
Elite social media - sushobhan
http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/26/15407144/exclusive-social-media-the-league-best-of-all-worlds-rich-kids
======
Animats
If you have a Bloomberg terminal, you get access to a message board much like
Craigslist. If you want to rent out your yacht, that's the place to go.

~~~
s_kilk
I want to believe that board is sub-4chan levels of relentless shitposting.

~~~
Neliquat
Petition to add /b/ to the bloomberg panel. Might improve things. Or just
crash the rare pepe market.

~~~
ucontrol
It's so odd to see mentions of Internet memes and casual cyberculture on HN of
all places.

~~~
krapp
It shouldn't be, it's obvious whenever a story about 4chan or Reddit (or even
Voat or 8chan) come up, that there's a significant overlap in the membership.
Hacker News doesn't exist in a vacuum.

Yes there are a few erudite intellectuals, brilliant greybeards, and SV
millionaires knocking about, but there are plenty of scrubs here as well
(present company included.)

~~~
arcanus
> Yes there are a few erudite intellectuals, brilliant greybeards, and SV
> millionaires knocking about, but there are plenty of scrubs here as well
> (present company included.)

Nor are those categories mutually exclusive...

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Geekette
I belong to some of the services listed, including ASW and BOAW and haven't
logged on in forever because they're boring. Despite all the hype, these
services are ultimately no different from other social clubs and most people
have sufficient avenues for socializing with and keeping in touch with people
on diverse bases (interest/activity, work, school, family, etc).

They proclaim exclusivity but are often trying to grow their user base
(including stealth advertising via article mentions/placement) and monetize.
When they focus on the latter is when they realize that their service isn't
that useful because their members clearly aren't interested in paying.
Exclusivity or not, a network is useless without X critical mass of users and
Y minimum activity level.

~~~
dsacco
_> including stealth advertising via article mentions_

Yes, like the convenient timing of this Verge article coming out mere weeks
before BOAW releases a new iOS app, and the founder's availability for
multiple comments despite their focus on discretion...

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kolbe
Hacker News is the only elite organization I like hanging out at!!

All things aside, HN always seems to be so serious in its discussion about
content, and I never get the opportunity to say how much I appreciate this
place.

~~~
ben_jones
Have you seen many of the discussions around tools like Javascript, Golang,
Django, Docker? Quite often they devolve into tiny opinionated nuances and you
have to pull your head out of your laptop and ask yourself "what year is it??"

~~~
dasil003
What does the year have to do with it? Given any geeky subject there are going
to be strong opinions, always has been that way and always will be, we just
couldn't see the artifacts of it as easily before the internet.

Not all the discussion on HN will be useful, but it's the highest signal to
noise I've found in 30 years of participating in internet fora, at least for a
group of this size.

~~~
ben_jones
I meant it in the sense of "oh god I just spent 40 minutes reading a circular
argument".

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aphextron
Reminds me of the 'I Am Rich' app launched back in '08\. It was just an app
that says 'I am Rich' and cost $999.99
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich))

Moral of the story: rich people will always want to show off that they are
rich.

~~~
gumby
> Moral of the story: rich people will always want to show off that they are
> rich.

I think you mean, "Some rich people are insecure enough that they want to show
off that they are rich."

Amex caters to this very well: they play the whole "prestige" thing but if you
have a "higher-level" card for the benefits (platinum, black) they are happy
to issue you an ordinary green one you can use so people won't guess your
wealth.

~~~
dsacco
You really don't need to be wealthy to get a platinum card. You don't even
need to be breaking six figures. You just need a good credit score. That
perception is all hype.

~~~
macavity23
You don't actually need that good a credit score, since it's a charge card,
not credit. You mainly just need the >$500/yr membership fee.

~~~
marssaxman
>it's a charge card, not credit.

What is the difference? I have always believed the terms to be synonyms, and
the Wikipedia article for "charge card" does nothing to change that
impression.

------
RichardHeart
Articles subheadline: "On the internet, no one can see your Rolex" Perhaps
they're on a different internet where pictures and video aren't popular.

I met some pretty cool people at the last ASMallWorld event I went to in
Gstaad. Like any social event, some people will be interesting, some will be
pompous, some both. You need to sort the wheat from the chaff on your own.

I'd much rather associate with great minds behind a common goal, than by
status of wealth. Wealth isn't that great of a filter by which to group
peoples' interests.

That being said, success leaves clues, and people who've earned their success
financially often have lots of interests stories to tell and lessons to teach.
Those that inherit their wealth, it seems, are soon to be parted from it.

There's a place for networking, and there's a place for networking with people
similar to you. That being said, I think you're better off focusing on your
mission, and letting people attract to you, than you are doing the jetset
thing.

Remember these "clubs" are businesses, and they're there to make money on you.

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dingaling
It's not quite 'elite' but The Well is a fairly exclusive and well-connected
social network, which has been running online for over 30 years now:

[https://www.well.com/join.html](https://www.well.com/join.html)

I dabbled in it a couple of decades ago when there was a special-offer for a
month's membership, it was certainly highbrow compared to Usenet at the time.

$150 is a fair chunk of cash for a year's membership, but does keep the rabble
out whilst not being much of a road-bump to those who are keen.

