i've been there. I also tried to think of new ideas to work on but I couldn't put any energy into it. I used to think I was a very creative person but even that I started to have serious doubt about. That's when I decided to take a break. I think you ran out of energy NOT because you're working in tech, but because you're working for yourself (This is pretty natural). Take a break and mindlessly work for someone else. After 6 months to a year you'll have recovered completely and probably be overflowing with ideas and energy.
Maybe you think you "comprehend" his point because you decide to interpret it in your own way. But it was not coherent (and honestly I'm not even sure if that was a snark in there or not, mostly because it was incoherent).
There are many cases where a social site shot itself on the foot and committed suicide by taking one bad move, such as Digg. What you're suggesting sounds like it will set a new record for a bad decision. Let's say Twitter does make that mistake and actually starts charging high end users. It is extremely naive to think most of these people will stick around and pay. Some will start leaving. Some new services will arise that claim to provide the service for free. Some of these "celebrities" will join forces to create a new "free" network (because that's what Web is supposed to be). Overall their userbase will decrease. And just as it grew exponentially after it reached critical mass, the reverse also applies, and at some point it will die at an exponential pace. It will probably end up looking something like MySpace.
It's nothing new or ironic because that's exactly the definition of centralization. Here's the definition: "concentrate (control of an activity or organization) under a single authority." There has been and will always be systems that try to centralize already existing distributed entities.
Mr. Miyagi wouldn't agree! Wax on wax off training turns Karate kid into a master martial artist. One neglected factor is you're most creative when you're engaging in extremely routine (read "boring") tasks, which means by preparing loads of meals you train your skills but also--with the right mindset--have plenty of opportunities to come up with creative ideas. The important part is "the right mindset". If you're just a lazy guy who does work just to get by and not care about creating something of "quality", then it won't help no matter how many years you do it. Karate kid became good because he was motivated to become good. Otherwise he would have ended up becoming just a damn good car washer.
I'm sorry, were we arguing whether this was a "DEMO" or not? You were the one who brought it up. I just pointed out how the assumption that someone can steal the device and use it just like a steel key is not true. Nothing to do with quality of the video
Is this actually really positively available right now? I don't see any link to kickstarter or a preorder link or a video that says "But now, we need your help". If so, it's refreshing.
so if i understand correctly, the model is more like the old megaupload/rapidshare/etc.....so what's new? Is it that they provide multiple ways of sharing tied to social media, compared to public/private/password protected mode of sharing for those aforementioned services?
Maybe it's because I am not a keybase user, but can somebody explain this product in human terms? I am not an idiot, and it does sound interesting, but the post is too long and I just want to know what makes it unique compared to dropbox, etc. in one sentence.
In some way these guys are "investing" in these YC companies' future, hoping that when they grow they will stick with DO. YC has good track record so it's relatively a good bet, whereas if they did it with any rando startup, they'll probably lose tons of money (statistically 99% of the startups die). Remember this is a company not a charity.
I have a project I was at first very excited about but then later paused working on as I discovered more about the email ecosystem. The reason I was excited about it at first was because email is--in theory--decentralized, this part was very attractive to me because I thought this was one potential way to disrupt all existing content silos. However the more I worked on it the more I found out how "centralized" it is when it comes to consumer email. If you take a look around there are only a handful of popular email providers (gmail, yahoo mail, microsoft, etc.) Rest of them are indies. I felt like building a consumer email client (or anything that utilizes consumer email) is as limited as building a twitter client, you're essentially tapping into a big platform. This is why I ran out of steam and put the idea on shelf until I come up with a compelling reason to start working on it again. I wasn't motivated enough.
i think what the op meant was that it didn't make sense because it's owned by facebook. Heroku being owned by Salesforce makes much more sense because that's their business models are aligned. I remember the first time I was about to try out Parse, fortunately that's around when Parse got acquired by Facebook and I decided not to take a risk. It especially didn't make sense for me because I was going to build a social app. It doesn't make sense to build a social app on a platform owned by a social app company.
