Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are yet. So, once upon a time, we used
Speaker 1: to have these things called programs. And I say that
Speaker 1: because now we don't call programs programs anymore. We typically
Speaker 1: call programs apps. I think that really started to become
Speaker 1: a thing upon the ascent of the consumer smartphone, which
Speaker 1: was sparked by Apple, which was then cranked up by Android,
Speaker 1: and that we really had the era of the app.
Speaker 1: At that point. We used to, like I said, call
Speaker 1: them programs. Now they are applications, whether it's for a
Speaker 1: phone or a computer. I guess app stores sounds better
Speaker 1: than program emporium anyway. For thousands of entrepreneurs, the dream
Speaker 1: is to build an app and to be come rich
Speaker 1: beyond your wildest dreams. Right, You design an app and
Speaker 1: then the money rolls in. Maybe it's because some bigger
Speaker 1: fish out there, like some Google or Apple or Meta,
Speaker 1: decides that you're just too good to be left unacquired,
Speaker 1: and then they spend a bucket load of cash on you.
Speaker 1: Hopefully ten times more than what you're actually worth. Or
Speaker 1: maybe you actually figure out how to be profitable all
Speaker 1: on your own, you actually have a business plan and
Speaker 1: you have a way of generating revenue. You would be
Speaker 1: the rare Silicon Valley project that actually works as a
Speaker 1: business on its own. That again is the dream. But
Speaker 1: dreams don't always come true, and sometimes even apps that
Speaker 1: seem to be strapped to a rocket for success end
Speaker 1: up blowing up and going up in flames. So this
Speaker 1: episode is about apps that fall into that category, apps
Speaker 1: that at one time seem like they were a sure thing,
Speaker 1: only they flamed out down the line. One of the
Speaker 1: apps I originally planned to put on this list was
Speaker 1: four square, but as it turns out, that app and
Speaker 1: the company behind it is still chugging along, just in
Speaker 1: a slightly different role than it was before. See I
Speaker 1: remember when four square launched and folks would use it
Speaker 1: to check in to locations that they were visiting in
Speaker 1: the real world. So some places would even start to
Speaker 1: offer special discountsl right like twenty percent off your first
Speaker 1: drink if you check into the bar via four square.
Speaker 1: Because it was seen as a kind of viral marketing.
Speaker 1: Other folks worried about the privacy issues of this kind
Speaker 1: of behavior. In fact, some folks created a website called
Speaker 1: Please rob Me, and this site satirically would scrape data
Speaker 1: off Twitter for four square check in notifications, so please
Speaker 1: rob Me would then list people who were saying they
Speaker 1: were not currently at home. Now, the whole point wasn't
Speaker 1: to actually inspire a way of burglaries, but rather show
Speaker 1: why it's dangerous to broadcast your location to the world
Speaker 1: in general, and it might not be a good idea,
Speaker 1: and maybe people should think harder about their personal privacy.
Speaker 1: In twenty fourteen, for Square actually changed dramatically. The company
Speaker 1: launched a companion app called Swarm Now. This app contained
Speaker 1: all the social networking features that for Square used to have,
Speaker 1: so all the check in stuff, all the geolocation stuff
Speaker 1: that was kind of seen as the critical element of
Speaker 1: force Square and the one that you should be worried
Speaker 1: about that went to Swarm. For Square meanwhile became four
Speaker 1: Square City Guide, which became a discovery and recommendation app,
Speaker 1: and it would help you figure out places that maybe
Speaker 1: you should visit based upon your past experiences. Right. It
Speaker 1: would say, Okay, I see that you're in downtown New
Speaker 1: York and because of the places that you used to
Speaker 1: go to in your hometown, here are some places we
Speaker 1: think you should probably check out because you'll really like them.
Speaker 1: You didn't have to use both of the apps if
Speaker 1: you didn't want to, but they did compliment one another,
Speaker 1: so if you used Swarm, four Square would tap into
Speaker 1: that check in data to help inform what recommendations it
Speaker 1: should give you. Those apps are still available today. Like
Speaker 1: I just thought that four Square had come and gone
Speaker 1: because I haven't personally used it in a decade, But
Speaker 1: the fact is it's still a thing. One really interesting
Speaker 1: thing to me is that, forour Square's business largely involves
Speaker 1: licensing its technology to other companies, which include Uber, Airbnb, Snapchat,
Speaker 1: and lots more. The check in feature that four Square
Speaker 1: developed powers numerous other apps. So while our perception was
Speaker 1: that four Square was a relic of the past, that's
Speaker 1: just not true. That's totally my misconception there, and again
Speaker 1: it's because I have really paid at digital four Square
Speaker 1: in a decade. But it is interesting to me that,
Speaker 1: you know, they found success in a different way than
Speaker 1: what they set out to do. I still don't have
Speaker 1: any real desire to read download either four square or Swarm. However,
Speaker 1: on a related note, there is also the story of
Speaker 1: yik yak. Now, this app actually did flame out, but
Speaker 1: then it was resurrected again just a few years ago,
Speaker 1: so for those of y'all who do not know the story,
Speaker 1: a couple of guys launched an anonymous location based messaging
Speaker 1: platform back in twenty thirteen, and the way it worked
Speaker 1: was that you would open the app and you would
Speaker 1: connect via putting in your phone number. This would end
Speaker 1: up allowing you to post to the platform, but you
Speaker 1: would only be able to read messages that had been
Speaker 1: posted by people within a certain distance of your physical location,
Speaker 1: such as within a five mile radius, and you could
Speaker 1: post a message anonymously, and again, only people who are
Speaker 1: in a five mile radius of your lowtion would be
Speaker 1: able to read your message. So as you would travel around,
Speaker 1: you would see new messages, while ones that were now
Speaker 1: out of physical range would disappear from view. The focus
Speaker 1: on geolocation, coupled with anonymity, made the app extremely popular
Speaker 1: with school campuses, and yakyak largely catered to that audience.
