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Secret Shuts Down

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Re: Secret Shuts Down

#91

Post by jusben1369 »

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…

It seems to me that VC's take heat for investing too early, too late, too much and too little. Being too conservative or too risky. They're an easy punching bag.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#92

Post by jusben1369 »

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…

Seems like a good argument for channels? Sounds like you would have liked to have stayed connected to the latest happenings for the tech scene in SF.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#93

Post by simias »

maxerickson wrote: post #73
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 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 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 better or worse.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#94

Post by ma2rten »

downandout wrote: post #34
sharkweek wrote: post #3

For the curious, pulled their deal history from PitchBook: Secret raised their B last July at a post valuation just over 130M ( http://i.imgur.com/jNXw5PZ.png ). They had some major investors backing them up, and then the hype train just... stopped. I remember so many people being so high on it when it launched, with several friends all raving about how fun/addicting it was, then just poof it disappeared from convers…

> http://i.imgur.com/jNXw5PZ.png Here was the intended use of the $25M: "The funding will be used to implement two new features, a Facebook login and the ability to follow posts on a certain topic" . This is what is wrong with Silicon Valley today. An afternoon project for a single developer gets $25M from investors. Please, someone give me just $10M....I've already implemented Facebook login for my apps.

I am not familiar with Pitchbook. Where does that information come from?

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#95

Post by arprocter »

ceejayoz wrote: post #13
danso wrote: post #11

I would've never understood the appeal of these anonymous apps over something like Reddit (in which you can be as anonymous as you'd like) if I hadn't had a job on campus, where YikYak is well-frequented, and a far better source of breaking trivial news (i.e. what is all that yelling outside about?) than anything else...using YikYak periodically has made me realize again how easy it is to underestimate the appeal of…

YikYak added muting by user just recently.

Yeah, it's an option when you "report" something.

Although assuming muted users continue to post controversial things, in the long run it may just lead to less reporting.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#96

Post by declan »

downandout wrote: post #34
sharkweek wrote: post #3

For the curious, pulled their deal history from PitchBook: Secret raised their B last July at a post valuation just over 130M ( http://i.imgur.com/jNXw5PZ.png ). They had some major investors backing them up, and then the hype train just... stopped. I remember so many people being so high on it when it launched, with several friends all raving about how fun/addicting it was, then just poof it disappeared from convers…

> http://i.imgur.com/jNXw5PZ.png Here was the intended use of the $25M: "The funding will be used to implement two new features, a Facebook login and the ability to follow posts on a certain topic" . This is what is wrong with Silicon Valley today. An afternoon project for a single developer gets $25M from investors. Please, someone give me just $10M....I've already implemented Facebook login for my apps.

Huh. I implemented iOS and Android Facebook login for https://recent.io/ in a few days last month. (The login code itself wasn't that time-consuming but UX, debugging, etc. took longer.)

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#97

Post by timr »

jusben1369 wrote: post #91
timr wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

It seems to me that VC's take heat for investing too early, too late, too much and too little. Being too conservative or too risky. They're an easy punching bag.

I don't ordinarily care what VC's do with their money (i.e. mostly lose it), but it's disingenuous to suggest that there aren't clear trends: it's very difficult to raise a series A, but if you're the hype-driven flavor-of-the-moment, you can close a round with little to no diligence, few metrics and none of the proof traditionally required of a series A investment. We're still seeing money get shoved at companies who had a moment in the sun on ProductHunt or Reddit, with zero validation of the underlying business prospects (or even much in the way of critical thinking).

So yeah, VC's do take heat for investing too early, too late, too much and too little. It isn't a contradiction -- it's what people do when they act as a herd.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#98

Post by nostrademons »

prostoalex wrote: post #85
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…

I'm assuming there was full understanding that some of the money will go to founders, with usual arguments - "brings long-term focus", "takes care of day-to-day expenses", "encourages building for the long-term instead of flipping a company", etc. With that said, with Odeo, one thing that went down in history books is how Evan Williams graciously purchased the shares out of his personal fortune, thus making every inv…

The irony is that if Evan Williams had not bought back the shares and had instead started Twitter out of the same corporate entity, the investors would've done a whole lot better. Instead of breaking even, they'd be sitting on a few billion.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#99

Post by danieltillett »

denzil_correa wrote: post #83
fredfoobar42 wrote: post #71

Good, and good riddance. Anyone who invested in Secret is a fucking moron. You can't monetize anonymous messaging, and no established company would buy technology they could build in an afternoon hackathon for the cost of a couple cases of Red Bull. If you need proof, 4chan's run at a loss for over a decade. Any investor in a VC fund that invested in Secret should sue their fund for mismanagement of money.

> You can't monetize anonymous messaging I have always been curious about this part. What are the reasons you think one can not monetize anonymous messaging?

What the op is saying that nobody has yet worked out a way to monetise anonymous messaging. I can think of a few ways that it could be done (none ethical), but the major problem is that as the barrier to entry in this market is so low it is hard to prevent your user base defecting if you try. There is little network effect and no content ownership by the users to prevent them walking away.

Re: Secret Shuts Down

#100

Post by notahacker »

denzil_correa wrote: post #83
fredfoobar42 wrote: post #71

Good, and good riddance. Anyone who invested in Secret is a fucking moron. You can't monetize anonymous messaging, and no established company would buy technology they could build in an afternoon hackathon for the cost of a couple cases of Red Bull. If you need proof, 4chan's run at a loss for over a decade. Any investor in a VC fund that invested in Secret should sue their fund for mismanagement of money.

> You can't monetize anonymous messaging I have always been curious about this part. What are the reasons you think one can not monetize anonymous messaging?

You can slap ads on anything. But the chance of slapping enough ads on a service to earn a multiple of a £130M valuation is pretty slim at the best of times, and when it's part of a trend of new "social" apps whose distinguishing feature is that they don't have network effects or targeting...

VCs backing startups whose primary hope of a major return is to get enough eyeballs to make Facebook nervous enough to buy them deserve to take losses more than most.

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