

Ask HN: No more Facebook Apps or Consumer internet - frosty

Are we here to build a company or to cash in on the next hype?<p>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.<p>Twitter is 3rd generation product built on of hype (Myspace-&#62;Facebook-&#62;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.<p>&#60;blockquote&#62;New Moto: Build something people are willing to pay for&#60;/blockquote&#62;<p>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.
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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 :).

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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.

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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.

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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.

