DailyBooth (YC S09), 4chan and the importance of context | Hacker News Reader

DailyBooth (YC S09), 4chan and the importance of context

jonathandeamer.com

But by changing the context of a simple imageboard, it’s overtaken a stalwart of internet culture (see chart) and got people talking

You should be using the domain 4chan.org instead of 4chan.com: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/4chan.org+dailybooth.com+4c...

Thanks, that was a pretty basic error of me to make! Corrected the post...but I hope the rest of my insight still stands ;-)

As a foreword, I like incubator companies because they tend to ship nice looking, solid products.

In all cases you stated - "Who you know" matters more. Not context.

I/You/Anyone could make a "twitter for families" or a "twitter for sports" or a "url shortener for bacon" or whatever & it would not get written up on techcrunch - unless I/You/Anyone knew someone there (at TechCrunch) or was part of an incubator (like YC/TechStars).

TechCrunch needs some news, even if it is mediocre, every day, covering every company from every incubator is a good way to keep that news flowing.

I partly disagree. Of course, networking, contacts and "who you know" are important. And DailyBooth were undoubtedly helped in getting TC coverage by the YC connection. But that's PR, which is different to creating a compelling product in and of itself, which is where I believe context and positioning (eg. link shortener for bacon) is important.

In this case, I don't think context matters so much as structure. 4chan is 4chan because there are no individual feeds, only a few giant public ones, and anonymity is allowed. That's hard bits creating the difference, not soft social norms.

DailyBooth could easily switch on anonymity - there's nothing technically difficult about that. But 4chan has a culture that allows for anonymous posts, which is why I think the context of a community is often more important in defining a service that technology.

Admittedly, individual feeds do change the way users behave a lot...but I'd argue that this feeds into changing the context that the tech is place in ;-)

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