Speaker 1: This also meant there was a lot of abuse. There
Speaker 1: was no accountability right there was no connection to a
Speaker 1: specific person, so people could post to the platform and
Speaker 1: they could bully other folks or worse. So there were
Speaker 1: these stories popping up all around the United States about
Speaker 1: how the app was bringing out the absolute worst in
Speaker 1: people and endangering folks. Right Like, let's say that you
Speaker 1: belonged to a minority population in a particular campus university
Speaker 1: of Even if someone's not specifically calling you out, it
Speaker 1: might be easy to figure out who people are talking about,
Speaker 1: which could definitely hurt your mental health, or they could
Speaker 1: even be calling for more extremes that could endanger your
Speaker 1: physical health. So pressure built against the company, and eventually
Speaker 1: yakyak cave to it. So in twenty fifteen, yakyk made
Speaker 1: a massive change and required users to register a handle
Speaker 1: with the site, So all messages now would be attributed
Speaker 1: to a handle. They wouldn't be fully anonymous. Now, it
Speaker 1: was still a handle, not your name, so it wasn't
Speaker 1: exactly the same thing as signing your name to your
Speaker 1: own words, but it was a lot closer than what
Speaker 1: had come before. Hardcore users hated this change, and eventually
Speaker 1: yak yak kind of backed off a bit and made
Speaker 1: it an optional feature, but by then the user base
Speaker 1: had been alienated and had dwindled, and in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: the company announced that the app was shutting down due
Speaker 1: to that dwindling user base. They actually did a sell
Speaker 1: off Square, the company that is behind online payment systems.
Speaker 1: They purchased essentially the IP but really more like they
Speaker 1: purchased the engineering talent of Yaka and brought them on board.
Speaker 1: And it was for reportedly like just a million dollars,
Speaker 1: which is still a lot of money. Don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1: A million dollars is a lot, but it's nothing compared
Speaker 1: to what yik yak was valued at a few years earlier.
Speaker 1: And so yik yak effectively stopped being a thing in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, and it stayed in the grave for four years.
Speaker 1: But then in February twenty twenty one, a group of
Speaker 1: new owners who remained mysterious and unnamed. Like everywhere I
Speaker 1: look to find out who the heck owned yak yak
Speaker 1: between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty three, didn't have
Speaker 1: information about that anyway, They purchased yik yak and announced
Speaker 1: plans to relaunch, and sure enough, late in the summer
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty one, the app came back. Now two
Speaker 1: years later, in twenty twenty three, another company called side
Speaker 1: Chat scooped up yik yak. Now side chats. Shtick was
Speaker 1: essentially the same as yik yak. Side Chat had an
Speaker 1: anonymous posting platform that largely was targeting college campus side
Speaker 1: Chat was not as popular as yak yak. A lot
Speaker 1: of yak yak users felt that side Chat's user interface
Speaker 1: was inferior, and initially yakyak users were getting messages where
Speaker 1: they were being urged to migrate to side chat and
Speaker 1: they hated it. Eventually that would change, where yak yak
Speaker 1: would remain a thing, but effectively transformed into side chat.
Speaker 1: You know, its interface became more of side Chat's interface.
Speaker 1: By the way, I based this all off of blog
Speaker 1: posts and articles and message boards because I wasn't on
Speaker 1: yik yak at the time, so I had no idea
Speaker 1: what was going on. But while the initial yak yak
Speaker 1: was popular with campuses, this new version specifically focused on
Speaker 1: university students, like almost like exclusively. As opposed to it
Speaker 1: being a community based thing or a regional base thing.
Speaker 1: It was specifically a campus based thing, and occasionally it
Speaker 1: sounds like it would even make mistakes and accidentally assign
Speaker 1: someone to a university that was not the one they
Speaker 1: actually went to, which could be really hairy, right because
Speaker 1: if I were to join yik yak and it suggested
Speaker 1: I was a student at Georgia Tech, that's fighting words
Speaker 1: because I attended the University of Georgia. Now that probably
Speaker 1: means nothing to most of you, but just know those
Speaker 1: two schools have had a long standing rivalry that goes
Speaker 1: between being you know, good natured ribbing and genuine, deep
Speaker 1: seated loathing. So if you had one student misidentified as
Speaker 1: going to the other school, that could be fighting words.
Speaker 1: Now I should say that yaikyak currently is only back
Speaker 1: for iOS users as I record this podcast. Now, the
Speaker 1: relaunch did at one point include Android, and apparently it
Speaker 1: was only active for a very short while before in
Speaker 1: the spring of twenty twenty three, the company said that
Speaker 1: they were shutting down Android support in order to focus
Speaker 1: on building out features for the iOS version. Now, again,
Speaker 1: I can't check this app out. I'm an Android user.
Speaker 1: Plus I'm not a college student, so I have to
Speaker 1: rely on articles and Reddit posts to read up on it.
Speaker 1: And it sounds to me that in the past you
Speaker 1: could register for yik yak just with your phone number,
Speaker 1: but now since the side chat acquisition, you have to
Speaker 1: supply a university email address to create an account university
Speaker 1: or college email address, and if you don't have one
Speaker 1: of those, you can't have an account, and that has
Speaker 1: upset a lot of users because it meant that they're one.
