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Comment by dsplittgerber | Hacker News Reader

I think there is this huge gap between which startups are covered all the time in the tech-savy press and which ones actually (will) matter for most 'regular' people medium-to-long term. Being a 'media-darling' and getting lots of buzz IMHO doesn't correlate with serious adoption beyond SF bay and Boston/NYC. Generally speaking, I think solving regular peoples' problems could be more worthwhile than pandering to early-adopters. I don't think they necessarily have the same problems.

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True, but FourSquare is really entertaining to the people who use it. Might not be a lasting trend but I've had several people gush about how fun it is. And there's a huge advertising opportunity, granted, again, that they can remain the popular platform for local-social-whatever.

I mean, what problem does FarmVille solve?

FarmVille solves the problem of people who want to avoid work by creating a game that allows them to simulate working on a farm instead.

FarmVille is a distraction from work, just like Hacker News is for many people.

but HN is one fine and diversely educational distraction that is sometimes applicable to work. I can't say the same for FarmVille in 99% of the cases.

It solves the problem of letting someone feel like they are nurturing something.

The question was rhetorical :) But thanks.

It's totally true: Foursquare, Gowalla, etc. appeal most directly to a young tech-savvy market. Basically, SF.

Companies like AngiesList and Groupon serve a broader market and are not based in SF area. So, they get less attention. But, these are bringing in far more revenue and will likely last longer.

It's the same answer that Ev Williams gave about an early critical review of Twitter: "how useful is ice cream?"

Just because there's people that use Groupon-like utilitarian services doesn't mean that they won't have fun with other stuff too.

Yet Facebook sees great potential in this space and just launched a competing service which I predict will become a HUGE hit, especially among college aged kids.

I'm not sure about that.

I think Facebook is moving to prevent someone else getting any sort of a foothold in the social media space.

It's play essentially amounts to little more than "you don't need to look at FourSquare, you can just stay here with us". If it turns out to be popular great, if not then it's not fussed, but what Facebook doesn't want is someone else building up a user base with anything close to critical mass.

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