241–250 of 253 posts
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…
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 you mention the injection of android users, aren't you really talking about inner city high school kids using the app on boostmobile and metropcs phones?
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I'm the sort of founder that thinks it's my duty to return value to shareholders. You can be a founder that thinks it is your duty to return value to shareholders and still take money off the table. In fact, there are situations where not taking money off the table hurts your shareholders. Example: you're a poor founder with $400K in loans and 0 in saving, you're running a startup with good traction. You get a $20M a…
There's a difference between "not being super poor anymore" and taking a $6 million payday. Can you name a company where this hasn't resulted in disaster? As Mark Suster put it, "Not FU money, but 'feed the family' money." What these guys got was FU money.
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That's a little different...
Reading your post a few times, I don't really see the difference. Your last sentence perfectly summarizes small subreddits and cross-posts.
So really, all of the two things that I suggested are things that reddit doesn't do.
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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!
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…
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I think 4chan survives thanks to its smaller communities. The big boards tend to turn into cesspool once a critical mass is reached (/b/ of course but also /v/ and /pol/, maybe others I'm less familiar with). Even in big boards if you're lucky it's sometimes possible to find an interesting thread if the subject is not too controversial. I'll still take that over reddit though, on 4chan people feel more genuine, for b…
/b/, /pol/, arguably /v/ are all containment boards. They've never been good, they'll never be good, etc. The reason 4chan has survived has been that it promotes anonymity and hence genuine expression. After dealing with it, for a while, you get to kind of know different types of people. You can go to a containment board and find people that are genuinely, for example, homophobic and antisemetic with complete serious…
"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…
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/b/, /pol/, arguably /v/ are all containment boards. They've never been good, they'll never be good, etc. The reason 4chan has survived has been that it promotes anonymity and hence genuine expression. After dealing with it, for a while, you get to kind of know different types of people. You can go to a containment board and find people that are genuinely, for example, homophobic and antisemetic with complete serious…
By containment board do you mean like a theme that serves as a sink for those types of users so they don't bleed into the more general topics?
Unlike other more oppressive moderation schemes (cough reddit hackernews cough), 4chan just accepts as cost of doing business that people are going to want to be shitheads.
So, you have boards specifically for people wanting to be shitheads. Over time, that becomes board culture, and often raises to a level of self-parody that they become easy to spot when they leak. Imagine, if you will, an island whose sole form of humor is hyperbolically racist, sexist, classist, or materialist. If you can contort yourself into that headspace and engage the art on its own terms, it is a never-ending source of creativity and amusement.
The best part is, if it shows up somewhere else, you can just tell them to "go back to ", and they don't get a persecution complex about it, because they're not being censored.