I think that this 'world changing' stuff is diluting the power of peoples' mindsets. How could you convincingly believe that, let's say Foursquare, is world changing? And that's a successful enough example. Why not just that it's a 'money earning' idea, and have the potential for business growth be the motivating factor before you start worrying about solving real problems?
Foursquare will be world changing. Don't dismiss it because it looks small now. Keep in mind pg's thoughts on toys:
Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that's a good sign. That's probably why everyone else has been overlooking the idea. The first microcomputers were dismissed as toys. And the first planes, and the first cars. At this point, when someone comes to us with something that users like but that we could envision forum trolls dismissing as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest.
Yeah, like the other commenter said, it might be a visionary 'toy', or it might just be a toy. I don't know which one it is yet, but at a guess, i'd say that it wont be world changing, because the benefit/effort is skewed too far in favour of retailers.
It reminds me of...i hope somebody can remember the name of some of these because i tried looking the other day...back in the 90's, there were a bunch of (legit, i think?) companies that gave you money if you installed a little application on your computer that showed you ads while you browsed the internet. Like, a penny per 3 minutes viewing, or a penny per 50 webpage views, something like that (anybody remember?!). This seemed like money-manna from heaven to my dumbass teenage eyes, until i realised how little i was getting out of the equation (my dumbass teenage eyes didn't factor in that it cost me a penny a minute to browse, at the time, too).
They'll need to un-chore it, if they're going to turn things around. And they'll need to come up with some big shift if it's going to be world changing...
There's been many articles on HN over the last few months saying there is. I'll try find some, but the basic gist was, there may be more users but there are a lot less checkins per user.
