Dick Costolo has been a startup person since the mid-90s; one of his first companies, BurningDoor, was hosted at the ISP I ran tech for. He's a good guy. Or, I mean, he was last time I talked to him.
This is very interesting, but one thing from the announcements was very interesting to me - is it common for people to release press releases by screenshotting the notes on their phones?
Maybe you're seeing this because so many startups these days seem to target upper middle class millennials by stepping between them and how they spend their money: start-up leeches. They do little except skim money going some place else under the "social" moniker by targeting people who are (1) unmarried, (2) mostly 18-34, and (3) have disposable income. They may even truly provide temporary value to that narrow community, but they're societal insulators building more of a divide between the upper middle class and the poor, between the young and the old, and between the haves and the have nots.
After all these years of stepping in the middle, maybe we want to see some of the VCs not targeting skimming money going some place else but instead, creating a startup that doesn't concentrate on "bringing the most money to founders and shareholders" but moves society around others who do. Even if that means their startup won't get them a seat at the billionaire's table.
I think you're mostly projecting here. Even if you were right, though, trying to get the rage needle in the red is the wrong way to approach the subject here. The HN community is genuinely interested in these problems.
He is very personally tied to fitness -- by far the most "fit" CEO I've ever known. Huge into CrossFit, he spent a ton of time in the gym at Twitter. It's not surprising at all that he would go in this direction, and it comes from a very authentic place for him. I'm just surprised he didn't weave beekeeping into it. ;)
