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Comment by freshhawk | Hacker News Reader

"Messaging is a modern version of the social graph"

"The company that controls the messaging platform will control the future of the way we interact with people and, quite possibly, with businesses"

"The growth team is the equivalent of Facebook’s Navy SEALs"

The entire section about privacy.

I know it's Wired but this article isn't even a puff piece, it's reads like it's straight from Facebook marketing or a spoof of marketroid buzzwords. Am I alone in finding its tone gross? I've seen better journalism in "sponsored content" on buzzfeed.

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It's breathless reporter-speak, and it's often not actually intentional or conscious. Many reporters truly believe they are uncovering Woodward and Bernstein level stuff every time they hit "publish".

I was thinking something similar. I get the whole 'Soul of a New Machine' vibe they were going for but it felt like talking about where in the Hall of Fame a rookie player is going to be[1], which is to say "Great, you made some changes, you pushed in a lot of traffic, now in a year or so we'll be able to evaluate how well you did. Declaring victory this early is potentially quite damaging to the future evaluation."

Except that I presume the Wired folks feel like if they called it you will remember them as being 'the journalists that broke this huge story' and if the future turns out much more ho-humm than that, well you won't remember this article anyway :-)

[1] - Tracey Kidder's "developers and managers as superheros book."

I was going to complain about that as well but will just say it's pretty impressive PR work. ("I'm not even mad, I'm impressed!" -Ron Burgundy)

Though a lot of people seem to love Wired(I used to read their magazine, back when those were a thing, and they did have some really nice layouts), for a while now their articles have been shameless, overhyping, clickbait. Every single headline is THIS IS GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD/BE THE NEXT BIG THING/MAKE X ESTABLISHED THING OBSOLETE, and it turns out to be a whole lot of nothing.

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