Slashdot Mirror
The New Brat Pack of Silicon Valley
bart_scriv writes "BusinessWeek looks at the current entrepreneurs of Web 2.0 via the lens of Kevin Rose and Digg. Although the article focuses on the rise and success of Digg, it also looks at the ethos of Web 2.0 and its successful companies, including YouTube, Del.icio.us, Facebook and Xfire. From the article: 'Clearly much has changed since 1999, and Rose and his fellow wealth punks have little in common with the sharp-talking MBAs in crisp khakis and blue button-downs who rushed the Valley as the NASDAQ climbed. In the late 1990s, entrepreneurs were the supplicants, and Sand Hill Road, dotted with venture-capital firms, was the mecca. Dot-commers relied on VCs for the millions needed to buy hardware, rent servers, hire designers, and advertise like crazy to bring in the eyeballs. For their big stakes of, say, $15 million for 20% of a company, venture capitalists received board seats, control of the management levers, and most of the equity. Now, it's more like: Maybe we'll let you throw a few bucks our way -- if you get it. Otherwise, get lost.'"
Indeed. Digg has had several millions invested, but Rose claims to still drive around a VW Golf and share an apartment with several people. Clearly he's having fun with his 'work', but it appears not to be earning him the same outrageous fortunes that the previous dot-commers expected.
Argh.
The economy in a downfall, interest rates lower than the inflation, people with money trying hard to find a place for investment. That's what we have today.
On the other hand, not too many people want to go down the dangerous road of self employment in the IT sector after the dot.com bubble burst. More so since if you have experience, are a good coder, know your stuff and don't quote "web design" as the core feature of your CV, you have no troubles finding a moderately to well paying job. Those would be the people to go for self employment, though, because without any experience (and connections) in the market, self employment is suicide.
In other words, there's a lot of investment money and not many people daring to pick it up. It kinda feels like dot.com all over again.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Silicon Valley to Business Week: Get a grip!
Ok, so there are a number of "Web 2.0" entrepreneurs who aren't in it soley for the money. (Or equally likely, IMO, some entrepreneurs are now standing pat in the hopes of a bigger payday later... but that's another issue).
So what? Back in the "Web 1.0" days there were also a good number of folks who didn't immediately go off the deep end when VC money became available. I was personally involved with two startups just before the dotbomb burst, and both had offers that they turned down because they wanted to keep control. This is nothing new, despite the ridiculous article. (Another hint to BW: don't try for "hip"--you just come off as lame)
And the folks in the story are still definitely a minority, as far as I can tell. There are still lots of folks out there who are trying the old scam of trying to get VCs to give them money based on a business plan and a Flash demo. It's just that now instead of "we'll give it away at a loss, but make it up on volume" there's the "we'll create a 'community' and sell advertising" theme.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
...the more they get the lame. And nothing is lamer than Digg and Kevin.
OK, in all fairness here's where I stand on Digg vs. Slashdot:
-Sort through the massive amount of crap on Digg for the latest news bits that might be worthwhile. On Digg it'a all about quantity, not quality. Or to put it another way, "How do we do it? VOLUME"!!!
-Hit Slashdot and find that some of the stories you found interesting on Digg are featured here and there is a better quality of discussion (amazingly) than there is on Digg. So this is where you get social. Digg is just an unsorted pile of crap.
-Yeah, I'm aware that the stories are "voted" to the front page by the readers. That's fine as long as your readers aren't idiots. The more popular Digg gets, the more idiots they collect. Therefore the quality of the front page represents what the idiots want to see. Not what actual, thinking readers are interested in.
Now, what I can also thank Digg for is the effect it's had on Slashdot. Not so much internally, but externally. I don't give a rat's ass if Taco and crew are scrambling to try and compete with Digg. That's not the effect I'm talking about. I'm talking about the somewhat homeopathic effect they've had on Slashdot. By becoming more popular, they've lured away most of the idiots. I've noticed that the level of discussion on Slashdot has improved since Digg 3.0 was unleashed. I think that a lot of the morons who annoyed the piss out of me after Slashdot became popular (I've been here since 1997 when I used to be CaptEno) couldn't resist that suction of stupid that Digg presented. The only negative effect I've seen is much slower story submission. Whereas the stories used to tick by quickly, now we're lucky if we see five new stories in a day.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Techdirt puts this article into nice perspective.
Here is Taco's mistake from way back in 2000:
8) What About the Slashdot Story Submission Queue?
by nullspace
I think it would be interesting to be able to view the story submission queue. That is, what type of stories are being submitted, which stories are being rejected and why, and other interesting trivia. Would you allow users to be able to view this queue, and if not, why?
Hemos:
One comment: Having us write rejections is probably impossible. I've tried to do the math, but considering the sheer amount of submissions we get, the people-power to write the rejection reasons won't work. Perhaps as a drop-down box, but still - we're dealing with hundreds per day.
CmdrTaco:
This is in the FAQ dammit! I don't wanna answer it again! Thats what the FAQ is FOR! AAAAGGHHH!
Seriously, there are a lot of reasons that it would make sense to do this. Unfortunately there are a lot of reasons not to do this too. The reason is abuse. If you saw some of the crap that gets submitted, you'd understand. Besides that, I don't want the submissions bin to be littered with noise like "First Post" and "Meept". We're already really busy sifting through 300 odd submissions each day, and we don't need it to be a game.
Several others wanted this as well.
Ahh.. what could have been.
More
I agree. I am by no means mega-rich, but I make a very very comfortable living working for an investment bank. However, I like my roommates, apartment, and neighborhood, the fact that I drive an environment friendly ninja 250 motorcycle, etc. I am content with these things and don't see the need to acquire a bmw or a crazy expensive co-op with a "good address" so I can home each day to an empty lonely apartment. The only thing I "bling" out on are tech toys, and the occasional vacation.
My 401k and bank account appreciate my lifestyle too. At this rate, social security can crash and burn for all I care.
While yes he's correct and should be modded up, keep in mind that their licence/TOS has gone through some iterations, and much of the specific language he quotes was only put there after the exact hue and cry of people like the grandparent poster (which, thankfully, is now no longer accurate).