
Dot-com bust ripples still felt 10 years later - timr
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/06/BUK71CB0PV.DTL&type=business&tsp=1
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necrecious
The funny thing is that at least people back then dreamed big, even if it
turned out to be stupid after the fact.

Now people just chase after social graph and all try to make money off it in
some way or another. Can anyone point me to a startup doing something cool
that has he potential to change the world?

~~~
jedberg
> Can anyone point me to a startup doing something cool that has he potential
> to change the world?

As cliche as it is to say it -- Facebook. Actually, they have already changed
the world. How so?

I graduated high school in 1995. At the time, a few people had email, but we
didn't really use it to stay in touch. When we graduated and went to different
colleges, we pretty much lost touch. We might see these people during break,
but I stopped going home at break.

I've reconnected with a whole bunch of high school friends thanks to Facebook.

And you know what? When you talk to kids that are graduating now, they don't
identify loosing touch with their friends as a problem. Even if they go to
different schools, they just check out Facebook, and they are all caught up.
When they go home for break, they just pick up where they left off on Facebook
the day before.

~~~
greenlblue
Not so sure about that. Online contact is way different from face to face
contact and I don't know about you but when you have 200+ people on your
friends list it turns into a different kind of social game than when you are
hanging out with 3 of your best friends at the local pub.

------
showerst
I just took a look at the startup they mention, flowtown.

By all appearances they're just scraping data from all the social networks,
canonicalizing it based on email, and aggregating it.

Is there any possible way to do this without violating the services TOS's?

~~~
staunch
[http://blog.cubeofm.com/how-to-convert-email-addresses-
into-...](http://blog.cubeofm.com/how-to-convert-email-addresses-into-name-
age)

maxklein exposed the primary technique these guys are most likely using. It's
definitely a TOS violation.

