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8 points by ehutch79 ↗ HN
Why do people who don't know what they're doing keep trying to develop facebook killers?

I don't mean any project with a team, but people who don't know the basics of the framework they're using.

I'm serious. I keep seeing it, and there must be something behind this.

15 comments

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brk
Probably for the same reasons people who can't carry a tune try to become the next Lady Gaga and people who can't act try to become the next Dustin Hoffman.

I think that people with mediocre talent have a tendency to look at someone else in the same talent genre and think "I can do that, it looks easy".

jrsmith1279
Lady Gaga is probably a bad example. She's actually a very talented vocalist. Unfortunately the music industry isn't about talent and her music is awful. She's also not "hot" so she has to rely on being weird to be successful. For the record - I hate Lady Gaga with a passion, but I do recognize that she IS talented and not some fake bimbo like Britney Spears who really can't carry a tune.
brk
I wasn't implying she wasn't talented. I think she is an example of someone that people might think they can "easily" copy.
stray
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to appreciate their mistakes.[1] The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. As Kruger and Dunning conclude, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others" (p. 1127). (from wikipedia)
brudgers
This topic always reminds me of Siver's take on the subject:

[http://sivers.org/below-average]

hcack
“At first, like almost everybody, I thought, ‘Yes, but I really am above average!’ Then I realized I was doing it again.”

What if I quantify that I am above average? Should I assume that, despite my 2400 SATs and 4.0 GPA, that I'm somehow below average?

fogus
Because any webapp of any complexity can be developed in a weekend by a true hacker.
AngeloAnolin
Simple. The prestige of being bestowed to have developed a Facebook killer overwhelms any developer's fancy of a cutting edge application. It ain't pretty hard to admit that Facebook is by far, one of the biggest, most widely accepted, and successful web application there is right now.

And not to mention the accompanying monetary rewards that go with it.

jesstaa
This is an important point. I always have trouble explaining to people what I'm working on. If you're working on a Facebook killer, when that hot babe at a party asks you what you do she'll actually understand what your working on and might be impressed.
daleharvey
Probably for the same reason that 1000 people + Zuckerberg tried to develop a MySpace killer.

Some people think its fun, some people think its a good way to learn, some people are aiming for the fame and glory. Almost all of them will gain something out of trying, the only people who dont gain anything are the ones sneering from the sidelines.

mindcrime
Sounds similar to the sentiment of this quote, of which I am always reminded, by posts like this.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

-- Theodore Roosevelt

recoiledsnake
> the only people who dont gain anything are the ones sneering from the sidelines.

That's not necessarily true. There are people who are concentrating on other ideas instead of doing the same thing and there are people who are investing all their life's savings and borrowing to launch the same kind of idea as Facebook.

daleharvey
at least in my experience, the intersection of people who scoff at those building new things, and those actually building new things for themselves isnt that large.
jdietrich
Zuckerberg didn't try to develop a MySpace killer. He tried to develop a facebook[1] killer. thefacebook.com v0.1 wasn't built as a "social network", it was built as an online version of the college directory. That's why Zuckerberg won and the other thousand guys lost. His MVP was useful with only a few hundred users and a killer app with a few thousand. Everyone who tried to kill MySpace needed zillions of users and had no real way of getting them.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_(directory)