

The Class that built Apps, and Fortunes - dr_
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/technology/08class.html?pagewanted=all

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thinkcomp
As someone who knows a lot of the people written about here, I think this
article says a lot more about the reporter than the people in it. Every now
and then the Times publishes a story that completely lacks the kind of level-
headedness that one would expect from an editorial process, and this is one of
those stories.

Most of the people mentioned in the article are smart individuals--I have a
lot of respect for Joachim's programming talent especially--but back in 2007,
the amazing growth in their respective applications was due to Facebook's
poorly-thought-out policies regarding application spam (and these apps all
sent an unthinkable amount of spam, much of it misleading), not the Stanford
class, and not some formula. It's possible to know this because once Facebook
changed those policies (because of apps like the ones mentioned in the
article), the growth immediately stopped. Most of the apps haven't existed in
any meaningful form, if at all, for years.

Where are the articles about startups that have made great advances in
tackling the enormous problems that plague the country? Those are the stories
I'd rather read.

By way of full disclosure, I was Ed's co-founder at a startup he was also
running in 2007 called Qubescape--not the one mentioned in the article. A lot
of that venture's code became part of FaceCash, which I am currently working
on. Ed started new with an app called PhoneBook and then friend.ly.

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grandalf
Thank you for posting this. I think you underestimate how common these sorts
of stories are in the NYT. They stand out when the reader knows enough detail
about the subject being written about to see that it's largely made up... a
story concocted around a few quotes and a few facts.

This is the main reason why I've stopped reading the NY Times on a regular
basis.

~~~
SkyMarshal
It's the main reason I've stopped reading most mainstream media at all.
Professional journalists just can't compete in most domains with actual
practitioners. From Engineering to Law, it's almost invariably better to seek
news of the field from practitioners' blogs.

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Cherian_Abraham
In an article where many, I am sure, see clear indication of a social bubble,
I choose to see unbridled enthusiasm of a young tech community who were quick
to see the potential of a growing social network and was equally quick to
capitalize on its growth.

Sure, many of these apps have no actual depth to talk about, but they stand
for "build quick and cheap, perfect later" which resonates with me and many
others. Also, what good is a business or technology education that costs you a
couple of hundred grand, unless it gives you an opportunity to recoup some of
that before you graduate.

I really wish there are more "Facebook classes" or just classes where tutors
challenge you to build ideas to fruition regardless of whether it makes one a
millionaire or not. I am trying to do this in Richmond, Virginia with a couple
of others, and trying to signup some patron saints from the business and
technology community in the region to help out in this effort. For a region
that has three Universities in a 50 mile radius (UR, VCU and UVA), we sure
dont have a startup ecosystem here and it seems we have squandered that
opportunity so far.

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grandalf
Major universities are not responsible for this sort of innovation.

It's usually people trying to get a break from the mainstream course selection
and expected trajectory that end up doing something innovative to quell their
boredom or do some mischief.

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uriel
I was very confused for a second while reading the title, for some reason my
brain associated 'fortunes' with a very different kind of fortune:
<http://fortunes.cat-v.org/>

