4 ms·

I think the issue people have with your comment is that you seem to label things you don't use as stupid crap for stupid users. Snapchat, Instagram and WhatsApp

I think the issue people have with your comment is that you seem to label things you don't use as stupid crap for stupid users. Snapchat, Instagram and WhatsApp solve a very real problem and are very useful for the hundreds of millions of people that use these services multiple times a day. It seems that you only label stuff as valuable if it solves problems you have (Slack and Lavaboom). I'm not a daily Instagram user, but some of my friends love it. They're not dumb, they just get more enjoyment out looking at and sharing pictures of cool shit and their friends.

deleted 11y ago
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AndrewKemendo 11y ago
It seems that you only label stuff as valuable if it solves problems you have The idea that things that are popular are "solving a problem" is a really bad trend in my opinion. "A problem" is something that has generally identifiable boundaries and detrimental implications if not solved - for example not being able to send someone money is a problem, and one big enough that it warranted the creation of paypal and the like. I doubt highly that the millions of snapchat users at some point said "If only there were a service that deleted my pictures 10 seconds after I took them." The major differentiation in my mind between a service that "solves a problem" and another "bullshit service" is whether people are willing to pay for it. That's not to say you can't get rich off of bullshit, the E! network among others is proof of that, but lets not fool ourselves into thinking these things actually make the world better.
- detaro 11y ago
  "How do I quickly share pictures without having to worry to much about them sticking around" is the problem snapchat claimed to solve (and does a reasonable job of solving, despite obvious limitations). People might have actually been willing to pay for that, but if you charge money from the beginning for this kind of thing, someone else just offers it for free and tries to monetize it after they got all "your" customers.
  - encoderer 11y ago
    And "How can I take better looking photos with my iPhone" is the problem Instagram has gotten famous solving.
  - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
    "How do I quickly share pictures without having to worry to much about them sticking around" See, to me that falls into the "problems I didn't know I had" - like for example a lack of a terra cotta animal that I can grow sprouts on.
- comex 11y ago
  WhatsApp is not that different from a hundred other messaging services, but people pay for it. I have no reason to believe it's worse than the other messaging services, but it doesn't solve some fundamental problem fundamentally better, either; it mainly just had good luck with network effects. People also pay for Candy Crush...
  - AndrewKemendo 11y ago
    >People also pay for Candy Crush... True. I guess that theory isn't actually that useful.
- tomjen3 11y ago
  People pay money for flickr, as a service to host your photographs. By your standard that would make it a non-bullshit service, however it is very annoying to sign up for it. Instagram is simpler, yes, its focus is mobile rather than DSLR cameras but I for one cannot see how that makes it a bullshit service.
- gumby 11y ago
  > The idea that things that are popular are "solving a problem" is a really bad trend in my opinion. Ohh, I think the opposite. Admittedly the "problem" solved by some popular solutions is "novelty" but they tend to rise and fall swiftly (poster child: Secret). > I doubt highly that the millions of snapchat users at some point said "If only there were a service that deleted my pictures 10 seconds after I took them." Well actually Snapchat does solve a real problem. encoderer put it well in comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9517657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9517657 : > Snapchat is the teenagers answer to the question many millennials have fretted about -- "how will ppl born today deal with having all 18 years of their development online". The answer is: they don't put it online. I made this mistake underestimating YouTube: it seemed like any other video site and I figured anyone who wanted to host video could just put it on their own web site -- I am interested in stuff by topic, not medium, and isn't everyone like me? But in fact YouTube solved several hard problem: 1 - hosting and bandwidth, even for people who didn't want to make a site (they were undifferentiated from other sites in this way, but the need was and is there); 2 - they dealt with infringements/DCMA restrospectively rather than prospectively which meant they could move faster at lower cost and 3 - they were first/early at embedding, so you could use video on your site without implementing a lot of crud. Those were all real needs. There is a completely unrelated problem which is: if you don't have a monetization approach early on, it's hard to graft one on later. And using my Youtube example: it's my understanding they've never made a profit. But in aggregate their costs are lower (by riding on google's infrastructure, expertise and scale) and add other values to their parent company. It's hard but not impossible to see that most of these Unicorns could provide value to an acquirer in excess of the acquisition cost. It's possible Uber has enough revenue base to make it worthwhile for (say) Daimler-Benz to buy them at a non-terrible multiple. It's harder to say the same for airBNB.