Speaker 1: If they're not in college, they can't be part of
Speaker 1: this anymore. Though honestly, I don't see why you would
Speaker 1: necessarily want to be, But then that's probably because I
Speaker 1: feel a lot of empathy for the folks who were bullied,
Speaker 1: but it also is a reason. One reason they don't
Speaker 1: want to do it anymore is because their actual identity
Speaker 1: would be associated with their account, maybe not directly, like
Speaker 1: the actual posts would be anonymous, but the site would
Speaker 1: know who you were because you would have an email
Speaker 1: address tied to your identity to register for the site. Arguably,
Speaker 1: you could say the same thing is true because for
Speaker 1: the old version, because you had to supply a phone number,
Speaker 1: so unless you're buying burner numbers just for yaekiyak, it
Speaker 1: would be pretty easy to figure out who you were.
Speaker 1: But it also means that if you're not a college student,
Speaker 1: or you're not on faculty or staff, then you're completely
Speaker 1: out of the loop. There's a lot of competition in
Speaker 1: the anonymous message board space these days. Seems to me
Speaker 1: that a lot of the companies behind these apps typically
Speaker 1: will reach a level of success that brings more attention
Speaker 1: to their activities and perhaps their flaws, let's say, and
Speaker 1: then they feel pressure to change things in order to
Speaker 1: make their apps less prone to abuse, because now people
Speaker 1: are paying attention to them and calling them out. And
Speaker 1: then subsequently, after making these changes, the apps decline in
Speaker 1: popularity because it turns out the user base the stuff
Speaker 1: that they really liked happened to be the same stuff
Speaker 1: that also facilitated abuse. Not to say that users all
Speaker 1: enjoyed and piling on folks and abusing people, but that
Speaker 1: the same features that made it easy to abuse folks
Speaker 1: were also the features that people just really liked. That
Speaker 1: kind of seems to be the life cycle for these
Speaker 1: kinds of applications. They launch, they go viral, they get
Speaker 1: really big, folks notice that sometimes really awful people are
Speaker 1: using that app to do really awful things. The app
Speaker 1: then ends up making changes in an effort to not
Speaker 1: be held accountable for these things, and then it alienates
Speaker 1: the user base, both the good and the bad users.
Speaker 1: It then declines in popularity, then it fades into memory,
Speaker 1: your rentse and you repeat. Now, I can't say for
Speaker 1: certain that's what's happening with Yak Yak. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of users who say that it's not as good
Speaker 1: as it used to be, that they don't see the appeal.
Speaker 1: The fact that it doesn't it's not available for Android
Speaker 1: users is a huge thing. It means that a large
Speaker 1: amount of the population can't even access it. Maybe the
Speaker 1: company will manage to relaunch for Android and regain some momentum,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's on the path back toward obsolescence. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got more failed app to talk about. Before we
Speaker 1: do that, let's stop for a moment and thank our sponsors. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. So no list of failed apps would be
Speaker 1: complete without Quibi. Holy cats. This was a massive whiff
Speaker 1: with a whole lot of money and some really heavy
Speaker 1: hitters in both the entertainment and tech industries at the wheel,
Speaker 1: and it still crashed and burned. It was the brainchild
Speaker 1: of Jeffrey Katzenberg, who had forged a legendary career in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: You know, he became really well known at Disney and
Speaker 1: then created dream Works, and Quibi was hoping to tap
Speaker 1: into that same magic that Hollywood success and also the
Speaker 1: same magic that TikTok boasts. That was the key was
Speaker 1: can we make something inspired by the success of TikTok,
Speaker 1: and that was namely short form content, And in the
Speaker 1: case of Quibi, the short form would be videos that
Speaker 1: would last ten minutes or less. However, unlike TikTok, Quibi
Speaker 1: productions would have some serious money behind them. We're talking
Speaker 1: about really high production values, stuff that you would see
Speaker 1: that would be akin to a television or film studio.
Speaker 1: And if TikTok can knock them dead with DIY shorts
Speaker 1: created by just any Yahoo out there, surely an entertainment
Speaker 1: app with serious Hollywood credentials could make a killing right now.
Speaker 1: On the tech side, former HP CEO Meg Whitman was
Speaker 1: on board, and Whitman and Katzenberg brainstormed the structure and
Speaker 1: execution of Quibi. They also are argued a lot. Witman
Speaker 1: would later essentially say that Katzenberg would undermine her decisions
Speaker 1: and was micromanaging, and there seem to be a lot
Speaker 1: of bad blood at the top levels at Quibi, which
Speaker 1: was just one of many problems. But the company signed
Speaker 1: on various actors, directors, writers, and associated people to create
Speaker 1: content for the site. They poured approximately a billion dollars
Speaker 1: to that effect. Some of the content created consisted of
Speaker 1: standalone short videos right like it was just a one
Speaker 1: and done ten minutes or less video, but some were
Speaker 1: actually serialized. They were longer pieces and divided up into
Speaker 1: ten minute long chapters. This, in turn was a really
Speaker 1: tricky because, like, if you're gonna divide a movie into
Speaker 1: ten minute long chapters, you need a way to entice
Speaker 1: people to continue after a chapter is over, and in
Speaker 1: my opinion, it becomes like a Dan Brown novel where
Speaker 1: every chapter ends in a cliffhanger to try and incentivize
Speaker 1: people to go to the next chapter. And personally, I
Speaker 1: find that kind of narrative exhausting and not very satisfying.
