Hey Jacob, thanks for sharing your writing. Just curious - what are MBAs even hired for at a startup? Not sure what credentials they have vs. someone with relevant industry experience.
Also took a look at your other essays as well - good stuff!
I pretty much copy+pasted from my journal, let me know what you think - and I appreciate you asking! I'm just trying to grow the userbase to a point where it's useful.
It is based on the following 3 principles:
1.) With 2 billion people connected to the Internet, meeting people online with similar interests should totally be easier
2.) The social taboo against making friends online is outdated
3.) Chatrooms allow people to connect with others in a way that’s not possible through content-driven sites like Facebook or Twitter.
Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit are driven mostly by user-generated content. Users post things like statuses, photos, and comments – social interaction is then derived from this activity.
However, we think that there is too much emphasis on content rather than on the social interaction behind it. A karma system encourages this – the “like” or “upvote” functions have effectively turned the act of posting into a popularity contest, since the people who accrue the most amount of likes or upvotes are the ones deemed as popular. This leaves little room for actually building relationships.
So what does it mean to be “social” on the internet? Is being social on the internet even a desirable thing? We think that being social on the internet means exactly the same as it’d mean in real life – making new friends and keeping up with the friends you already have. Over time, you might drift apart from some friends, or you might grow closer to others. But considering how many people are on the internet now, it’s crazy that there isn’t a system to make the social process easier.
Just wanted some feedback, since I live in the middle of nowhere and the internet is the only place I can go. If you think it's taking away from the community, I will delete it! I had no intention of causing harm.
"For a more concrete idea, think of a small but active mailing list, IRC channel, or subreddit, that's approximately the desirable result. If you can, make those mainstream, pretty please :-)"
I've actually been working on a side project for a couple of weeks - it's a chatroom-based community. I think it'd be nice to have a place where people could go and talk about specific topics, without having it be all about "content", and without the judgmental weed-out process that karma-based sites force on users. Kind of like a live version of Reddit, you know? As useful as IRC is, I don't think it will ever become mainstream.
Thanks for sharing the article - and I totally agree. Facebook "likes" give you some element of exposure (at least in terms of getting your name out there), but it does little to nothing for active user engagement.
Facebook just seems like a very impersonable way to market your business; there really isn't a way to drill down to focus groups, it's just one big mass of users.
I think it will (or at least should) become easier to meet people online with similar interests - and I'm not talking about dating. Given that there are 2 billion people on the Internet, this shouldn't really be a problem. Yet, social media sites like Facebook limit us, for the most part, to people we know in real life.
With that said, I think we should be careful of where our collective conscious takes us.
Toka is a chatroom-based community that I've been working on for a couple of weeks with a friend.
We could actually talk at great length about the ideology behind our project, but we'll save you the trouble/time.
Right now, all we want to do is make something that you might find fun or useful. You can either join the premade Hacker News chatroom, or venture out and create your own. You can also invite your friends - the more the merrier (well, until everything crashes because of traffic).
So feel free to leave us feedback, and we'll take your thoughts into consideration!
*You'll have to sign-up first before you can use Toka. Also, you are limited to creating just 1 chatroom so far - but we'll make updates soon :)
I don't think it will hurt to apply regardless :) it will help you hash out some of your thoughts as well, if you are serious about doing a startup. Good luck!
That's really cool, thanks for sharing! I got to go to Dubai this summer and got a good feel for the city. While I believe the city of Dubai is very beautiful, it is nevertheless missing a crucial element...nature. Every day is a battle against the elements. The city only exists to serve business people and the local Emiratis who thrive on oil money and the newly established tourism industry. On an environmental level, it is a disaster. Building a city on such an inhospitable area certainly takes a toll on the environment...it is a city that should not exist, barring oil money.
If you believe in BitCoin as a form of currency with legitimate potential, you can turn BitCoin into a long-term investment. As people learn more about how it works, the trading volumes should increase and the volatility should decrease.
A long-term investor should realize gains as the demand for BitCoin gradually goes up and people get less scared. When PayPal first came out, people were afraid of online/digital transactions ("You mean I'm going to give this online company my payment info?"); look where we are now in 2015.
It is worth noting that most people in the world still do not know much about it (or if they do, they are misinformed).
Much of how quickly you learn a language depends on what languages you've had prior exposure to. So, depending on the language you choose to learn, YMMV.
Total immersion, at least in the beginning, is only useful when your language of choice has linguistic similarities to what you already know. Otherwise, to get to a level where immersion even makes sense comes only after hard studying. Without this base knowledge, everything you hear will sound like complete gibberish...not really an efficient way to learn.
As someone who is fluent in Korean, I'd presumably have an easier time picking up Japanese here in the US than a foreign exchange student in Japan who only knows English (given similar levels of dedication/work ethic). That's because Korean has many similarities to Japanese.
Also took a look at your other essays as well - good stuff!