deleted 11y ago

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AndrewKemendo 11y ago

It seems that you only label stuff as valuable if it solves problems you have The idea that things that are popular are "solving a problem" is a really bad trend in my opinion. "A problem" is something that has generally identifiable boundaries and detrimental implications if not solved - for example not being able to send someone money is a problem, and one big enough that it warranted the creation of paypal and the like. I doubt highly that the millions of snapchat users at some point said "If only there were a service that deleted my pictures 10 seconds after I took them." The major differentiation in my mind between a service that "solves a problem" and another "bullshit service" is whether people are willing to pay for it. That's not to say you can't get rich off of bullshit, the E! network among others is proof of that, but lets not fool ourselves into thinking these things actually make the world better.

detaro 11y ago
"How do I quickly share pictures without having to worry to much about them sticking around" is the problem snapchat claimed to solve (and does a reasonable job of solving, despite obvious limitations). People might have actually been willing to pay for that, but if you charge money from the beginning for this kind of thing, someone else just offers it for free and tries to monetize it after they got all "your" customers.
- encoderer 11y ago
  And "How can I take better looking photos with my iPhone" is the problem Instagram has gotten famous solving.
- AndrewKemendo 11y ago
  "How do I quickly share pictures without having to worry to much about them sticking around" See, to me that falls into the "problems I didn't know I had" - like for example a lack of a terra cotta animal that I can grow sprouts on.
comex 11y ago
WhatsApp is not that different from a hundred other messaging services, but people pay for it. I have no reason to believe it's worse than the other messaging services, but it doesn't solve some fundamental problem fundamentally better, either; it mainly just had good luck with network effects. People also pay for Candy Crush...
- AndrewKemendo 11y ago
  >People also pay for Candy Crush... True. I guess that theory isn't actually that useful.
tomjen3 11y ago
People pay money for flickr, as a service to host your photographs. By your standard that would make it a non-bullshit service, however it is very annoying to sign up for it. Instagram is simpler, yes, its focus is mobile rather than DSLR cameras but I for one cannot see how that makes it a bullshit service.
gumby 11y ago
> The idea that things that are popular are "solving a problem" is a really bad trend in my opinion. Ohh, I think the opposite. Admittedly the "problem" solved by some popular solutions is "novelty" but they tend to rise and fall swiftly (poster child: Secret). > I doubt highly that the millions of snapchat users at some point said "If only there were a service that deleted my pictures 10 seconds after I took them." Well actually Snapchat does solve a real problem. encoderer put it well in comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9517657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9517657 : > Snapchat is the teenagers answer to the question many millennials have fretted about -- "how will ppl born today deal with having all 18 years of their development online". The answer is: they don't put it online. I made this mistake underestimating YouTube: it seemed like any other video site and I figured anyone who wanted to host video could just put it on their own web site -- I am interested in stuff by topic, not medium, and isn't everyone like me? But in fact YouTube solved several hard problem: 1 - hosting and bandwidth, even for people who didn't want to make a site (they were undifferentiated from other sites in this way, but the need was and is there); 2 - they dealt with infringements/DCMA restrospectively rather than prospectively which meant they could move faster at lower cost and 3 - they were first/early at embedding, so you could use video on your site without implementing a lot of crud. Those were all real needs. There is a completely unrelated problem which is: if you don't have a monetization approach early on, it's hard to graft one on later. And using my Youtube example: it's my understanding they've never made a profit. But in aggregate their costs are lower (by riding on google's infrastructure, expertise and scale) and add other values to their parent company. It's hard but not impossible to see that most of these Unicorns could provide value to an acquirer in excess of the acquisition cost. It's possible Uber has enough revenue base to make it worthwhile for (say) Daimler-Benz to buy them at a non-terrible multiple. It's harder to say the same for airBNB.