HN Explorer

Ask HN: No more Facebook Apps or Consumer internet

7 points by frosty ↗ HN
Are we here to build a company or to cash in on the next hype?

Both are completely different things. It takes ten years to build a company. You can go jump up and down or left and right but it really takes that long.

Twitter is 3rd generation product built on of hype (Myspace->Facebook->Twitter). The first two generation still have to make enough company to be called interesting. Twitter can become big but is it big enough given the hype? The latest trend seems to be building apps around twitter. Two years back it was building facebook apps.

<blockquote>New Moto: Build something people are willing to pay for</blockquote>

If they are not willing to pay for it, they dont really need it. Be it a virtual gift or freemium or clean ur toilet service. As long as people pay, you have a business.

6 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 28.1 ms ] thread
anigbrowl
Twitter seems to me to have much more in common with IRC than Facebook or Myspace; the primary difference is the persistence of identity across the system.
jawngee
Twitter has more in common with instant messaging than it does IRC. Basically twitter is a disconnected version of AIM with an arbitrary message size limit.

IRC is an open standard, free to be implemented by anyone and interoperates with everyone. That's pretty much the anti-thesis of Twitter, which is a service, not a protocol.

anigbrowl
Sorry, I meant in social terms, rather than the technical or business model. The way I see people using Twitter reminds me of the social dynamics on IRC, just on a much larger scale.
sgrove
"The first two generation still have to make enough company to be called interesting."

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "make enough company", but a quick google search shows MySpace pulled in revenue of $800 million, with $10 million in profit. Facebook came in somewhere around ~$250 million (admittedly not profitable yet, but that's high revenue. Only a matter of time).

That's pretty damned interesting.

Somebody is willing to pay for services these companies provide; they must not be all hype. Twitter will likely find a revenue model as well (not as high as the other two, I would suspect, but still).

I'm sorry if it seems harsh, but these companies have had copious amounts of sweat and blood poured into them, and have grown into huge revenue generating machines. Calling them pure hype seems shockingly cavalier.

frosty
> "Twitter can become big but is it big enough given the hype?"

Yeah I totally agree with that lots of effort have into these companies and they will be profitable one day. I am not trying to say its pure hype. Its just overhyped. And its not like twitter is saying hype me, its just the bad ecosystem around it :).

Lets say a service like yelp, will you be willing to pay to use it. I would. They might not charge but still its solving a definate pain-point.

I thinking having an option to monetize using ads have led lots and lots of developers to just build stupid products and not focus on trying to solve a pain-point and provide enough value to the user that he says: "I like your product. I use it daily. Here you go $10, this months fees."

I think that would be the day :).

octane
MySpace has been around for about 10 years, and make large profits consistently.

Quite honestly I'm not sure they belong in the same discussion as facebook and twitter.