{"id":2401,"date":"2011-05-23T05:27:57","date_gmt":"2011-05-23T09:27:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adam-jackson.net\/blog\/?p=2401"},"modified":"2011-05-23T05:27:57","modified_gmt":"2011-05-23T09:27:57","slug":"valley-hype-meets-real-world-hype","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/05\/23\/valley-hype-meets-real-world-hype\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2605 Valley-Hype Meets Real World Hype"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alexia Tsotsis<\/a>:<\/p>\n

So it turns out that almost nobody wants people to check out their purchases. And also that just adding a social element to a feature isn\u2019t enough to make it useful. The lessons of user adoption are sometimes learned the hard way.<\/p>\n

Thus is the story of the failure of\u00a0Blippy,<\/a> a product that launched in private beta in December of 2009 and that we breathlessly fawned over\u00a0again<\/a>, and\u00a0again<\/a>, and\u00a0again<\/a> and\u00a0again<\/a> (andagain<\/a> and\u00a0again<\/a> \u2026).<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine being able to see everything your friends buy with a credit card as they do it,\u201d MG wrote. \u201cThis not only tells you what kind of things they\u2019re actually into (rather than someone just\u00a0saying\u00a0they like something), but also other information like how cheap they are, as well as\u00a0where\u00a0they actually are at a given time.\u201d<\/p>\n

What we failed to ask was, \u201cWho cares?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Alexia (earlier that day)<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Local Q&A startup\u00a0Hipster<\/a> has raised $1 million in seed funding from some prominent angel Valley investors including\u00a0Mitch Kapor<\/a>,\u00a0Dave McClure\/500 Startups<\/a>,\u00a0Lightbank<\/a>,\u00a0Google Ventures<\/a>,\u00a0Charles River Ventures<\/a>,\u00a0Max Ventilla<\/a>,\u00a0TechStars<\/a> David Cohen<\/a> and\u00a0David Tisch<\/a>, Google\u2019s\u00a0Don Dodge<\/a>,\u00a0Paige Craig<\/a>,Ludlow Ventures<\/a>,\u00a0Lerer Ventures<\/a> and others.<\/p>\n

Many of you best know Hipster as the startup that launched a thousand blog posts, having insane hype and a\u00a0couple of acquisition offers<\/a> before its SXSW launch. While Hipster\u2019s initial launch page had over\u00a010,000 signups<\/a> in its first few days of existence, the startup\u2019s actual user numbers for SXSW were at just over 4,000 for the entire three day period. Were you using Hipster during SXSW? I wasn\u2019t either.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Alexia during SXSW:<\/a><\/p>\n

Hipster<\/a>, the\u00a0oddly named<\/a> local Q&A site that was up for three months in Boulder, CO, shut down in order to relaunch, went\u00a0viral<\/a> despite being in \u201cstealth\u201d a month ago, almost\u00a0got bought <\/a>by Google and Groupon pre-launch, didn\u2019t end up launching at the Launch conference and so on, has\u00a0revealed itself<\/a> to the public today, just in time for yes, SXSW.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m guessing about 6 months from now, we’ll get another Blippy-esque post from TechCrunch with “No one is using Hipster after raising millions in capital. I guess we forgot to ask if anyone really cares about this site before writing seven posts about it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My post about Hipster after SXSW<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t sign up for UseHipster until the day it was released at SXSW. I browsed for 5 minutes and never went back until today to see what\u2019s going on with it. Most people haven\u2019t gone back at all.<\/p>\n

I feel sorry for the 10,000+ tweets Hipster beta users sent out in\u00a0order to get \u201cearly access\u201d to yet another startup that\u2019s over-hyped and delivers nothing more than a copy of a copy of another startup.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thank goodness, my all-time favorite TechCrunch writer continues to write insightful pieces like this one<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A lot of that is the fault of publications like TechCrunch: We get excited about new things. If it\u2019s exploding like Groupon, all the better. But we even go nuts over things like Foursquare or Quora that have pretty muted user-bases. That\u2019s what being evangelists and early adopters is all about. We tend not to write about all the apps that launch and go nowhere, with good reason: If we\u2019re doing our job well, we probably thought they sucked to begin with.<\/p>\n

But the bigger disservice we do is not writing enough about the boring companies who work every day to build something that becomes huge, giving the impression that starting a business is easy in the Valley. That somehow people wake up with an idea, and roll out of bed onto a pile of venture capital, press and adoration. A lot of times the companies we should be writing about more than we do are admittedly boring infrastructure or enterprise software names. But there\u2019s a category of consumer names that should be sexy, but for whatever reason don\u2019t get the hype.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sarah Lacy continues to wow me with her editorial work, traveling and exposure of unknown companies. She rarely gets involved with the daily churn of huge funding rounds to unknown companies. She spends weeks on a single piece and rocks it. I may be wrong but I believe she’s the only J-School graduate employed by TechCrunch and it freaking shows! I forgive her for writing this post<\/a> in 2009 about feeling sorry for journalism students. The truth is, Sarah Lacy has THE BEST posts on TechCrunch and is the best author there. She rarely speculates and always has context and quotes. This is no attack to Alexia, she just happened to be the one who wrote the Blippy and Hipster stories but I’m disappointed in TechCrunch for hyping these companies to no end, admitting they were wrong about hyping but then following up announcing the company has now raised more funding and congratulating them.<\/p>\n

There is a fine line when it comes to hyping, admitting you were wrong but then posting about that company’s round of funding in order to prove you were right all along and that company was destined for greatness. Cut your losses, lose the ego and move on. No one should have written about Hipster again after SXSW just like no one has written about Quora for months. These companies should continue to innovate and we should let them do it without hyping them too much.<\/p>\n

I’m not an early adopter anymore because I don’t have time to beta-test services. I’m very picky about who gets my data. I wish TechCrunch did employ real journalists. The publication would be better off.<\/p>\n

J-School students, I salute you.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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