babakian's comments

Ha! I should have used larger made up numbers! How about $100/yr from 5% of their users? Anyhow, you know that the investors are betting that the numbers will grow.

My main point is, Snapchat has a lot of users who have formed the habit of opening the app and sending snaps, totaling hundreds of millions of snaps/day. Simply cloning the app in no way means that you can generate those kinds of numbers. The numbers are stellar, and the investors seem to think so as well.

What Snapchat has is millions of users who have formed the habit of opening the app every day and using it to communicate, sending 350 million* snaps a day. You can go ahead and make clones of Snapchat (or Facebook or Twitter), but building a clone does not guarantee that you will get the number users that Snapchat (or Facebook or Twitter) have. The investors are betting that the folks at Snapchat will experiment to find ways to extract money from some small subset of Snapchat's users (e.g. let's say Snapchat has 350 million users and they find a way to extract $10 a year from 1% of their users, then that's $35 million a year). This is the bet that the investors of Snapchat are making. It's a risky bet, but they're OK with that. They're used to making risky bets. Most of their bets don't pan out, but the ones that do...well, you're smart, you get the picture.

* This number was taken from the article.

[Edited to fix typos.]

Transcript: http://votesmart.org/public-statement/295064/cbs-early-show-...

SEN. BIDEN: But this idea that no court will review, no Congress will know, and we've got to trust the president and the vice president of the United States that they're doing the right thing, don't count me in on that.

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Mind blown x 2

Hi raganwald. Your post might be dangerous. I am not an expert. It is worth further research. You can start with the following sections on Wikipedia to give you a gist of why it might be dangerous and then research further:

- Journalism codes for reporting on matters related to suicide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide#Journalism_code...

- Social proof model for explaining copycat suicides: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide#Social_proof_mo...

- Cialdini's book, Influence: the psychology of persuasion, references some scientific studies on this subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide#cite_note-isbn0...

Joel has taken inspiration from Philip Greenspun, as described here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000021.html

Yes. It is a safe to say that Jonathan Ive has studied the work of Dieter Rams. When it comes to industrial design, Dieter Rams is one of the greats. There is nothing wrong with being inspired by him. It is important to note that this inspiration goes beyond the industrial design of Apple's hardware. For example, it is widely agreed that the iPhone's calculator app is based on the Braun ET66 calculator, designed Rams: http://barryborsboom.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/172_721-ram...

You've introduced a new idea here by comparing FogBugz to Facebook.

Those earlier comments are comparing the strategy that Fog Creek took versus the one that Facebook has taken. The strategies are similar, and so the comparison makes sense.

It should be noted that Wasabi is a general purpose programming language. It is Turing complete (up to relatively trivial finite-memory issues, just like any other general purpose programming language). Like C, for example. It should also be noted that Wasabi is a .NET language. It has full access to the .NET Framework and all of its classes.

One could use Wasabi to write a C compiler.

[NB: I am a Fog Creek developer, working on the FogBugz team.]

No, not really! (Though, he would make a good sitter.) I was trying to be funny, but I guess I should stick to making silly faces in pictures.

However, he does enjoy making lattes for visitors at Fog Creek HQ, and people around the office.

Hi. I'm that employee (http://babak.ghahremanpour.com/). Joel does pay me for using the photo. He babysits twice a month so my wife and I can enjoy romantic dinners. I get shoulder rubs when I ask for them. And, he makes me the best lattes (including latte art). All the other Fog Creekers are jealous...but, they're not the ones entertaining JoS readers, by being funny in a picture... :)

Actually, that's a shot of Joel's office. But, yeah, Fog Creeker's other than Joel do read Hacker News.

To the point about getting your data out. FogBugz On Demand lets you download a snapshot of your database, at any time, in three different formats: MS SQL Server, Access, and MySQL. The FogBugz database schema is open and fully documented here: http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/KB/dbsetup/FogBugzSchema.htm...