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Secret Shuts Down

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Re: Secret Shuts Down

#221

Post by blumkvist »

harryh wrote: post #151
ryandrake wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh, but we're not talking about building the whole product and generating buzz, etc. We're talking about the stated purpose for raising $25M: "The funding will be used to implement two new features, a Facebook login and the ability to follow posts on a certain topic". $25M. For TWO features. Hell, ignore my previous offer. I'd have given them a 92% discount and done that for a cool $2MM.

That's not the actual purpose for the money. The purpose of the money was to grow the company. For a business < 1 year old it's impossible to predict what they'll need, so they just fill in the blank with some random sentence that no one cares about.

Excellent business practice!

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#222

Post by mherdeg »

What were some of the key contributions from Secret to wider culture?

Was it — Julie Ann Horvath's decision to disclose big cultural problems at the company GitHub?

Was there anything else?

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#224

Post by burger_moon »

blumkvist wrote: post #220
billmalarky wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It doesn't look like it.

https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ABOX&fstype=ii&ei=IQp...

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#225

Post by lmm »

rtpg wrote: post #167
zachalexander wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually when people say "4chan" I assume they mean /b/.

/v/, /jp/, /pol/, and so many other boards are extremely toxic in behavior as well. There's some interesting stuff, but it's behind layers of "2edgy4u" behavior of people trying to out-insult each other.

That's what keeps them interesting, honestly. I see the edginess as a kind of intelligence test: only people who are smart enough to ignore offensive content need apply.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#226

Post by lmm »

Retra wrote: post #182
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…

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…

It's very hard to bootstrap something that doesn't just let people add all their friends (from anywhere in the world).

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#227

Post by Nemcue »

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.

Not entirely true.

Some of the very large subreddits such as /games and /askscience have actually retained very high quality. They just require very strict rules and heavy moderation.

Just compare the frontpage of http://reddit.com/r/gaming with http://reddit.com/r/games — granted one is about twice as big as the other in terms of active users, but /gaming has been full of low-quality submissions since before it became a default subreddit.

It just comes down to having proper rules and enforcing them.

Now, reddit and 4chan are very different in the regard of perceived quality. If you heavily moderate a subreddit the low-quality submissions will for the most part only be viewed by those that browse the queue of new submissions. This isn't really true with 4chan since the low-quality submissions that are buried will still be viewed by everyone (although this kind of depends on if you've configured the order of submissions).

As an interesting aside, you can actually significantly impact what submissions get buried in a subreddit with very few votes since there's not a lot of people that browse the new-queue.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#228

Post by lmm »

oldmanjay wrote: post #159
sergiotapia wrote: post #118

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.

I hate that I have this reaction; when I read things like this, I can't help but feel that you're a 14 year old who accidentally found your way into the adult Internet. Welcome! Please try to not be a jerk here. We aren't 4chan.

Your comment is superficially more polite than the typical 4chan post - but actually it's even less constructive (and perpetuates the horrible stereotyping of younger people). There's no way to respond - nothing to refute, not even anything helpful if you do agree.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#229

Post by Ntrails »

rtpg wrote: post #167
zachalexander wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually when people say "4chan" I assume they mean /b/.

/v/, /jp/, /pol/, and so many other boards are extremely toxic in behavior as well. There's some interesting stuff, but it's behind layers of "2edgy4u" behavior of people trying to out-insult each other.

I'd take goatse spam, arguments about hitler being a decent enough chap, and FYAD flames in that sort of environment over twitter where the threats seem real, because most of those sending don't seem to be in on the fact it is all a big joke.

Maybe it's just me - but I think the irreverent self-aware toxicity has it's advantages.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#230

Post by lmm »

geojageojawg wrote: post #82
abalone wrote: post #35

"Secret will hand its remaining cash back to investors" Minus the $6M the founders took off the table? If they keep it.. if ever there were a case for blacklisting founders, this is it. It is definitely NOT cool to pull a move like that. You want to cash out early a little because you've been boostrapping, ok, but if you then bail on the company and shut it down within a year, then you start to look like a fraud who…

> If they keep it.. if ever there were a case for blacklisting founders, this is it. Hell no to this horrific and toxic idea that we should blacklist anybody who sells equity and then fails. Can you please identify yourself, so we can all be well-informed that if we go into business with you, we're going into business with somebody who believes in the public shaming and blacklisting of those who take chances and fail…

Taking a chance and failing is one thing. But $6m is an absurd amount of money. That's never-work-again money (I'm not sure why they'd even mind being blacklisted). People in my neighbourhood would literally kill for less (and in a few tragic cases did).
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