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The crowd-sourcing aspect of this has me really excited. I think it is awesome that people are throwing their support behind these four random guys with a drea

The crowd-sourcing aspect of this has me really excited. I think it is awesome that people are throwing their support behind these four random guys with a dream. The skeptic inside me says, who the hell are these guys anyway? And how do I know they will act responsibly? And even if they attempt to act responsibly how do we know anything will come of it in a sub-optimal situation (sub-optimal in my point of view because they have little experience, no mentors, and don't have to answer to anyone. I don't think a great amount of experience is necessary but when combined with the other two it just doesn't look good.) Also, it just seems like this system is ripe for abuse. If I just want 50,000 bucks it seems like I can use Kickstarter to mobilize people around some fake or inflated cause, do little to no work, and pocket the money. No offense to Kickstarter, I participated in "New York Makes a Book"! [EDIT] Also, I agree with pretty much everything you said. All of that can and will happen in the best case scenario, but how likely is it?

jacquesm 16y ago
Highly unlikely at the moment. Another 20 days of favorable press and a 0 behind the current figure and they're in the 'viable' department, even if they themselves are not capable of pulling it off they'll have to funds to attract the expertise to nail it and they'll have the 'ins' with VCs they need for the rest. Hopefully they'll pick something like YC for their source of knowledge. Or they might crowd source that too, no telling. Already people are offering them fat pipes, infrastructure expertise and so on. They're currently pulling in $3500 per hour, it is accelerating rather than slowing down. If they hit a feedback loop (if that isn't already happening) this will be the start-up story of the year. By some measures it already is. edit: they just picked up another $2K donation, $55,429 now, that's a 10% increase in about an hour and half.
- kwamenum86 16y ago
  Alarm bells start ringing in my head whenever I see a "bandwagon" pattern. I always think to myself, is the popularity warranted here and I think the answer here is a resounding "no." The ratio of information provided to money donated is waaay to low and to me this indicates that people don't have a great idea of what they are donating to. Then again maybe there is very little harm since most people are donating very little money. If they raise 500,000 dollars that would be a truly remarkable outcome that I did not expect.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Yes, the bandwagon pattern is very scary, but then again, it was the bandwagon effect that made facebook in what it is, I think that the frustration with facebook is what is driving it and that would almost have to follow the same pattern. The harm will be if they fail. Even if they ship something in the next 6 months I'll be really impressed.
    - stcredzero 16y ago
      If they just have a secure, P2P Twitter with rudimentary social networking, that's enough to get them started.

jacquesm 16y ago

Highly unlikely at the moment. Another 20 days of favorable press and a 0 behind the current figure and they're in the 'viable' department, even if they themselves are not capable of pulling it off they'll have to funds to attract the expertise to nail it and they'll have the 'ins' with VCs they need for the rest. Hopefully they'll pick something like YC for their source of knowledge. Or they might crowd source that too, no telling. Already people are offering them fat pipes, infrastructure expertise and so on. They're currently pulling in $3500 per hour, it is accelerating rather than slowing down. If they hit a feedback loop (if that isn't already happening) this will be the start-up story of the year. By some measures it already is. edit: they just picked up another $2K donation, $55,429 now, that's a 10% increase in about an hour and half.

kwamenum86 16y ago
Alarm bells start ringing in my head whenever I see a "bandwagon" pattern. I always think to myself, is the popularity warranted here and I think the answer here is a resounding "no." The ratio of information provided to money donated is waaay to low and to me this indicates that people don't have a great idea of what they are donating to. Then again maybe there is very little harm since most people are donating very little money. If they raise 500,000 dollars that would be a truly remarkable outcome that I did not expect.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Yes, the bandwagon pattern is very scary, but then again, it was the bandwagon effect that made facebook in what it is, I think that the frustration with facebook is what is driving it and that would almost have to follow the same pattern. The harm will be if they fail. Even if they ship something in the next 6 months I'll be really impressed.
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    If they just have a secure, P2P Twitter with rudimentary social networking, that's enough to get them started.