
Mob Wars CEO: Twitter Is Run by Hippies - peter123
http://mashable.com/2009/06/23/mob-wars-twitter/
======
teej
Ok, this Mashable article throws around some crazy stuff, mostly propagated by
bad information in the CNN Money article. Let's straighten things out:

\- Jason Bailey is the CEO of Super Rewards (<http://www.srpoints.com/>). They
do payment processing and CPA offers for social apps.

\- lolplaying (<http://lolplaying.com/>) made the game 140 Mafia. 140 Mafia
implements Super Rewards for virtual goods.

\- Jason Bailey made the comment "I don't know who puts hippies in charge of
these companies" in reference to Twitter not doing a centralized virtual
currency.

\- The "CEO" of Mob Wars is Dave Maestri. He didn't say anything about
Twitter, from what I can tell. Mob Wars is made by Psycho Monkey LLC

\- The "CEO" of Mafia Wars is Mark Pincus. Mafia Wars isn't a "sequel" of Mob
Wars, it's a clone. Just like 140 Mafia is a clone of both. Mafia Wars is made
by Zynga.

EDIT: Thanks to joshuaxls for corrections.

~~~
joshuaxls
Good corrections, but you're still wrong about one thing. Super Rewards did
NOT make 140 Mafia. lolplaying did.

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blhack
No, twitter is run by a bunch of geeks that have seen countless companies like
youtube get bought out for hundreds of millions, or in the case of youtube,
~$1.6 _billion_ , and are hoping to cash in the same way.

They're trying to let somebody _else_ come up with a way of monetizing it, and
probably hoping for google.

~~~
henning
By countless do you mean a handful?

~~~
blhack
It is considerably more than a handful

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Yahoo>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Microso...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Microsoft)

~~~
netsp
Even bigger:

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=f...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-
US:official&hs=URI&num=100&ei=QcNCSt6SLYyYkQXhysj7CA&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=site%3Aen.wikipedia.org/+list+of+acquisitions+by&spell=1)

*If we had 'list of companies not acquired by anyone', or 'list of companies quietly making a reasonable profit', we could compare.

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fartron
>I don’t know who puts hippies in charge of these companies.

"These companies" being the ones the hippies start. The same ones guys like
this don't know how to start either. Let's keep guys like this away from
"these companies."

~~~
teej
To be fair, Jason Bailey's company is profitable and doing 8 digits in revenue
a year. How much is Twitter making again?

~~~
tremendo
_How much is Twitter making again?_

What does it matter? They're certainly not starving (yet). These hippies
started up something from scratch, are having an incredibly fun time doing it,
getting funded, making waves and headlines and may yet make money. Ev already
got loads of cash from selling Blogger before. And wasn't that the same
question people asked of Amazon and Google before? How much were they making
two years after launch?

~~~
blader
Amazon: 15.7 million in 1997

Google: 86.4 million in 2001

------
dasil003
As much of a douche as Jason Bailey comes off as, and as random an idea as
virtual currency is for Twitter, there's this:

 _They do not need to rush into a business model, especially with their eye-
popping growth._

Is that the growth fueled by celebrity curiosity and spam of all types? Do
they really have unlimited runway?

The quality of Twitter is going downhill so fast that I can't help but think
it may have already jumped the shark masked by huge amounts of worthless
traffic. I know, I know, "you choose who you follow," but at this point I'm
getting followed by so many porn bots that blocking them is almost a daily
task.

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DannoHung
Ugh, I really don't want twitter to do payment processing because I don't want
my idle chit chat mixing with my bank account.

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madair
I unfollow people who play games like that, drowning my twitter and facebook
with stupid posts. I think a lot of people do.

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swombat
Is that a veiled compliment? I quite like being called a hippie.

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dpnewman
Maybe making Mob games makes you think you're in the mob.

