
The Stupidest Answer In The World - ksvs
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/10/the-stupidest-q.html
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raganwald
Tangentially, I find myself in the mainstream about Twitter. I tried it for a
few weeks and couldn't figure out what it was for, what was _actionable_ (my
favourite word from my go-go thirties) about it. It felt like Facebook status
updates with wimpy group chat on a quad short espresso.

Which made me feel old. Whenever throngs of people love something and I can't
figure out what it's for, I immediately think of mainframe programmers sking
what on Earth anyone would ever want to do with an 8 bit microprocessor, a
couple of K of memory, and a paper tape reader.

~~~
run4yourlives
_Which made me feel old._

This is the funny thing though: the majority of people out there _are all
older than us!_

I'm the last of the gen xers, (75) and I can still say that. With something
like twitter that needs to be popular to stay alive; if my initial reaction is
"I feel old because I don't get it", that's not a good sign.

~~~
mattmaroon
It's not a bad sign either though, because time spent online is almost
inversely proportional to age. If you appeal to the younger half of the online
population, you're still only losing maybe 1/4 of the audience.

~~~
run4yourlives
Except that retirees are the largest growing segment of internet users... and
the boomers haven't really retired yet, and are more familiar with computers
than those who barely used them at work.

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mattmaroon
It doesn't matter. There were enough people on the internet 3 years ago for a
product to be wildly successful. Even if 0 of the older people use Twitter,
their potential audience is more than large enough.

A product doesn't have to appeal to 100% of the population to be successful.
It does to be Coke or McDonald's or Google successful, but you can still make
a shit ton of money by only appealing to 50%.

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run4yourlives
_It is not the stupidest question in the world. It's a terribly important
question. But I don't think it's the most important question facing Twitter
right now. Twitter has yet to cross the chasm to mainstream usage. It's not
immediately obvious to anyone why they should use Twitter_

See this is why I have a problem with the "get big and everything else will
happen" philosophy that so many in the valley share: It's twisted logic.

If a startup can't make money now, then yes, it's possible that they might
make money later. That's sounds more like trying to win the lottery twice
though. Odds are it won't happen. In fact, Google is the _only_ time it's
happened that I can think of off hand.

Now, if a startup can turn a profit from the start (or soon enough) then it is
pretty much guaranteed to continue making that profit no matter how big it is.
In fact, _it doesn't even need to get bigger_. It can if it chooses, but it
doesn't have to.

Why do people continue to focus on the bubble mentality of trying to profit
from popularity alone? Even when it works, it isn't sustainable.

~~~
fallentimes
Although I agree with you, I actually just got kinda owned in a similar
argument/conversation:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=334545>

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fallentimes
Wow - cheers to Fred for admitting his mistake. It takes balls to do this, let
alone blog about it to thousands of people.

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Hexstream
I'm dead- _blazé_ about the Twitter "controversies". It's like an endless
stream of always the _same_ praises and complaints, questions and answers,
positive and negative outlooks. Can we please move on?

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Prrometheus
It's interesting that anecdotes about Obama have entered into the popular
consciousness as parables in the same way that was once reserved for stories
of Jesus or Buddha.

~~~
fallentimes
Uh oh - I hope he doesn't make it 2 out of 3 for false prophets. Or is it 3
out of 3 or 0 out of 3.

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matt1
Can someone explain what was so stupid about his answer? I don't understand.

~~~
orib
It implies that he's not even looking for a way to make money, as well as
sounding rather arrogant ("Well, we're obviously going to be the next google
whether we try or not")