Speaker 1: I am not a Dan Brown fan, nothing against him,
Speaker 1: I just it doesn't appeal to me to end every
Speaker 1: few pages with another cliffhanger. Anyway, they also made a
Speaker 1: really odd decision when it came to framing, because the
Speaker 1: whole point of Quibi was that it was intended to
Speaker 1: be consumed on smartphones, and as I'm sure you're aware,
Speaker 1: we're used to watching television programs in landscape format, that is,
Speaker 1: the picture is wider than it is tall, right, But
Speaker 1: for phones, we often hold phones in portrait mode, where
Speaker 1: it's taller than it is wide. Otherwise you have to
Speaker 1: turn the dang phone on its side, and there's a
Speaker 1: chance you'll end up watching a tiny video with huge
Speaker 1: black bars above and below it. So one choice Quibi's
Speaker 1: founders made is that all content should be viewable in
Speaker 1: full screen, whether the user was holding their phone in
Speaker 1: portrait or landscape mode, and that you could switch back
Speaker 1: and forth. So you could hold it in portrait mode
Speaker 1: and then say you know what, I want to see
Speaker 1: this in wide screen, turn your phone landscape. It would switch,
Speaker 1: and in both versions the image would completely fill the
Speaker 1: screen of your phone. That's a big deal, even though
Speaker 1: it might not sound like it, because if you're a
Speaker 1: director or cinematographer, part of your job is making sure
Speaker 1: all the important information for the viewer is available within
Speaker 1: the frame. Obviously that's going to be different if the
Speaker 1: finished product is to be viewed in portrait mode rather
Speaker 1: than landscape you need to figure out how are you
Speaker 1: going to frame the image so that it works in
Speaker 1: both formats, or you might have to use things like
Speaker 1: pan and scan or switching views to get the information across. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: you might have a scene where you have two characters,
Speaker 1: one far left and one far right on the screen.
Speaker 1: They're talking to each other, and in landscape mode, that's fine,
Speaker 1: you can see it, but you switch it to portrait
Speaker 1: mode and now there's not enough room on the screen
Speaker 1: to get both characters in frame. What do you do?
Speaker 1: Do you have an empty frame where both characters are
Speaker 1: off screen, one off screen left and one off screen right.
Speaker 1: Do you just focus on one character and then you
Speaker 1: switch whenever the dialogue changes so that you get a
Speaker 1: different view when character one speaks versus character two? Do
Speaker 1: you pan back and forth? Which is that swimmy effect
Speaker 1: you often get if you watch like old old home video,
Speaker 1: not home video, but you know videos that were made
Speaker 1: for home video use. You will often get that scanning feature.
Speaker 1: Because televisions were in the old four to three aspect
Speaker 1: ratio and they couldn't incorporate a wide screen picture unless
Speaker 1: they did the bars at the top or bottom or both,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people hated those. They wanted to
Speaker 1: have the image take up the whole screen, So you
Speaker 1: end up having this digital panning, which I absolutely detested. Well,
Speaker 1: you have to make those decisions, or do you end
Speaker 1: up blocking all of your shots so that all the
Speaker 1: relevant information can be seen in one view, even if
Speaker 1: it's portrait, in which case you might just have a
Speaker 1: lot of unused space, like negative space in the frame
Speaker 1: if you're watching it widescreen, or maybe you shoot with
Speaker 1: multiple cameras so that way, one camera is taking the
Speaker 1: landscape version of the shot, one camera's taking the portrait
Speaker 1: version of the shot. Like, there's a lot of complex
Speaker 1: things you have to think of behind the scenes from
Speaker 1: a content creator standpoint, beyond just the technology of if
Speaker 1: you turn your phone, you want the frame to be
Speaker 1: completely full. So this was a real issue that goes
Speaker 1: a technical challenge, and they did not have enough time
Speaker 1: to figure out how to deal with that in a
Speaker 1: way that was satisfying anyway. That whole design decision became
Speaker 1: a big hurdle. But another hurdle was that Quibi was
Speaker 1: meant to be mobile only by design. It was not
Speaker 1: intended to be an app that you would access on
Speaker 1: a computer or smart television or streaming box or anything
Speaker 1: like that, and something that was outside the control and
Speaker 1: not predicted by the folks at Quibi when they were
Speaker 1: putting together their business plan was the COVID nineteen pandemic,
Speaker 1: which took a lot of us totally by surprise. So
Speaker 1: Quibi was really intended to be used for a world
Speaker 1: that was on the go, right. The use case was
Speaker 1: that you would be out in the real world and
Speaker 1: you would have time to kill. Maybe you're waiting in
Speaker 1: line of the bank, or maybe you're sitting on a
Speaker 1: subway and you're on your way to work and you
Speaker 1: just need something to distract you from the tedium of life.
Speaker 1: Boom Quib is there to save the day. High production
Speaker 1: value scripted entertainment or you know, like game shows or whatever,
Speaker 1: but still high production value, not the type of stuff
Speaker 1: you would see typically on a site like TikTok. Except
Speaker 1: the app launched just as the world was shutting down
Speaker 1: and going into quarantine in twenty twenty, so the use
Speaker 1: case for the app was no longer relevant, at least
Speaker 1: not for the several first months of the app's existence.
Speaker 1: Plenty of critics said that even without the pandemic, Quibi
Speaker 1: would have just totally failed, But certainly the lockdown was
Speaker 1: a massive blow to the service when there were plenty
Speaker 1: of other options folks could act when they were at home.
