When I first read about Varnish it was framed as a "correct" implementation of what Squid was trying to do. It seems like people are using Varnish in situations where they would not otherwise be using Squid.
One way to look at AirBnB is as a craiglist plus escrow service. The idea is they spammed people advertising rental properties on craiglist to get them to visit the AirBnB site and it has worked so far. Eventually, though, all the people advertising on sites like craigslist will have migrated over to AirBnB and then the growth ends.
The escrow service seems a little dodgey since they are not licensed (see Greenspan's critique - he was roommates with one of the founders of AirBnB). Few major incidents so far, but how long will that last as they scale? The attraction of AirBnB over craiglist may be that the hosts perceive some added degree of safety by using AirBnB. But really, how much liability is AirBnB taking on? Can you sue AirBnB if your property is destroyed? Good luck with that.
What if another site that has an even faster interface pops up and uses a growth hacker to lure away hosts listing their properties on AirBnB? Then what? Acquire them out of fear!
The web is a medium. People use it to advertise things. It's hard to believe that any one company can monopolize a medium like the web for some class(es) of goods or services. But it sure looks like they can, doesn't it?
From For Sale ads in Usenet groups to a mailing list that grows to a website (craigslist) to AirBnB acting as an informal escrow agent to _______?
The interesting thing is that Usenet was originally free. As long as you had an internet connection, you could advertise for free. I'm not sure I understand why advertising still shouldn't be free. And we should be able to reduce the signal to noise ratio, and make doing business via internet more personable and trustworthy, without having to pay a spammer who acts as a dubious escrow agent and takes a percentage.
According to Dave Gooden, AirBnB had a growth hacker who did her magic via email. "[email protected]" was her address.
She harvested emails from people adveritising on craigslist and sent out thousands of emails. Some call that unsolicited bulk commercial email. Some call is spam. Others call it growth hacking.
Remember, wise man say startups need <em> high growth </em>.
Founding startup is like being research scientist. Science!
Harvard grad gets shut down by FTC for sending porn-related spam from custom-built spam machine in his dorm room. Earns some nice coin. Moves on to greener pastures:- doing the dirty work for internet venture capitalists. Say hello to the CTO of AirBnB.
Ivy League indeed.
The eventual victim is untimately the public investor if there's an IPO or the naive acquirer... because these businesses are not built to last long enough to provide the return on investment the public expects, nor to cover the inevitable charge the acquirer has to take.
These petty criminals doing the dirty work for internet VC are young with many years ahead of them to regain their reputation. But time may not heal bad reputations as well as it used to... because the internet never forgets.