This is about as blatant as copies get. But real question is, doesn't the word hacker in the name mean conversations that mostly transcend geographies. So, what's the need for this?
While I'm all for measure ability on social media, this is again snake oil: oversimplification of how social media works and where it can actually benefit your business.
I think the biggest sin is the sin of omission: the only use case it caters to a direct transaction business, say, e-commerce. What about social activity for engaging with customers, say, what a local mom-pop store may want to do. What about building brand affinity, something larger brands want to do. What about giving users a forum to connect with the brand at multiple levels. How about a place where you can make accessible certain contact points, say, customer service, or simple stuff such as table bookings at a restaurant. And the above list is by no means exhaustive.
Even in the specific use case of e-commerce, it makes an over simplistic assumption of effectiveness = instant conversion. What about a guy who discovers something through the Facebook feed, does some comparison shopping, and then goes on to the site to finally buy that same product. Basically, the formula is an oversimplification of the buying process, even for the narrow scenario within which this works.
I think for a lot of Wall Street, Apple remains a loser, starting with their historical loss against Microsoft. So, this winning streak, for a lot of people, is an aberration. After all, how can someone so uncompromising with viewpoints and products be a successful company.
Plus the fact that Steve Jobs has been the one associated with all the success that Apple has had. Of course, the real impact of an approach stays within organizational cultures for far longer, but then, perceptions are seldom based on facts. And this constant harking back to 'how would Jobs do this' can't be healthy for 'objective' thinking among investors.
Do you think there's merit in incorporating a way for users to collaborate towards finding solutions; and I mean something designed for collaboration rather than the current answer+comments scenario. In some ways, that means relooking at the current paradigm where users start with an answer, which by default, implies something complete. Of course, the flip side of what I'm saying could be a lot of half-baked gibberish, but then again, since peer respect is the currency here, maybe that in itself takes care of things.
I don't really have an answer to how to do collaboration, but I think it may, just enable a lot more challenging problems to be posted here, which takes this a while lot further.
Also, I'm wondering if anyone else thinks if having one needing to give bounty even if there is no satisfactory answer could be an impediment down the down.
Skype & IM mean different things to different people. A lot of people may be using both, but not necessarily interchangeably, even though Skype has the ability to do both text IMs as well as voice. So, unless MSFT have a seamless migratory path, they will end up losing a lot of people who will suddenly be exploring all possibly options as their next IM client.