising? Product placement in the photos? (I'm not interested in advertising. I'm just curious.) I'm surprised by Target: Why not rotate their product lines and improve selection rather than just advertise to teens? Most of them would probably go to Walmart where it's cheaper.
Yes, that's probably it. It's the "influencer" model. If 700,000 people who are following you on social media see you wearing a cool jacket from Target, and you say something nice about it in the comments, then those people are more likely to buy that jacket than say, seeing some random person wearing it in a TV ad or a catalog.
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>Yeah, the 13-21-year-old chunk of society MySpace had that one nailed, and look how that turned out for them. This is exactly the kind of demographic that is susceptible to fads and keeps leaving dead services in its wake.
The MySpace argument is tired and stale and not even that insightful. MySpace made several mistakes as a company that had nothing to do with their premise (connecting people, the same as Facebook). It just turned out that Facebook had better execution in the long run.
I don't know if you remember how that went down, but people loved myspace. It worked well, then all the cool kids jumped to Facebook. It was herd mentality.
Definitely a trend situation over product features.
With network effects, you live by the sword and you die by the sword.
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>Yeah, the 13-21-year-old chunk of society MySpace had that one nailed, and look how that turned out for them. This is exactly the kind of demographic that is susceptible to fads and keeps leaving dead services in its wake.
The MySpace argument is tired and stale and not even that insightful. MySpace made several mistakes as a company that had nothing to do with their premise (connecting people, the same as Facebook). It just turned out that Facebook had better execution in the long run.
As an user in their target age (18-24) I have to say that since Instagram started introducing features like stories and stickers the activity in my Snapchat has diminished enormously. I would say 50-70% less activity. I don't know if it's something specific to my social circle or more widespread but anyway it's been impressive