Speaker 1: Why use Quibi if you have access to Netflix or
Speaker 1: one of the billion other streaming services that are out
Speaker 1: there now. The Verge has an article going through other
Speaker 1: reasons why Quibi flopped. The writer Julia Alexander argues in
Speaker 1: that piece that one big reason is that none of
Speaker 1: the shows on Quibbi were particularly good, and that is
Speaker 1: a really tough problem. It is hard to convince folks
Speaker 1: to flock to your streaming service if the stuff you're
Speaker 1: streaming isn't very entertaining or compelling. Alexander actually says, quote
Speaker 1: most titles felt like jokes straight out of thirty Rock
Speaker 1: end quoteff if you don't know what that means. Thirty
Speaker 1: Rock was this sitcom, a satirical sitcom about creating a
Speaker 1: late night comedy variety show a kin to Saturday Night Live.
Speaker 1: And often the show was joking about different shows that
Speaker 1: the network was launching, and they were always ridiculous, and
Speaker 1: you know, you would never really expect to see such
Speaker 1: a show in the real world well, Quibi apparently brought
Speaker 1: those kinds of shows to the real world. Initially, Quibi
Speaker 1: offered a free subscription for a few months to early users,
Speaker 1: kind of a trial period, but once that trial period
Speaker 1: ran out, users were then given the option to subscribe
Speaker 1: to the service either for five dollars a month, which
Speaker 1: was an ad supported experience, or eight dollars a month
Speaker 1: if you wanted to be free of ads. But since,
Speaker 1: as Alexander points out, there really wasn't much compelling content
Speaker 1: on the streaming service, most folks declined the offer once
Speaker 1: it stopped being free. They're like, that's it, I'm out,
Speaker 1: there's nothing here to keep me here. Julia Alexander also
Speaker 1: argues that Quibi was doomed even if there had never
Speaker 1: been a pandemic, and it's quite possible that she was right, because,
Speaker 1: as we do know, Katzenberg and Whitman were at odds
Speaker 1: with each other. There was a lack of good content
Speaker 1: on Quibi. There were a lot of other competing services
Speaker 1: already out there, and there weren't a lot of good
Speaker 1: arguments to say, why use Quibi when there are these
Speaker 1: other alternatives? Right, And to Alexander's point, the people at
Speaker 1: Quibi never really settled on what Quibi actually was, or
Speaker 1: what it was for, or what its mission was. And
Speaker 1: because there was this lack of clarity, there was really
Speaker 1: little chance of success. Now we'll never know if Quibi
Speaker 1: would have succeeded had there not been a pandemic, or
Speaker 1: if it would have survived, but we do know that
Speaker 1: Quibi launched on April sixth, twenty twenty, and it was
Speaker 1: shut down by December of twenty twenty. It didn't even
Speaker 1: make it a full year. And considering how much money
Speaker 1: was behind that app, like, remember, this is an app
Speaker 1: that spent a billion dollars just on the content, that's
Speaker 1: not even on the engineering or anything else. Well, that's
Speaker 1: a massive flop, like big time flop in the tech world.
Speaker 1: And while we're on the subject of short form entertainment,
Speaker 1: let's talk about a pre sir to TikTok, something that
Speaker 1: kind of was forging the path that other services like
Speaker 1: TikTok or Instagram reels would follow. And I'm talking about
Speaker 1: the venerable and missed app Vine, at least it's missed
Speaker 1: by some people, including me. So in twenty twelve, Don Hoffman,
Speaker 1: Colin Kroll, and Russ Yusopov developed and launched the app Vine. Now,
Speaker 1: for those of y'all who have never experienced Vine, it
Speaker 1: was a short form video app where you could record
Speaker 1: and then post a six second video clip and it
Speaker 1: would automatically loop once it reached the end, so it
Speaker 1: would play out the six seconds or however long it was.
Speaker 1: It could be less than six seconds, and then once
Speaker 1: it was at the end, it would start over again
Speaker 1: until you scrolled to the next you know, Vine. And
Speaker 1: this made the app ideal for meme worthy content, so
Speaker 1: it was great for stuff like pranks or funny visual gags,
Speaker 1: or amazing feats of skill, like if someone was, you know,
Speaker 1: shooting a basketball from half court and sinking it perfectly
Speaker 1: nothing but net perfect Vine, right. And it also meant
Speaker 1: that folks started to get really creative. They started to
Speaker 1: look at Vine as sort of a challenging platform and
Speaker 1: they wanted to create content specifically for it, and they
Speaker 1: would create six second long stories, typically comedic. Right. You'd
Speaker 1: have a setup and then a punchline and it would
Speaker 1: all take place in six seconds, but sometimes it would
Speaker 1: include things like scene changes. This was not easy to
Speaker 1: do in Vine because there were no real editing tools
Speaker 1: to speak of. Within the app, you could record, then
Speaker 1: you could pause recording, and then you could start recording again.
Speaker 1: But you had just that six seconds to do everything,
Speaker 1: and you couldn't cut and edit clips together. So if
Speaker 1: you had like a really good take in the first
Speaker 1: three seconds of one verse and a really good conclusion
Speaker 1: in the last three seconds of another version, you couldn't
Speaker 1: pair those together. You had to get it all done
Speaker 1: in one go, which meant if you made a mistake,
Speaker 1: your options were either post the imperfect version or keep
Speaker 1: trying till you got it right. Even so, with these restrictions,
Speaker 1: folks flocked to Vine to make some pretty amazing short videos,
Speaker 1: and they ranged all over the place. I mostly think
Speaker 1: of the comedic ones, but there were other ones too.
