Mob Wars CEO: Twitter Is Run by Hippies

http://mashable.com/2009/06/23/mob-wars-twitter/

by peter123 • 17 years ago

19 21 17 years ago

blhack2• 17 years ago

No, twitter is run by a bunch of geeks that have seen countless companies like youtube get bought out for hundreds of millions, or in the case of youtube, ~$1.6 billion, and are hoping to cash in the same way.

They're trying to let somebody else come up with a way of monetizing it, and probably hoping for google.

henning• 17 years ago

By countless do you mean a handful?

blhack2• 17 years ago

It is considerably more than a handful

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Yahoo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Microso...

jasonlbaptiste• 17 years ago

You mean one company- blogger, right? Even that alone is enough justification.

fartron• 17 years ago

>I don’t know who puts hippies in charge of these companies.

"These companies" being the ones the hippies start. The same ones guys like this don't know how to start either. Let's keep guys like this away from "these companies."

metaguri• 17 years ago

Wow. Yeah. Nobody "put" them in charge of this company.

Perhaps "hippies" have the vision to create something that will change the world (a bold claim about twitter... but at least somewhat true already) and "non-hippies" have the pragmatism to make a copycat mmorpg that will rake in a few million bucks but no one will remember next year.

When I think about what spurred the creation of a memorable technology that changed the course of human history, I see vision, not monetization. (Ford => a car for each family, Edison => light in every home, Apple => easy to use computers, Google => bigger, better search)

blader2• 17 years ago

"I see vision, not monetization."

You see years of great PR, not reality. Most founding myths are the result of gross simplification and made-up mythology which the are designed to be interesting and consumable for mass media. (see Amazon, eBay, YouTube, PayPal etc).

teej2• 17 years ago

To be fair, Jason Bailey's company is profitable and doing 8 digits in revenue a year. How much is Twitter making again?

tremendo• 17 years ago

How much is Twitter making again?

What does it matter? They're certainly not starving (yet). These hippies started up something from scratch, are having an incredibly fun time doing it, getting funded, making waves and headlines and may yet make money. Ev already got loads of cash from selling Blogger before. And wasn't that the same question people asked of Amazon and Google before? How much were they making two years after launch?

menloparkbum• 17 years ago

His comments don't even make sense. He calls twitter hippies because they aren't starting a virtual currency business that his company can glom onto. If his company is so loaded, why doesn't he start his own virtual currency business? Oh right, because starting a virtual currency is hugely risky, full of regulatory hassle and not very interesting. If anyone should start a virtual currency, it is the game company that is going to use the virtual currency! (Like you know, MMORPGS already do...)

dpnewman• 17 years ago

Maybe making Mob games makes you think you're in the mob.

teej2• 17 years ago

Ok, this Mashable article throws around some crazy stuff, mostly propagated by bad information in the CNN Money article. Let's straighten things out:

- Jason Bailey is the CEO of Super Rewards (http://www.srpoints.com/). They do payment processing and CPA offers for social apps.

- lolplaying (http://lolplaying.com/) made the game 140 Mafia. 140 Mafia implements Super Rewards for virtual goods.

- Jason Bailey made the comment "I don't know who puts hippies in charge of these companies" in reference to Twitter not doing a centralized virtual currency.

- The "CEO" of Mob Wars is Dave Maestri. He didn't say anything about Twitter, from what I can tell. Mob Wars is made by Psycho Monkey LLC

- The "CEO" of Mafia Wars is Mark Pincus. Mafia Wars isn't a "sequel" of Mob Wars, it's a clone. Just like 140 Mafia is a clone of both. Mafia Wars is made by Zynga.

EDIT: Thanks to joshuaxls for corrections.

joshuaxls• 17 years ago

Good corrections, but you're still wrong about one thing. Super Rewards did NOT make 140 Mafia. lolplaying did.

swombat• 17 years ago

Is that a veiled compliment? I quite like being called a hippie.

dasil003• 17 years ago

As much of a douche as Jason Bailey comes off as, and as random an idea as virtual currency is for Twitter, there's this:

They do not need to rush into a business model, especially with their eye-popping growth.

Is that the growth fueled by celebrity curiosity and spam of all types? Do they really have unlimited runway?

The quality of Twitter is going downhill so fast that I can't help but think it may have already jumped the shark masked by huge amounts of worthless traffic. I know, I know, "you choose who you follow," but at this point I'm getting followed by so many porn bots that blocking them is almost a daily task.

DannoHung• 17 years ago

Ugh, I really don't want twitter to do payment processing because I don't want my idle chit chat mixing with my bank account.

madair• 17 years ago

I unfollow people who play games like that, drowning my twitter and facebook with stupid posts. I think a lot of people do.

Mob Wars CEO: Twitter Is Run by Hippies

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