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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

"Hey why use this? It's the same as Slack?" "Hey why use this, it's the same as IRC?" "Hey why use this, it's the same as a mailing list?"

These are the sorts of things people say to lazily kill any new idea.

"Hey why use this new fangled 'google.com'? It's the same as Alta Vista." "Hey why use this new fangled 'google.com'? It's the same as grep."

People say this stuff because it makes them feel smart.

Folks, not all software that allows people to communicate via the Internet is the same.

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> People say this stuff because it makes them feel smart.

Or because they really don't see any new value. When launching a new product, it isn't the general public's job to get on board with your vision. It is your job to communicate the value in a way that connects with your audience, and makes them want to use your product.

> Or because they really don't see any new value.

Value is a misnomer. There's no inherent value in 90% of the stuff that blows up. What's the "value" in Facebook? It's even hard to see today, think about how hard it was to see in 2006.

"Value" is the same nonsense idea as "solving a problem" that startup wantapreneurs are so obsessed with -- what problem did Snapchat really solve? What problem did FB solve that Myspace didn't? What problem did Google solve that Yahoo didn't?

Sometimes it's just about being different (Pinterest), being controversial (Snapchat), being novel (AirBnB), and having fun (reddit). Sometimes it's about cleaning up UX (Facebook), or making things just a bit easier to find (Google). But above all, it's about the right place, right time, and right execution. Fortune favors the bold.

It seems like you're going out of your way to avoid describing the value these products provided. Especially in your characterization of Google.

Pinterest provides entertainment, product discovery, and community.

Snapchat enabled a new type of communication by removing self consciousness.

Airbnb provides quality lodging at low prices.

Facebook provided authenticity, exclusivity, and increased information density through timeline.

Google provided far better search results.

> Pinterest provides entertainment, product discovery, and community.

This is kind of a non-statement. You could say that just about any internet based social network startup provides "community" and "entertainment" -- and yet many completely fail. This is quintessential grasping at straws and a posteriori reasoning.

> Snapchat enabled a new type of communication by removing self consciousness.

So did Yik Yak, so does IRC, so do anonymous forums, so does Kik. Again, this is kind of a ultra-general non-value value proposition. Why Snapchat got funded has nothing to do with the idea -- and everything to do with traction.

> Airbnb provides quality lodging at low prices.

So does hotels.com or (if you haggle a little) Craigslist.

> Facebook provided authenticity, exclusivity, and increased information density through timeline.

The timeline wasn't around when FB launched (back then we had the wall). I'm not even sure what "information density" means (or if it's even a good thing), it seems like 20-20 rear-view justification for FB's success. MySpace probably provided more authenticity, anyway (I could customize my page way more).

Maybe more specifically, the value of all these networks lies in the network part. The tricky part is convincing the people that will use it to become part of the product.

> So does hotels.com or (if you haggle a little) Craigslist.

hotels.com doesn't work as well as airbnb for rural areas and even in cities, you don't get to see anything about how flats are set up in the local area. The idea of trying to book accommodation for an anniversary weekend seems utterly mad. How do you comb through results? How do you pay? How do you view the reputation of the place? How do you know there aren't going to be animal bones all over the walls?

Yes, you can ask all those things and go back-and-forth. Yes, you can set up a separate paypal payment, but all of that is time spent and additional worries.

Just to hone in on one example, do you really not see any benefit to using Airbnb over Craigslist for short term rentals? Even in the beginning? I can argue the other side, I think quite clearly, but I first want to make sure that's actually what you're claiming because it seems so demonstrably untrue.

Solving a problem and providing a new, better way of doing something are really two different sides of the same coin. Put differently, you don't have to solve an explicit problem. You can also solve a latent problem.

Who are you to judge "wantapreneurs"? Of course, there is something such as "value"!

The original comment could then still hold, though. Yes, it might be like Slack/IRC/whatever, but better.

> Solving a problem and providing a new, better way of doing something are really two different sides of the same coin.

I'm going to contend that they are two fundamentally different things. Inventing the internal combustion engine and working at Honda on their 2019 model are two very different things.

This seems like a strawman. No one is arguing that the 20th iteration of a major auto model is providing a new way of doing things.

I am admittedly stretching the argument thin, but I still hope you see my point.

I'm not really sure what your point was. But you seem to think that doing something better is not solving a problem. Sure it is, just a slightly doesn't problem. Your car analogy... The original problem was a carriage needed house to be pulled, the solution was the combustible engine. The next problem was the engine want fast enough. Then the engine used too much gas. Then the problem was it cost too much. Perhaps working on the 20th iteration of the engine isn't as hard as inventing the engine in the first place, but there are still problems to be solved, and value to be added. Sure, the winner isn't always better, sometimes they just have better marketers. But most of your original examples the succeeder did something better. Yahoo want a search engine and it was noisy. Google was simple and it find stuff. MySpace had a spam problem. Sometimes the new thing is just easier to use, or looks nicer, or it does one small thing the other doesn't.