Speaker 1: There were some that weren't, you know, comedic. They were
Speaker 1: like heartwarming or you know, they might make you weepy,
Speaker 1: depending upon the content. Vine was a phenomenon shortly after
Speaker 1: launching in June of twenty twelve, and it was enough
Speaker 1: to convince Twitter to acquire the company in October of
Speaker 1: twenty twelve for thirty million smackaroos, which is not bad
Speaker 1: for a newly launched app. A couple of years later,
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen, some successful Vine creators all banded together
Speaker 1: to move into an apartment complex which became kind of
Speaker 1: a ragtag collaborative studio in a sense, and they found
Speaker 1: further exposure on mainstream media. Like their success on Vine
Speaker 1: translated to larger platforms like classic ones on television. But
Speaker 1: even by twenty fourteen, things were starting to get rocky
Speaker 1: for Vine. One major reason is that Vine was in
Speaker 1: trouble due to hefty competition. You see, the same year
Speaker 1: that Vine launched, back in twenty twelve, Meta which at
Speaker 1: that point was just known as Facebook, acquired Instagram for
Speaker 1: a billion smack a roos. That's really a princely sum.
Speaker 1: And then in twenty thirteen, Instagram introduced the ability to
Speaker 1: post video clips of up to fifteen seconds in length,
Speaker 1: so already more than twice as long as a Vine.
Speaker 1: Instagram also already had a huge user base, which was
Speaker 1: made even larger by Facebook's integration, and it took a
Speaker 1: big old gulp of Vine's milkshake as a result. Now,
Speaker 1: this move should not have surprised anyone, because even back then,
Speaker 1: Facebook already had a reputation for scooping up companies that
Speaker 1: could otherwise distract Facebook users. Instagram was actually a great
Speaker 1: example of this. Instagram was one of those acquisitions where
Speaker 1: Facebook says, Oh, this other app is starting to get
Speaker 1: people's attention, which means their attention isn't on our website,
Speaker 1: which means we're not making money from them. I don't
Speaker 1: like that. Let's fix it. And Facebook typically had one
Speaker 1: of two ways that they would fix this problem. They
Speaker 1: would buy the company and incorporate it into Facebook's corporate structure,
Speaker 1: and thus it became a bonus. It was adding to
Speaker 1: Facebook's value. It was no longer taking away. Or they
Speaker 1: could copy it, and if they copied it, then they
Speaker 1: get undermine their competitor, and in the case of Vine,
Speaker 1: Facebook shows that option. They would just mimic the defining
Speaker 1: features of the co competitor, either in Facebook or in
Speaker 1: one of their other properties, and they would try to
Speaker 1: sap the user base back over to Facebook without having
Speaker 1: to buy the competition. That's kind of what was going
Speaker 1: on with Vine, and it worked. The money began to
Speaker 1: shift from Vine to Instagram, and that money was largely
Speaker 1: coming out of marketing departments. So brands were partnering with
Speaker 1: popular creators in an effort to manufacture some viral marketing campaigns,
Speaker 1: and these could be really cost effective, right, Like, if
Speaker 1: you're a creator, a deal might land you a ton
Speaker 1: of money, but that ton of money would still be
Speaker 1: tiny compared to what a traditional mainstream marketing campaign would
Speaker 1: cost a company. So then there you go. That's where
Speaker 1: the money was for Vine. But then Instagram was offering
Speaker 1: a longer form factor, right, more than twice as long
Speaker 1: as what a vine was, and that was far more
Speaker 1: attractive to a lot of marketers out there. Like when
Speaker 1: you're talking fifteen seconds, you're talking half of a traditional
Speaker 1: television commercial. So the shift of money and influence meant
Speaker 1: that creators would also jump ship from Vine to Instagram
Speaker 1: or in some cases to other platforms like YouTube. Now,
Speaker 1: not everyone did it, but it was really challenging to
Speaker 1: go in for that small pool of money that was
Speaker 1: still available for Vine creators. And it was also scary
Speaker 1: to port your work from one platform to another because
Speaker 1: there was no guarantee the audience would follow. Right, just
Speaker 1: because you were popular on Vine doesn't mean you're going
Speaker 1: to find the same success if you move over to
Speaker 1: Instagram or to YouTube. Some folks could do that, and
Speaker 1: maybe they would lose some of their audience, but they
Speaker 1: would have enough to be able to not lose too
Speaker 1: much momentum. For others, it would mean having to start
Speaker 1: from scratch, and there's no guarantee that you'll strike gold twice.
Speaker 1: But since that pool of money was getting smaller and
Speaker 1: smaller over at Vine, most creators didn't need a lot
Speaker 1: of convincing. They had to switch or else they weren't
Speaker 1: going to make any money anyway. So Vine went into
Speaker 1: further decline, and in twenty sixteen, Twitter announced it was
Speaker 1: going to shut down Vine, which happened in early twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: And we can still feel the influence of Vine today
Speaker 1: in the form of Instagram reels and TikTok videos, and
Speaker 1: it's possible that neither of those things would have happened
Speaker 1: without Vine. And I know lots of folks who to
Speaker 1: this day limit the loss of Vine. So farewell Vine.
Speaker 1: We hardly knew. Yee, Okay, we're gonna take another quick break.
Speaker 1: When we come back. We've got a couple more examples
Speaker 1: I really want to talk about. Okay, let's talk about
Speaker 1: some more failures. And this next one is one that
Speaker 1: I absolutely loved, even as I recognized that it was
Speaker 1: a hot mess from the get go, and it probably
Speaker 1: wasn't a practical solution for ninety nine percent of the
Speaker 1: population out there. So I'm talking about Google Wave, And honestly,
Speaker 1: I could do a full episode just about Google apps
Speaker 1: that have come and gone, and in fact, I actually
Speaker 1: have done that at least once or twice in the past.
