
New Y Combinator startup: overhear.us - nostrademons
http://overhear.us/
======
myoung8
Is anyone else kind of dissapointed to hear that after what seems like a
grueling application process (I didn't apply) this is the best YC can come up
with?

Maybe there aren't that many areas on the web that are still ripe for
innovation...

~~~
nostrademons
I think it's kinda clever.

It reminds me of my reaction when I saw Reddit. "Well, this is new, but I
can't imagine anyone ever doing something useful with it." I was right about
the first part, right about the second, but completely wrong about the
implicit assumption that things have to be useful before they'll be used.

~~~
myoung8
Agree with the first two parts, although I do think Reddit serves a useful
purpose. I don't use it because news.YC and Digg provide me with more than
enough to digest every day.

Back to the point, though: who do you see as the target demographic of
overhear.us?

I suppose when I think about work, I think of my parents, and despite being
technologically capable, 1) this site would get blacklisted where they work
and 2) I can't see them sitting in front of a computer at home gossiping,
although they do talk about work quite a bit

~~~
nostrademons
I figure it's made for the younger FaceBook generation who're just now
entering the workplace and want a place to gripe about FaceBook being blocked
at work.

~~~
myoung8
I can certainly see this being more appealing to them (us) as a generation,
but I still think the fear of getting caught will outweigh the desire to post
one's thoughts online in many cases, especially when it isn't all that hard
(and is actually more useful for one's social life) to talk to someone at the
office, be it at the water cooler, in the hallway, in your own office with the
door closed, or at lunch or dinner.

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tx
Are you serious? This _is_ the idea? That you had 10 slides or whatever to
present it to investors? Wholy cow. The end is near...

Soon dressed up "hello world" implementations will pass by as "startup ideas".

Why bother going to college and paying for CS degree if after 10 days with a
RoR book you can start your company!

~~~
nostrademons
"Why bother going to college and paying for CS degree if after 10 days with a
RoR book you can start your company!"

I think that's kinda the point of YCombinator...

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neilk
YC folks: I sure hope you told this crew about password hashing.

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Tichy
I don't think people are paranoid enough to use this.

~~~
randallsquared
That depends strongly on the company, doesn't it? A list of companies
represented here after they get some usage would read like a "don't apply to"
list.

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danielha
That shouldn't be a problem. You have to already have a company email to view
that company's comments.

~~~
nostrademons
But you can view the fact that people are commenting on a company. If a whole
bunch of one liners suddenly appear as soon as the work day is over, you could
guess that it's been banned at work and everybody's griping over it.

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zangief
This thing will be a victim of its own success. If it ever takes off, it will
be blacklisted by every web-content filtering program. If gmail and vault.com
are blocked, you'd better believe this will be, too.

~~~
pg
They thought of this. In that case people will use it from home. And if
they're working for the kind of company that would block Overhear.Us, then
there will probably be a lot they need to talk about.

~~~
zangief
People are lazy. And people at big companies, where web-blocking software is
routinely deployed, are especially lazy. Standard Bayes.

Vault.com, despite not having nearly as nice a site as overhear.us, had reams
of traffic and posts about individual employers, until it got blacklisted.

I can imagine this site having a good following with companies that are not
strict about the web-filtering list [which I abhor, btw].

However, those companies are not likely to be large because large companies
have burdensome regulations [SEC in financial industry, HIPAA in healthcare
industry, SarbOx for all public companies] that generally require (or imply
that) employee communication and web usage should be monitored.

And large companies are the interesting ones for overhear.us, because they
have the most interesting networks and stories!

~~~
myoung8
And also provide the least chance of getting caught. Yeah, I know it's
anonymous, but at a small company "anonymous" doesn't mean much. It's not hard
to figure out who's dissatisfied, who's the gossip queen/king, or even figure
things out just by the way someone writes.

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immad
I like the idea, anonymity but based on verified identity, facebook could do a
similar spin on it for university gossip, or in fact you could do a similar
spin on it for universities with a little fb integration. No one should be
using it from there work though because if they post anything offensive up
quite a lot of companies monitor all traffic and it wouldn't be hard to find
out who it is. Txt-in method would help with that, trcky but not impossible.

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nickb
Guys, watch out for lawsuits and subpoenas! Some employers are gonna go nuts
over this... trade secrets, harassment charges etc. Make sure you remove logs,
IPs, etc.

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randallsquared
Wow. I guess this explains why they weren't interested in our
<http://dontrentfrom.com> , since it's a variant on the same idea. It would be
trivial to spin off various topical forums.

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mhidalgo
This has to be weakest idea I have seen come out of Ycombinator.

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yaacovtp
Look out when the bosses pretend to be coworkers.

~~~
danielha
A boss _is_ a coworker. It's all anonymous, anyhow.

~~~
SwellJoe
That's the point. I think.

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SwellJoe
It's actually a lot of fun to use. I'd like to see a web chat client that
works the same way.

~~~
socmoth
thanks

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Leonidas
Guy Kawaski just invested in something similar to this didn't he?

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someremains
i don't think its similar. kinda like a papparazzi thing.

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orlick
This could turn into the non-nerd version of InklingMarkets.com. Or it could
just be a place to bitch about your boss. I think it's great!

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mojuba
xx xxx xxxxxx xxx xxx xxxxxx?

so the arrows are for rating?

I guessed it, haha!