~~~
ThomPete
Yeah I used to be a member there too, was an amazing community. Jaron Lanier
used to hang out there plus a bunch of other cool people.

It had a very interesting commenting system which was non threaded. Instead
you referenced the number of the post you were responding to.

It gave some very interesting dynamics in the conversation, something I have
never experienced since and I have often thought about doing some exploration
around the non-threaded discussion forum.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Non-threaded as in there being exactly one global stream of comments? Or were
there separate threads, each of which was a linear stream within which
comments reference each other by number? 4chan and such have the latter.

~~~
ThomPete
Separate threads and channels. But it also had some other interesting features
in the HTML version based on picospan the underlying discussion forum
software.

------
charlesdm
BOAWs website doesn't look all that great + their iOS apps haven't been
updated in 2+ years. I'm not saying it couldn't be an amazing community, but
unless someone jumps in here and tells me they're a user and it's amazing, I'd
be suspicious.

~~~
gumby
> BOAWs website doesn't look all that great + their iOS apps haven't been
> updated in 2+ years. I'm not saying it couldn't be an amazing community, but
> unless someone jumps in here and tells me they're a user and it's amazing,
> I'd be suspicious.

I agree, but consider the Vertu phones: really shitty old Nokias caked in
diamonds. Even once modern smartphones came out they continued to sell $20K
feature phones -- and some clowns bought them.

Personally, whenever I hear the words "prestige" or "luxury" I turn away.

~~~
smacktoward
The stereotype has always been that you can tell the _nouveau riche_ by the
sheer volume of gaudy "luxury" goods they drape themselves in, while old money
prefers pedigree to ostentation.

~~~
gumby
Or plenty of well of people just don't care (and lack a "pedigree"). But your
point is correct.

My GF had a visitor from Hollywood during the Super Bowl week end. Said friend
was shocked that nobody had bodyguards or drove those fancy looking cars like
they have in Hollywood. She was shocked when I introduced her to a couple of
billionaires at the sports bar during the game: they were wearing basically
the same clothes as everybody else.

(I was shocked that they were there too -- I would have no interest in a
sports bar during the Super Bowl except for the entertainment of said house
guest).

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Kalium
I had a brush with Ivy.com at one point. It was an art show. It was an
interesting experience, but mostly it was full of the kind of socialite-types
I am not particularly interested in associating with.

The problem with elite social events is that they're full of the kind of
people who value being at elite social events.

------
ThomPete
I am a member of Erik Wachtmeister first company A Small World I haven't
logged in for ages heard they now charge.

This sounds exactly the same and will probably fail for exactly the same
issues. A lot of the people aren't really "1 percenters" at all but rather
people who live of the "1 percenters" and so the benefits one ends up getting
unless they are trying to make money on these people are easy to overlook.

A much better example of a 1 percenter community is Angellist's syndicates. I
got a lot of connections that way.

~~~
Buge
Are 1%ers really that rare or special?

There are 3 million of them in the US.

~~~
ThomPete
Well that depends whether you think 1% is rare or not.

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downandout
I wonder how much of the ticket-selling success of the Fyre Festival debacle
was attributable to postings on these networks. I had never heard about it
until it fell apart.

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spitfire
half way through the article the writers let drop that the founder of BOAW's
previous attempt was A small world. Which failed as it became commoditized.

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rixed
Is my memory corrupted, or didn't Facebook also pretend to be reserved for the
"elite" in its infancy? I remember several newspaper articles describing
Facebook as the "secret" website where "important" people stays in touch with
each others, with some celebrity names listed as reputed users.

~~~
calvano915
I joined pretty early when it was still invite only and mostly university
population. Perhaps it was described that way because of being invite only but
the membership has always been normal, non-elite people (like me).

~~~
oneweekwonder
> mostly "Ivy League" university population.

From wikipedia:

> The founders had initially limited the website's membership to Harvard
> students; however, later they expanded it to higher education institutions
> in the Boston area, the Ivy League schools, and Stanford University.

~
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook)

------
OJFord
Poor, poor Sartre.

