The Stanford Class That Built Apps and Made Fortunes

The NY Times has a story about a group of students who took a 2007 course in app development at Stanford that turned out far better than any of them expected. Quoting: "... by teaching students to build no-frills apps, distribute them quickly and worry about perfecting them later, the Facebook Class stumbled upon what has become standard operating procedure for a new generation of entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley and beyond. ... Early on, the Facebook Class became a microcosm of Silicon Valley. Working in teams of three, the 75 students created apps that collectively had 16 million users in just 10 weeks. Many of those apps were sort of silly: Mr. De Lombaert’s, for example, allowed users to send “hotness” points to Facebook friends. Yet during the term, the apps, free for users, generated roughly $1 million in advertising revenue."

Comments

App programmer is the new web designer

[improfane]

Ever felt you'll be left behind? This IT treadmill is ridiculous. I learn things that come out that are new but often see through the hype. These apps aren't breakthroughs in any sense of the word. It's ridiculous how people can make money from doing nothing groundbreaking. The clueless public buy into it. I have never understood how internet media/web design/app companies can be started by students with bigger egos than ability and what they make is so painfully trivial, why are they being rewarded?

Is there such thing as geek purity? Or am I just bitter because they did it first?

Get off my lawn?