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There are many days where I feel like the right thing for my career is to focus on building meaningful software that solves an actual problem. Then there are da
by ardeaver 7mo ago
There are many days where I feel like the right thing for my career is to focus on building meaningful software that solves an actual problem. Then there are days like today, especially after seeing this.
- RajT88 7mo agoIt is like musical one hit wonders, but for software. Some dumb idea which just hits at the right moment and makes a bunch of money.
- fantasizr 7mo agoit's the AI wave of the original viral app store apps like "Yo" and "I am Rich".
- songshu 7mo agoTo this day I swear I want Yo. I’d use it daily.
- tartoran 7mo agoDoes anyone remember the Iphone IFart app that was sold for $1 million?
- zooweemama 7mo agoProbably not because it never happened. They did try to sell it though.
- matsemann 7mo agoThe person that got the top spot for "flashlight" in the app store back in the days made about $600k on it before apple made it a built in function. Just copied existing apps and got lucky. https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/92ybl/erik-ble-app-millionaer-det-ble-litt-sloesing https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/92ybl/erik-ble-app-millionaer-de...
- shadowgovt 7mo agoIn this case in particular it looks like an acquihire. Meta just saw two engineers actually execute on the joke about "building Facebook in a weekend" except that it then really took off in its target niche and generated a ton of press. I don't doubt that they're interested in the AI aspect, but I suspect that a significant contributor was that they demonstrated competence right in the middle of Meta's wheelhouse so why not just grab these guys?
- entropicdrifter 7mo agoIt's also part of their longer-term trend of buying or burying any company that starts to get any press as a social media site of note outside of major players where that hasn't been an option.
- Marsymars 7mo agoThis is really it. At Meta's scale, even if it's an long-shot for a competitor to hurt them, it's worth turning those low odds into zero odds.
- alex1138 7mo agoYet Zuck can somehow argue with a straight face FB has competition (apparently they straight up used to delete links to competitors like Google+ at the time, and also the constant copying of Snapchat) and Hacker News can split hairs over trivial definitions like "wdym fb no competition? email exists" or whatever
- ohyoutravel 7mo agoThose “early” ai generated avatars created from you sending in a handful of your own photos. Absolutely printed money, hit right as mildly technical people could use the tech + the tech was developed enough, but before normal people could easily do it.
- pocksuppet 7mo agoIt's not even one hit software. The software is horrible. It's a one hit PR website.
- tired_and_awake 7mo agoI am right there with you. We might lack the language to describe this emotional state; its like the opposite of FAFO? There's also this nuance that they were acquired by meta so yeah they're rich but now they're working for not-serious people and will flame out in 18 months.
- igleria 7mo agoA lot of people find their lives ruined after suddenly becoming rich. Perhaps a second removed cousin tries to be your best pal out of nowhere, etc etc. Also you might not like being the type of person that builds moltbook. People you like might not like that type of person either! No reason to feel bad.
- RajT88 7mo agoThe key seems to be to get rich slowly, or anonymously. Do not give people the idea you have more money than you know what to do with, and life will continue as it did before.
- oldestofsports 7mo ago> Livies ruined after suddenly becoming rich. This is somewhat of a myth though, in most cases, suddenly becoming rich is absolutely fantastic.
- Sivart13 7mo agoFACO, f around and cash out
- browningstreet 7mo agoI used to work for IPOs and bonuses. I worked in interesting areas of tech. Now if I could make my mint selling hangers, I wouldn't hesitate.
- mnky9800n 7mo agovibe hiring.
- game_the0ry 7mo agobetter than leetcode.
- beAbU 7mo agoI'm reminded of the potato salad kickstarter.
- biznickman 7mo agoThis is an awful read on this acquisition. They didn't acquire Moltbook because of the software. Meta is far behind on the AI front especially as it applies to usage adoption. OpenClaw has begun showing new consumer use cases and Moltbook is directionally down a similar path. They get the team that built it and have more people on the AI initiative who are consumer-centric. I've watched Matt Schlicht from the team always experiment with cool new use cases of AI and other technologies and now him and Ben have a bigger lab with resources to potentially spawn out larger initiatives. The lesson here is to spend less time focused on doing what you think is the right thing and spend more time tinkering.
- margin-dash 7mo agoGood take
- liangzhihaver 7mo ago[flagged]
- biznickman 7mo agouhhh that's a wild take
- cimi_ 7mo ago> They get the team that built it and have more people on the AI initiative who are consumer-centric. Who are comfortable releasing systems with horrible security, while proudly stating they never read the code? And with metrics that can be gamed by anyone, but that got reported to literally the entire world? > The lesson here is to spend less time focused on doing what you think is the right thing and spend more time tinkering. I'd say the lesson here is that clown world keeps on giving, but hey, maybe I'm just jealous ;)
- CuriouslyC 7mo agoThe only currency in a world where AI does everything is your ability to get human attention. So from that perspective moltbook is a huge success. If Mark hired these people to do anything other than viral marketing, i.e. if he thinks they're visionaries who are going to make amazing apps, he's deluded.
- dubeye 7mo agoBuilding software is only a small part of any endeavour, be it a website, a PR stunt or a career. there is no shame in just doing the building software bit. but it does sound like you've built it up to be more than it is
- renewiltord 7mo agoIt’s a lesson that what you think “an actual problem” and what people want to pay you for are two different things.
- armchairhacker 7mo agoFor each of these successes there are many failures, as evidenced by the deluge of “Show HN” slop (which is a small fraction of all vibe-coded slop). Because these projects are simple, there’s nothing stopping you from working on one alongside your day job building meaningful software. You can vibe-code something that actually tries to solve a real problem. You can vibe-code something interesting to learn how to generally use these tools. Although, don’t expect to get hired by OpenAI or Meta (or make any money off it).
- jrjeksjd8d 7mo agoIn the past ten years I have been frustrated by the tension between working on "interesting" or "important" stuff and working on dumb trendy shit. With the current LLM trend everything has become dumb trendy sshit, which has made the decision simpler.
- mvc 7mo agoHa! I stopped worrying about that when someone got $1m for the "Yo" app.
- kseniamorph 7mo agothey are seeking talent, not buying the product. this is a valid strategy for devs - just to attract attention no matter what.
- overfeed 7mo agoOver the years, Meta has bought a lot of "talent" based on a single hit, and they continue to be one-hit wonders despite being embedded at Meta, with ungodly amounts of resources at their disposal. e.g. none of the game studios they bought have produced new IP, all they do is produce content for the aging, pre-acquisition games
- ardeaver 7mo agoYou're not wrong, I just wish you were lmao
- carabiner 7mo agoI've said it before, but a mexican line cook who doesn't speak english is contributing more to the world than the average Stanford educated AI engineer at Meta.
- PaulHoule 7mo agoIt's easy to dismiss as more A.I. FOMO. I mean, Meta's AI has half the IQ of ChatGPT or Gemini. However, a fake social network full of generated content might well be a solution for Meta's problems where their userbase inevitably doesn't measure up to what they wish it would.
- jmye 7mo agoWas going to cynically suggest they were just going to merge the two sites and then pretend they had higher user counts at their next earnings, but adding even more (better?) fake content is probably the more plausible idea.
- Arcuru 7mo agoCould be worse, you could be stuck working at Meta.
- gcheong 7mo agoMaybe not our careers, but probably our souls.