March 24, 2005
On efficiency
I woke up at 7AM today and it's now 8:30. I am on my third blog entry and have not gotten out of bed, showered or eaten anything. I am a model of robot-like efficiency.
I have, however, resolved to buy an economics textbook on eBay as I never studied it in college and the more I learn about it, the more it seems like exotic chaos theory than actual science. (Is it a science? I'm so poorly informed on the topic that I don't even know.) A possibly equally ill-informed friend told me that the Federal Reserve prints money on a regular basis, thereby further devaluing existing currency -- but don't they also destroy old/crinkled/written-on bills?
Biz-partner Wendell is working on a social software called Meetro, a severely scaled-back, location-based version of our Matador project that I predict will be significantly more successful. Matador was a myspace-style social software network that also allowed encrypted, decentralized, BitTorrent-style file-sharing: upon upload, files broke themselves into individually encrypted chunks and spread themselves to unused hard-drive space on the network. A great idea but several years ahead of its time in terms of productive public consumption, something we never bothered to consider.
During the thick of development a year ago, the software's big idea, to us, was the encrypted file-sharing aspect. Social Software Networks such as friendster and myspace were old news -- to us. We ignored the fact that every time we talked to potential investors, they were stymied by the very idea of SSNs -- and unsettled by the potentially litigious aspects of offering the public yet another file-sharing software. Always looking at it from an engineer's perspective, we failed to account for the newness of SSNs in the public consciousness and the continued public mistrust associated with file-sharing (not an irony anymore in America, where our moral outrage is almost always exceeded by our lust for getting away with something). We failed to roll out the product in manageable stages that would have allowed us to build, post, promote, refine. We won't make those mistakes again.
Posted by chauncey at 02:28 PM | Comments (738)