I've always felt that companies like Groupon, LivingSocial, and Zynga do way more harm than good.
Early on I was impressed by how well these startups were able to capture mainstream attention and change the way so many people live and behave.
But at the end of the day, what value does Groupon and Zynga actually add to society? I'm of the opinion that most daily deals and social gaming companies bring out our most primitive and animalistic tendencies (addiction and impulsiveness), and are antithetical to human progress.
If this is the beginning of the end of LivingSocial and daily deals then good riddance I say.
I disagree, it is will within the scope of HN especially if we're to prevent this sort of thing happening again from a founder/person on the ground level.
The other guy is wrong, good and human progress can be paired well with technology and business solutions. It's called social venture, and it's possible. It's just not what the valley focuses on.
lets talk about drug dealers. The drug market isn't really a free market. THere isn't really easy competition, the means of production is difficult for people to get into. The participants don't really want to do it sometimes, but is forced to.
In fact, if the gov't legalized drugs, and let big pharmaceuticals produce these drugs, i reckon it'd drive the scarcity of the drugs down, leading to their devaluation, and the market would correspondingly collapse (as its no longer seen as the forbidden fruit).
On driving prices down, yes, on the market collapsing, you have clearly never interacted with an addict.
Selling drugs to an addict is in no way creating value for society. None. You're taking money that was hustled/stolen in order to leave someone worse off than if they got clean. It might be that legalization is better than the black market but what I'm contending here is that "just because you made money, does not mean you were serving society".
Did you read my comment? Please define what you mean by "value, "worse off," and "serving society." Don't just throw those terms around expecting everyone else to share the exact same values as you.
Some examples: life, truth, and/or pleasure. If it's a combination, how do you prioritize?
Discussing "X has no value" is absolute garbage if you don't discuss "value."
Agree, technology for the sake of technology and growth for the sake of growth does not a business (or social good) make.
I love so much of what YC does but I wish their motto was not "Make something people want" but rather "Make something people need" because the two can often be diametrically opposed. Kinda like how a parent should not always give their child everything he/she wants (candy at every meal, constant attention, making a mess/scene everywhere you go, etc).
If we as startups only tried to make stuff people "want" then the world might end up looking like the dystopian society in the 2006 film "Idiocracy".
Isn't all entertainment just about Dopamine release (catchall for all other known and unknown 'pleasure' neurotransmitters. Zynga's games were decent enough at first. The problem is that for a business that is in the business of purveying entertainment, to be successful, it has to figure out a way of continually squirting out Dopamine in a subject without harming them (harming is more from business point of view than moral). Zynga's current game plays simply can't achieve that. Now if they can get the gambling license...
(it is approaching midnight, so please pardon my incoherence)
I've got nothing against either endeavor, I just don't like the way Groupon and Zynga in particular go about it. (Thus my "more harm than good" accusation)
Otherwise, there are plenty of small business marketing and entertainment companies I really like.
Early on I was impressed by how well these startups were able to capture mainstream attention and change the way so many people live and behave.
But at the end of the day, what value does Groupon and Zynga actually add to society? I'm of the opinion that most daily deals and social gaming companies bring out our most primitive and animalistic tendencies (addiction and impulsiveness), and are antithetical to human progress.
If this is the beginning of the end of LivingSocial and daily deals then good riddance I say.