

Startups needs to stop trying to solve boredom - tsunamifury
http://www.leavesofcode.com/2011/06/startups-need-to-solve-problems-not.html

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qq66
When Twitter started one could say it was to relieve boredom. Who needs a
stream of user-generated content about what some stranger in San Francisco ate
for breakfast?

5 years later, Twitter has been instrumental in organizing protests that have
brought down governments. YouTube was used to expose a senatorial candidate
making a racist remark and cost him the election. Facebook was instrumental in
the Obama election campaign, without which we might have had President Sarah
Palin.

Anything can become anything else.

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tsunamifury
Certainly true, I am not arguing that communications platforms are not able to
find productive uses. It's more than for every twitter, there are hundreds of
failed or carbon-copy twitters which do not focus on any sort of productive
solution. They simply copy eachother with the idea that more noise is better.

~~~
qq66
But how to distinguish these? Of 100 stupid sounding ideas, how do you know
that Twitter will be the one to change the world? You don't. You have to start
all 100 to find out.

~~~
tsunamifury
You can tell when the pitch boils down to, this is twitter but for XXXX.

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rglover
Great article. It does seem like the majority of popular startups do lack some
sort of philanthropic effort. But at the same time (as sad as it may be),
people don't care. It's difficult to imagine a world where an education app is
#1 in the app store. In the U.S. at least, nobody cares about problems on a
large scale unless it makes them look good. If there's little to no social
traction in terms of solving a problem, then anyone willing to is facing a
mighty uphill battle. It's easier to make distractions than it is to really
_change_ something. Hopefully that changes one day.

~~~
tsunamifury
I think boredom-killing will hit a threshold when we begin to neglect the very
real productivity and critical thinking which is needed for our society to
continue to fuction. Pain is a powerful stimuli, and I believe it will
motivate the startup world to become more 'productive'.

~~~
ulisesroche
I hope, for my own good, you're right. I gotta pay student loans on the 15th,
and can't find anyone doing anything other than social networking games to
take people's money, "sexy" data-mining to take people's money, or mobile fads
to take people's money.