There's too much fluff in that description. If i were a potential user and saw that line, i would just close the tab without trying to understand what you're trying to say. The op rightly described the essence of what makes bootstrap compelling imo.
> I have, and I quit. For the same reason that I quit FB for. It wasn't adding anything meaningful to my life.
What is the point of this comment? It doesn't add value to the thread. My point was that it's not just Twitter that lets celebrities interact with their fans anymore. Your opinion is really irrelevant here.
> Can you point me to some, please?
If you've been living under the rocks, there are now messaging apps with more active users than twitter, and some almost catching up. If you're curious just do some google search. 5 years ago "social" basically meant Twitter or Facebook. It is not true anymore.
I agree. Celebrities only look at these networks as nothing more than distribution channels, and they're the worst people to target when you're building a social app even though in the short term it may look as though you're succeeding
> 1. Twitter is the greatest social platform ever built. Period.
This is like saying "Imma let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time. because she had one of the best videos of all time. Period."
> 2. No other platform gives me a chance to talk to people like Marc Andreessen, Chris Sacca, Tim O'Reilly etc. Twitter empowers us all. Think about how much 1:1 time you can get with influencers on platforms like Facebook or Snapchat. These people won’t take the time out to send you a snap.
Welcome to 2016. This guy apparently hasn't used Snapchat before. I can already see a lot of celebrities using Snapchat Stories to interact with their fans in much more intimate ways than Twitter can ever facilitate.
3. Facebook is not a fair comparison. But I quit Facebook because it made me unhappy and dissatisfied. Twitter makes me smart.
The reason Twitter is having hard time is because of all the competing products that have surpassed it, not just Facebook. There are hard numbers that tell us Twitter is losing people's attention. One person's denial won't change that.
CS stands for Computer Science. Online programming courses like Treehouse and Lynda are not computer science. What you're looking for is a programming course.
I feel like you're overly being dramatic about "ditching all services". Do you literally only listen to music through soundcloud? If that is indeed the case, you're missing out on a lot of great music. Also as a listener of both Soundcloud and Spotify, I think Spotify's discovery has improved immensely to the point where it's much better than the filter bubble of a feed you create on soundcloud
> You going to build a bunch of services on Gopher protocol anytime soon? Require people pay large amounts of money upfront for stuff they usually get free? Expect no browser? Do a mobile solution that requires a specific device rather than smartphone?
Yes. This is exactly what I am talking about. While most people won't bother to try, there will be some people who keep on trying. Most experts will say the same thing: "This and that company already tried this and failed you idiot". But here's why sometimes it works: Startups don't succeed purely based on their absolute value. It's all contextual and relative, which means the same model that didn't work last year may work this year because of how the situation has changed. But nobody knows that until it actually happens. The reason why a lot of disruptive startups are built by inexperienced people just out of college instead of experienced people is because experienced people already know too much and have seen certain models don't work and their thought process is just like you stated. Whereas younger people who have no idea will just try (and most of the times will fail) and sometimes it works because of the right context.
In fact your rhetorical questions I quoted above--which you probably meant cynically--are very interesting questions and I encourage that you seriously think them again. You seem to think they're idiotic but I think they are brilliant questions. YES, it is possible that a new model can arise that will make people want to pay for stuff that they usually get for free. Yes, there can be something that completely rethinks how we consume information (not our contemporary browser). Yes, there can be an entirely new device that can replace a smartphone.
"Avoiding problem areas" is the last thing you should do if you're working on a startup. It's a good thing that people make stupid mistakes because sometimes something extraordinary comes out of them. If everyone acted in conservative manner because they don't want to make mistakes and be called an idiot by others, we will have much slower innovation.
In my experience, people give direct feedback in terms of how they should execute (in constructive manner), but rarely criticizes and discourages the idea itself as being crazy. Over time people learn to cope with the fact that they really never know what will happen tomorrow to a guy they thought had the stupidest idea, so people are very open to crazy ideas.