Speaker 1: But Google Wave has a special place in my heart.
Speaker 1: So Google launched this bizarre app back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine, and it was a real time online collaborative
Speaker 1: tool and it was kind of like a Frankenstein's Monster
Speaker 1: of features. There were elements of email worked in there,
Speaker 1: Instant messaging was worked in there, online word processing, and
Speaker 1: lots more. So you could create a document in Google Wave,
Speaker 1: you could invite online collaborators and all of you could
Speaker 1: work within that document at the same time, and you
Speaker 1: would be able to see what others were doing in
Speaker 1: the document, like word by word. You could watch as
Speaker 1: they made typos and corrected and stuff. It was all
Speaker 1: going at the same time, and the app would also
Speaker 1: keep a history of all the changes made to the document.
Speaker 1: So maybe someone's going off the rails right and you're like, no, wait,
Speaker 1: we can't none of this is working for this document.
Speaker 1: You could actually wind things back to an earlier version.
Speaker 1: I only used Google Wave with one other person, who
Speaker 1: was my former co host, Chris Pillette. We used Google
Speaker 1: Wave to build out a run of show for a
Speaker 1: streaming video series we used to do way back in
Speaker 1: the day. So once a week we would do a
Speaker 1: streaming video that was kind of like a tech news
Speaker 1: program live on TV in the middle of the day
Speaker 1: Eastern time, and we would use Google Wave to organize
Speaker 1: our show and even to make changes on the fly
Speaker 1: while streaming our video content. And it was an ideal
Speaker 1: tool for that situation. The trouble was, I couldn't figure
Speaker 1: out any other use case where it would really make
Speaker 1: sense for me, just this one thing I would do
Speaker 1: once a week for my job, and for a lot
Speaker 1: of folks out there, they never found a good use
Speaker 1: for Google Wave. By the way, I really miss that
Speaker 1: streaming video show. One of the fun things that we
Speaker 1: used to have in that show is that occasionally either
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick, one of the hosts of Stuff they Don't
Speaker 1: Want You to Know, would do this, or some some
Speaker 1: times Tyler Klaig, who's now like the head of our
Speaker 1: podcast production. Both of them are still with the company.
Speaker 1: I would do a tweet of the week segment and
Speaker 1: they would hold up a little bird on a stick.
Speaker 1: They would be out of frame and they would poke
Speaker 1: a bird of stick to be in front of my
Speaker 1: face and they would make a tweet sound, which just
Speaker 1: shows how far those guys have come since we were
Speaker 1: doing the streaming news show. Anyway, features in Google Wave
Speaker 1: would eventually find their way into lots of other Google applications,
Speaker 1: but Google Wave itself was just not very long for
Speaker 1: this world. Google supported it for about a year. Then
Speaker 1: they essentially said, you know what, this isn't working for us,
Speaker 1: and they shifted it off to the Apache Software Foundation
Speaker 1: in twenty ten. Folks suggested that Google's decision was due
Speaker 1: to lots of converging reasons, ranging from just a confusing
Speaker 1: interface that was turning away new users to internal conflicts
Speaker 1: that were happening within the development team, especially at the
Speaker 1: leadership level. There were stories that there were leaders who
Speaker 1: were disagreeing on what Google Wave was even supposed to be,
Speaker 1: which meant that the development team was put in this
Speaker 1: really difficult position in the middle to try and create
Speaker 1: all things for all people, which was impossible, so they
Speaker 1: ended up creating something that was for nobody. But even
Speaker 1: the Apache Wave version is no more. The nonprofit group
Speaker 1: had Wave in an incubator status for almost a decade,
Speaker 1: but in twenty eighteen the Wave became still Waters because
Speaker 1: development ceased and Wave just never graduated out of that
Speaker 1: incubator status. Now I can't say that I would still
Speaker 1: be using Wave to this day if it were still around,
Speaker 1: but that's mostly because tech stuff is a pretty simple project.
Speaker 1: I research, write, and record all the episodes, and then
Speaker 1: super producer Tari she edits and publishes the episodes, so
Speaker 1: there is collaboration there. Tari and I do collaborate, but
Speaker 1: it's divided really neatly into a production phase and a
Speaker 1: post production phase. Perhaps if I were more actively working
Speaker 1: on shows that had multiple collaborate I would feel Waves
Speaker 1: loss more keenly. But I really liked using it, even
Speaker 1: while I recognized how weird and janky it was. Now
Speaker 1: this list could go on much much longer, but I
Speaker 1: figure I'll conclude with a rock Star like story, and
Speaker 1: that story involves a company called pay by Touch Will.
