Was just talking with friends yesterday about this - Internet Computer getting absolutely dumped by the VCs who pumped it so hard from the beginning. Once I saw that they were headquartered in the Bay, had their entire team in the Bay, and wanted to be the “everything for everyone” computer, that was kinda my sign that this was a scam.
Internet Computer aka DFINITY is not a scam. The price action is fishy, but when you investigate the project’s vision, the technical architecture, the team behind it, and the community building on it, you’ll discover that it’s perhaps the most serious, innovative, and ambitious system out there.
I agree that people often use scam to mean “it’s not worth what people think it is”, “this is going to be vaporware”, “this doesn’t have much real world use”. I expect that the folks at DFINITY are actually trying to build something.
But it’s a little beside the point. I’ve seen some of how the sausage was made in creating and listing new crypto projects, and it’s pretty ugly. There’s a lot of focus on pumping, shilling each other (all while putting in a facade of independence), “tokenomics” which is 50% euphemism for Ponzi scheme. There are likely scam-like qualities to the way that this was listed, who was involved in providing early liquidity / pricing (the initial listing price/pump matters a lot in keeping the price stable above a certain value), and a suite of lesser benefits the inner crowd get.
I left before ICP so I don’t have any facts, but what I saw with projects before that make me confident the exact same thing happened.
The idea of the NSA googling `lemon graph` then saying "Welp, looks like someone else already has it. Back to the drawing board", is actually pretty hilarious.
I agree with the general sentiment of the article: "In order to make money, Snapchat is doing things it previously scorned"
This is particularly saddening for me because I remember back in 2011/12 (around that time) I desperately wanted an Iphone so that I could do one thing - download Snapchat. I wanted a totally new/expensive phone to do one single thing - use Snapchat. Sure I was 19, and it was slightly known as the sexting app but man oh man, there was this sort of aura of mystery surrounding it. It was literally the "coolest" app in my peer group (hell, in my age group at the time). It was soooo difficult to search for people, so you had to know their user before you could add them. It was as if the app was so public (sharing pictures that could be screenshot), yet so private (you tended to only add people you knew, and the porn accounts).
It's slightly funny to watch Evan Speigel still think that he knows whats best for Snapchat (e.g., the UI changes, monetization). He makes his changes now and tells the users to shutup and deal with it (bad idea). Now that I'm older, everyone I know still uses the app, but not nearly as much, and it's not nearly as "cool" or fun. It seems to be just another app on our phones now - not "the" app.
But in some ways I understand Snapchat's changes. Those servers, engineers, creatives, and yellow bikes cost money. You can't pay for an office lease in Venice Beach with "cool" points. However, with that said, I do think Snapchat went overboard with the monetization efforts. They followed in the footsteps of Google, Facebook, etc - not knowing that they were so much cooler and so much more fun than anyone else. And in trying to monetize, they ruined the experience, and thus the app. The "scale" thing [gives Reid Hoffman a side eye] doesn't always have to apply to everything. Sometimes just having an amazing app that does what it does is ok - the partnerships, click bait, and "publishers" be damned.
RIP Snapchat. The only app I've ever bought a brand new to device for.
> "this generation wasn't ready for this boom of communication we are living in"
I definitely think we will look back on my generation (Generation Y) as the guinea pigs for this whole "connected social world" thing. So far it's been too much, too fast, and we have done an abysmal job handling it.
Well, thanks. I built it with react and redux starting with the "create react app" package. There are probably frameworks that will help a bit more, but I'm not too familiar with the front-end world so I went with what they used at my last job.
While I agree with the general/intended sentiment of "Advertising is has changed from a bunch of slick white guys in suits, to tech", it might be worth pointing out that Don Draper doesn't _exactly_ have anything to do with what the author is discussing. The author implies that ad tech is ruining _traditional_ advertising, which is true on the Sales side, but have you seen some of the high PPC/CPM ads on some Youtube videos? They still _heavily_ rely on great creative. And let's not forget that Don Draper was the Creative Director - not head of Sales (which would've been Pete I believe).
