noelsequeira

Completing one of these courses along with the accompanying assignments only takes you so far. Grades in a rigorous examination, however, represent a credential, which in turn sets up much needed (by the candidates taking the course) signaling. Eventually, a lot of employers might end up becoming sensitive to this signaling. A crude example of this can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3353543

If (and when) someone does crack this puzze and if employers in turn, react to this change, I see a lot of universities more than breaking a sweat. This latent potential is what, IMHO, most analysts / investors are really upbeat about.

1) Isolation through cliques can be a bit of a double-edged sword. While the prospect of being able to battle spam (and a wave of unsolicited mentions) is probably immensely appealing to the 1%, altering the fundamental contract on which the protocol is based is almost always a bad idea.

2) Even if this accounts for a non-trivial fraction of overall revenue, they aren't going to stop pursuing advertising dollars. Which means that they still need to own the stream. And that the third party client massacre will, therefore, continue unabated.

But that seems to be the very problem with it. In trying not to bury his lead, I believe Dalton Caldwell has let it take over the pitch. 95% "why" and 5% "what". 10 minutes in, I was still scratching my head wondering what the service will look like. And the name App.net certainly doesn't do the cause any favours. The first decent explanation finds itself relegated to question 2 of the FAQs.

This is an audacious attempt, and I laud that. But the pitch, in my opinion, needs an overhaul. Diaspora was also about the "why", but they addressed the "what" really early in their Kickstarter pitch.

B2C apps, especially those that rely on network effects to grow (Instapaper, Gumroad, Buffer) would do well to shrug off any concerns about clones, and continue to do what they do best: iterate on product and get more visiblity.

And while Instapaper and Gumroad might not have shared a detailed analysis of their journey in the "How I made $X in Y days on platform Z" format, their ability to succeed is in some ways tied to their perception as a successful business. In Instapaper's case, as a user, I'm building a repository of articles, and I wouldn't invest any effort if I felt the service wouldn't be around in a few months. A similar argument might be made for Gumroad - as a "paywall for everything", it just can't afford to seem small-and-under-the-radar, something that could easily be misconstrued as fly-by-night.

While this observation is somewhat anecdotal, I can sympathize with the sentiment. But the real reason that commenters on Hacker News might appear conceited or condescending is because they usually comment to disagree. If they do comment to express their agreement, they are encouraged to do so only when they have a non-trivial contribution to make. And this focus on a high signal-to-noise-ratio (even though it may consist of far more disagreement) on HN is not by happenstance, it is by design (achieved through guidelines, self-selection, and curation).

The comment thread on Google+ referred to by the OP, is largely an echo chamber of low-on-signal assent, with the odd nugget in the rough. And while this isn't a bad thing for a marketer trying to cultivate and engage a large audience, it would be toxic for Hacker News as a community.

While the most insightful commentary generally lies in a well reasoned, thoughtfully worded counterargument, it's always hard to deal with being judged or disagreed with; especially in public. This may be exacerbated when an argument is worded poorly (see http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html). Unfortunately, the odds of either happening on Hacker News, are far higher.