Speaker 1: Most of the apps I've talked about so far were
Speaker 1: ones that you would either use on your phone or
Speaker 1: on your computer. Pay by Touch was different, okay, it
Speaker 1: was an app that was a service, and this service
Speaker 1: would let you pay for purchases at a point of sale,
Speaker 1: primarily in places like supermarkets here in the United States,
Speaker 1: and all you had to do was swipe your finger
Speaker 1: on a fingerprint sensor at the cash register, and your
Speaker 1: biometric data would correspond to your pay by Touch account
Speaker 1: and an electronic transaction would take care of your grocery
Speaker 1: bill by deducting it from your checking account or from
Speaker 1: a credit card, and you could go on your merry
Speaker 1: way without ever having to hand over cash or write
Speaker 1: a check or use a cra card physically. Just swipe
Speaker 1: your finger, good to go. This was the future, and
Speaker 1: it was all in two thousand and two. The idea
Speaker 1: of having your financials directly tied to your own identity
Speaker 1: was one that had been around for a while but
Speaker 1: not really accomplished. So again, it was really considered to
Speaker 1: be convenient, and you could even tie your biometrics to
Speaker 1: things like a store loyalty account, so by using your fingerprint,
Speaker 1: you could then apply discounts or coupons to whatever it
Speaker 1: was you were buying, and this was coming out in
Speaker 1: two thousand and two, you know, like five years before
Speaker 1: we would get the first iPhone. So these days, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously we have lots of contactless payment solutions, mostly tied
Speaker 1: to mobile phones, But back in two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: this was really revolutionary. Now, the services did face challenges.
Speaker 1: One big one was that folks were a little anxious
Speaker 1: about having their money tied to their fingerprints. There seemed
Speaker 1: to be something invasive about that. Heck, if you're the
Speaker 1: type of person who prefers to use cash for your transactions,
Speaker 1: it absolutely goes against your references. Also, the thought of
Speaker 1: a third party company potentially having insight into your purchase
Speaker 1: history seemed creepy. But despite the slow going and low
Speaker 1: adoption rate, pay by Touch did grow and got lots
Speaker 1: of investors. It expanded its business into various supermarket chains.
Speaker 1: But then the company would ultimately declare bankruptcy in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. So what happened, Well, part of what
Speaker 1: happened was a failure to communicate to the public the
Speaker 1: benefits of this system. Just really bad marketing and education.
Speaker 1: The concept again, including things like tying biometrics to loyalty
Speaker 1: programs and stuff that just didn't really get communicated effectively
Speaker 1: in most locations, and some stores were just using the
Speaker 1: system for loyalty programs and customers would still pay for
Speaker 1: their purchases using more traditional means. So there was this
Speaker 1: element of distrust that the company was never able to overcome,
Speaker 1: possibly for good reason, because another big reason for the
Speaker 1: company's failure was in its leadership. The CEO of the
Speaker 1: company was a guy named John P. Rogers, and he
Speaker 1: had had some trouble with the law that largely went
Speaker 1: unnoticed when he was getting investments for his company. At
Speaker 1: least a couple of women had accused him of violent behavior,
Speaker 1: one saying that he had abused her, the other saying
Speaker 1: he had trashed her home. Both of them had been
Speaker 1: connected romantically with him. He had also been pulled over
Speaker 1: by police and arrested on suspicion of driving under the
Speaker 1: influence of cocaine, and apparently he was known to have
Speaker 1: had issues with drug addiction. Investigation suggested that Rogers had
Speaker 1: been rather extravagant with corporate funds, that he had spearheaded
Speaker 1: efforts to convince those with really deep pockets to invest
Speaker 1: in pay by touch that paid off in dividends. He
Speaker 1: raised around three hundred and forty million dollars, but by
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight the coffers were empty, and the
Speaker 1: investigation suggested that one reason for this was that Rogers
Speaker 1: appeared to have been dipping into corporate funds to pay
Speaker 1: for an extravagant lifestyle, complete with drug use. And when
Speaker 1: I say extravagant, I mean that the investigation suggested he
Speaker 1: was burning around eight million dollars a month, which is
Speaker 1: a lot of money. And it would turn out that
Speaker 1: Rogers had a history of failed businesses, something that no
Speaker 1: one had really noticed when Pay by Touch was just
Speaker 1: getting off the ground. He had managed to keep his
Speaker 1: history kind of out of the spotlight, and investors didn't
Speaker 1: ask any tough questions. They just were excited about this
Speaker 1: potential opportunity to completely revolutionize the way we pay for
Speaker 1: stuff at retail locations. Obviously that was key to him
Speaker 1: securing investments. Ultimately, Pay by Touch went couput. Some investors
Speaker 1: pursued civil litigation against the company and against Rogers, but
Speaker 1: he never faced criminal charges for how things went down,
Speaker 1: which is kind of wild. I wasn't there, so I
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe the evidence was all circumstantial. Maybe there
Speaker 1: was not a solid case against him, but it does
Speaker 1: seem to fall in line with the perception that the
Speaker 1: rules are different depending upon who you are and your
Speaker 1: station in life. I don't know if that's actually the
Speaker 1: case in this particular instance, but on the surface it
Speaker 1: seems to reinforce that idea anyway. That is just a
Speaker 1: quick list of some major apps that received a lot
Speaker 1: of attention but ultimately flamed out. As I said, we
Speaker 1: could go on much much longer with this list. There
Speaker 1: are tons of other examples, and I'll probably do more
Speaker 1: episodes about them in the future. And you should expect
Speaker 1: these kind of things, right because again, creating an app
Speaker 1: is seen as one of those gateways toward insane success
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley. Like it seems like everyone in Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley is behind some sort of app, and we might
Speaker 1: only hear about a small percentage of them. Some of
Speaker 1: those cases are because the app is just so incredible
Speaker 1: and useful that it's undeniable how valuable it is. In
Speaker 1: other cases, it might be that it's a peculiarity and
Speaker 1: it gets some momentary notice and then ultimately that doesn't
Speaker 1: stand the test of time. And in a few cases
Speaker 1: it may just be notorious and infamous, as I would
Speaker 1: argue the pay by touch story ultimately became once the
Speaker 1: history of Rogers became more public knowledge. Anyway, I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this episode. I hope you are all well,
Speaker 1: and I will talk to you again really soon. Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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