Also - Pax apologized and then spent over a year being an excellent citizen of the startup community and on social media. I worry about an ecosystem that is so unforgiving.
I believe that ostracizing people - without the possibility of giving them second chances - is ultimately bad for everyone. It takes folks who have messed up and disenfranchises them so that they no longer have a stake in their reputation and participation in the community.
I'm saddened that Pax's work at Glimpse didn't help to redeem his reputation. Pax showed excellent judgment on social media for the entire time that he was my cofounder. And we did excellent work together (we consistently had 10 - 18% week over week traction, app had five star reviews, well known security experts pen tested our app and found it was well designed etc.)
For what it's worth, some VCs did want to fund Glimpse. We didn't follow up on that while Pax was on board, for various reasons. A significant A raise would likely have helped Pax rebrand positively in a mainstream way.
Pax is now publicly pro-gamer gate (as you can see on his Twitter feed and with his most recent startup ExposeCorrupt.) I understand why that would have an impact on marketability.
As much as we talk about diversity in technology, there are some ideas and some kind of people that are simply not welcome. I worry about this a bit because I think it hurts a lot of people, not just neo-reactionaries.
PG has done a lot for the community and I think he deserves a conversation rather than a lynching. I'm calling for a more civil discourse on sexism. We could say that I'm baised bc my cofounder was similarly attacked by Valleywag, but it's very reasonable to say that these conversations could be handled more thoughtfully.
Thanks. I was reluctant to post the link on HN (because it's a less warm audience than feminists on Twitter) but I think it's important that we talk about this. - Elissa (author)
If brands can't rely on Facebook to reliably deliver messaging to a significant number of their fans, then these brands will spend less resources (both effort and money) on cultivating fan bases on Facebook. Instead they'll focus on Twitter, Instagram or just reduce the scope of their social media campaigns in favor of something with more optimized results.
It's a good business model ;) The issues with it are exacerbated by the promise they made to always be free (which makes it problematic to offer a tier of paid services even if users would be interested.)
They're getting around this by offering paid services that are outside their basic offering (services for business, messaging users outside your friend group, etc.)
Yes, "Check Him Out." The article also mentioned that the app didn't have much of a user base, at least in the author's location (LA.) I'd really love to see women taking the initiative in online dating, but I believe this will require a sociological shift (in how women relate to men online and potentially offline as well.)
Author Ann Friedman has a useful insight: "From the Web-based heavy hitters like OkCupid, eHarmony, and Plenty of Fish on down to newer apps like Skout, How About We, and MeetMoi, they’re all developed by men."
The CEOs of every major online dating site are men, with the exclusion of newcomer Coffee Meets Bagel. OkCupid, for example, has about 30 people, and fewer than five team members are women. These women have relatively minor roles in product development.
Women don't like using online dating sites. Female users are harder to sign up, much less engaged than men, quit sites faster, and are less likely to convert to paid memberships. It's worth considering whether this has anything to do with online dating sites being designed primarily by men. Online dating sites monetize via their male users, which perpetuates designing for the male experience.
This can be solved by pre-registrations. I've done this before for two sites - Member of the Tribe and JSpot (both Jewish dating apps - http://JoinJspot.com ) This lets you wait until you have a certain threshold of users before you launch.
Pre-registrations for online dating are different than with other kind of consumer apps. Daters eventually stop being single. So pre-registrations are most useful if they are for a short period of time - no more than, say, eight weeks. This ensures that your profiles are accurate (single people are actually single and will become active users once you launch.)
Apps like this don't have enough engagement. Women, in general, don't actively search & message men on dating sites. Online dating behavior isn't so different from offline courtship, where men tend to be the pursuers.
What are the implications of Techstars under-reporting the deaths of their startups? Not to knock 100K in notes (and the other benefits of being in a reputable accelerator) but these statistics vastly overstate the positive impact of Techstars.
As for Crunchbase, they could do a reasonably good job of catching the death of startups by running a check every six months for basic social media updates. While it might be premature to call a quiet startup dead, they could include a line to call a startup "inactive."
What's relevant & interesting here is that this levels the playing field (at least somewhat.) Google's struggle to monetize mobile ads - on search & elsewhere - means that there is still time for another company to figure that out first and dominate the mobile ad revenue market.
Desktop ads existed in a mediocre state for a long time before Adwords changed the game. The mobile landscape resembles the desktop landscape before Google invented Adwords.
We need to be careful not to read too much into this data without context. "Liking" a fan page used to be a much lighter thing before the FB interest graph became interwoven into other applications & this new search feature.
I used to "like" friends fan pages without much thought, if they asked me to. Re: Ashley Madison, there are married people who work there and will choose to "like" their employer. This represents a small number of users, but is meant to show that there are legitimate use cases.
Tested CrazyBlindDate last night. Recognized a friend from okcupid labs (despite the surrealist facial shuffling) and clicked to set up a date. It gave me two options to meet him at Philz in SF - 3:14am or 3:44am. So clearly there are still some bugs to work out. That said, the mobile app for CBD feels much more modern than anything I've seen okc release recently.
I don't believe that this is simply about enabling advertisers to message users. Until I have more data this is speculation on my part. That said - I believe this is an attempt to expand their nearly-saturated US market by facilitating users to connect with users outside their friend network. Until now this was discouraged and could lead to termination of your account.
More details: There is a new tool tip in my FB account now stating "Your messages get filtered automatically so you mostly see stuff from friends and people you may know in your Inbox. To review your filtering options, click Other > Edit Preferences. Note: These filters replace the old "Who can send you Facebook message"
I believe that ostracizing people - without the possibility of giving them second chances - is ultimately bad for everyone. It takes folks who have messed up and disenfranchises them so that they no longer have a stake in their reputation and participation in the community.