I don't. What's the difference between solving a problem and finding a better way of doing things?

Whenever you can make a point by stretching an analogy to an extreme, I think it's possible to imagine stretching the analogy the other direction. In this case, the distinction seems to be a matter of degrees, rather than a fundamental difference.

The way I remember it, Facebook removed customisation, giving users one good page design. In Myspace people had to think about what tiled wallpaper and brutally large sound file to include in their page. Seconding everything shafyy said.

Or maybe they are curious about what differentiates it? Maybe they are asking questions to learn more about the motivations behind the project? Maybe they don't know why they would want to use it, so they are asking to see if they are missing something. There are lots of reasons why people might ask the same question. Just because you might ask those questions to feel smart, doesn't mean that everyone else asking them is doing so for the same reasons.

Our goal is explicitly not to communicate via the Internet. Sure we'll promote online and use a Slack group to organize our mentors, but we're not taking on SO or IRC or Slack.

There's something to be said about coworking spaces and working remote from a cafe. We crave the company of other people.

This is where Meetups.com fits in. But this area has kind of migrated away from the traditional discussions (which now happen on places like here, Reddit, Slack). There's usually too many recruiters, managers, vendors and sales people involved. I'm not saying these people are necessarily bad for the environment, but to cater for a particular type of discussion - they detract from it.

How many conferences or meetups have you attended where a significant portion of the audience doesn't understand what's being talking about on stage (usually because "business" and "technical" tracks aren't broken up)?

I think there's definitely a space for this to succeed in. Look forward to attending.

I am asking sometimes similar questions because I just can not allow to spend half a day to do the research on these kind of very obvious questions - meanwhile the author could answer them in two minutes.

These kind of questions are a good indicator about the documentation quality of a project. They are valuable input that can help you to put your project presentation on a much higher level.

Also from "inside" a project it is very easy to forget about the most obvious question a person might have looking at it for the first time - these questions are the best signal for exactly that happening.

There is no reason to interpret any kind of question in a hostile way - it only shows that you must be living in a personal environment of too-much-aggression. Take a break.

We are living in an age of upcoming aggression and ongoing regression of human brain capabilities (too much poison everywhere) - we have to stay aware of that and actively try to overcome these emotional aberration (and, of course, constantly work on the causes) - it is not easy, but if we all try it, we can all win.

I get why phrased like that it can sound condescending, but really, "what do I use this for" can be a perfectly legitimate and innocent question. Personally, if I ask this, most of the time it's because I'm genuinely intrigued and would like to understand it better, not to put the author down.

Don't forget the most famous one, "Why use this [Dropbox]? It's the same as FTP or email"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

Man that has to be framed and put on a wall for all entrepreneurs trying to catch a break.

My original message could not be more strongly emphasised than by reading the "but hey I can just use FTP" in that thread.

Here's the bit that I love the best:

"It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. "

That must be the quote of the century. DropBox is one of the MOST viral and revenue generating ideas there was - but here on HN when DropBox is announced, the idea killers all pop up quickly with "Hey this thing is the same as some unix utility and won't make money".

Just magnificent.

Also classic: "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem"

I love this - it's such a techhead way of thinking - you don't need an integrated easy to use product, all you need to do it type 40 arcane commands for exactly the same thing - it's trivial!

It's not the same as FTP, because FTP is a technology, not a hosted service. Slap an interface, apps, and integration on top of FTP and it's similar.

"Hey why use this new fangled 'google.com'? It's the same as Alta Vista."

Because it does not accept money to change companies' rankings.

"Hey why use this new fangled 'google.com'? It's the same as grep."

Don't be silly, you can't grep the whole internet.

Thing is, if you can't easily come up with a retort to these, then the criticism may be valid.

> to lazily kill any new idea.

efficiently kill a new idea. The point is the idea isn't very new, it's just another, competing, standard..

> It's the same as Alta Vista

But it isn't - read the page-rank paper. Google produces better results. It isn't at all comparable to grep.

> not all software that allows people to communicate via the Internet is the same

Neither is it all significantly different.

Almost the first thing I look for with every project/product is a 'Compared to' chapter. This gives a good indication the author(s) is aware of the problem space and existing solutions and gives me the confidence I'm not looking at 'Yet Another Solution' for the same problem but without the lessons learned by existing solutions.

> "Hey why use this new fangled 'google.com'

Anyone who saw the original google home page after using Alta Vista back in the 90s would have immediately understood that the minimalism was its great benefit.

"Like X but we've fixed deficiency Y" is a fine way to market a product or service.

And if someone asked you why to use Google instead of grep, would you not have an answer?

I think in general, "fuck the haters" is one of the most important lessons there is to learn in life, the sooner the better. Still working on this myself of course.

It's more surprising to see these replies because this is clearly not "software that allows people to communicate via the internet."

Remember that guy that wrote here on HN that Dropbox was useless because you could basically set that up yourself with an FTP server? :D

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