5 ms·

I completely agree with this. It is often said that, "constraint drives creativity." Therefore, if everyone is bound by the same set of constraints, you limit t

by vkjv 12y ago

I completely agree with this. It is often said that, "constraint drives creativity." Therefore, if everyone is bound by the same set of constraints, you limit the possible set of creativity.

spiritplumber 12y ago
And so the cycle continues. AOL was an innovative place to work at some point, I'm sure.
- yuhong 12y ago
  Facebook is not likely to end up as bad as AOL did.
  - dijit 12y ago
    I'd like to think you're joking. but you're likely not- it's very, very possible to be worse than AOL.
    - _delirium 12y ago
      AOL has had perhaps the softest landing of any obsolete tech company, because their dialup revenue has been declining very, very slowly, less than 10% per year. And that is partly offset by profit margins increasing every year. People seem to just not cancel. Some are still dialing up, but plenty of people have kept paying $10/mo for dialup service they don't even use. Perhaps they just forgot. Or they use the @aol.com email through the web interface, and don't realize that you can keep your email address after cancelling the ISP service (to be fair, that didn't used to be the case, and many people missed the change). So AOL's had many billions of dollars of basically "free" revenue to cushion their decline. Even in 2014, they had roughly $600m of ISP revenue, of which about 2/3 was profit.
      - amyjess 12y ago
        Also, before Wi-Fi became as ubiquitous as it is today, the only reliable way to get an Internet connection in a motel room was to dial into an AOL POP, so anybody who would expect to take a road trip would keep their AOL accounts active. I think by 2006, almost every motel had free Wi-Fi though... and that wasn't the case in 2003 (at least, that's what I remember from road trips in those years). Edit: Actually, I remember now that Earthlink POPs were as reliable as AOL POPs, but AOL had better name recognition.
        _delirium 12y ago
        Ah right! Yes, that's definitely true, I remember using AOL dial-up a few times in the early/mid-2000s. My parents had kept their account because of the @aol.com email issue (AOL webmail only became free in 2005), so I used their account to connect from motels.
  - beat 12y ago
    Why not? Microsoft did. Lots of once-innovative companies lose their edge, stop attracting top talent, and just become body shops shuffling to the graveyard.
    - yuhong 12y ago
      AOL's fate ended up being worse than even Microsoft, as far as I know.
    - learc83 12y ago
      I don't think Microsoft is a good example here. They're doing some pretty innovative stuff. Open sourcing much of the .NET stack, F#, and Windows 10 on the Raspberry Pi. Even at their worst they never really stopped acquiring top talent, and their revenue hasn't stopped growing [1](it's also about 7 times what Facebook's is). [1] http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/FY2002-20131.png http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/FY2002...
      - oldmanjay 12y ago
        I'm not going to address whether or not Microsoft innovates, but open sourcing existing projects is possibly the loosest application of the term I've ever seen

by vkjv 12y ago

I completely agree with this. It is often said that, "constraint drives creativity." Therefore, if everyone is bound by the same set of constraints, you limit the possible set of creativity.

spiritplumber 12y ago

And so the cycle continues. AOL was an innovative place to work at some point, I'm sure.

yuhong 12y ago
Facebook is not likely to end up as bad as AOL did.
- dijit 12y ago
  I'd like to think you're joking. but you're likely not- it's very, very possible to be worse than AOL.
  - _delirium 12y ago
    AOL has had perhaps the softest landing of any obsolete tech company, because their dialup revenue has been declining very, very slowly, less than 10% per year. And that is partly offset by profit margins increasing every year. People seem to just not cancel. Some are still dialing up, but plenty of people have kept paying $10/mo for dialup service they don't even use. Perhaps they just forgot. Or they use the @aol.com email through the web interface, and don't realize that you can keep your email address after cancelling the ISP service (to be fair, that didn't used to be the case, and many people missed the change). So AOL's had many billions of dollars of basically "free" revenue to cushion their decline. Even in 2014, they had roughly $600m of ISP revenue, of which about 2/3 was profit.
    - amyjess 12y ago
      Also, before Wi-Fi became as ubiquitous as it is today, the only reliable way to get an Internet connection in a motel room was to dial into an AOL POP, so anybody who would expect to take a road trip would keep their AOL accounts active. I think by 2006, almost every motel had free Wi-Fi though... and that wasn't the case in 2003 (at least, that's what I remember from road trips in those years). Edit: Actually, I remember now that Earthlink POPs were as reliable as AOL POPs, but AOL had better name recognition.
      - _delirium 12y ago
        Ah right! Yes, that's definitely true, I remember using AOL dial-up a few times in the early/mid-2000s. My parents had kept their account because of the @aol.com email issue (AOL webmail only became free in 2005), so I used their account to connect from motels.
- beat 12y ago
  Why not? Microsoft did. Lots of once-innovative companies lose their edge, stop attracting top talent, and just become body shops shuffling to the graveyard.
  - yuhong 12y ago
    AOL's fate ended up being worse than even Microsoft, as far as I know.
  - learc83 12y ago
    I don't think Microsoft is a good example here. They're doing some pretty innovative stuff. Open sourcing much of the .NET stack, F#, and Windows 10 on the Raspberry Pi. Even at their worst they never really stopped acquiring top talent, and their revenue hasn't stopped growing [1](it's also about 7 times what Facebook's is). [1] http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/FY2002-20131.png http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/FY2002...
    - oldmanjay 12y ago
      I'm not going to address whether or not Microsoft innovates, but open sourcing existing projects is possibly the loosest application of the term I've ever seen