Speaker 1: Hey, it's care Price host of tech Stuff. We're taking
Speaker 1: a week off, but we'll have a fresh episode for
Speaker 1: you next Wednesday. You're not gonna want to miss Oz's
Speaker 1: conversation with the CEO of Colossal Biosciences. I know, I
Speaker 1: was surprised by just how close we may be to
Speaker 1: bringing back the Wooly Mammoth and what that could mean
Speaker 1: for our planet. So definitely check that out next week.
Speaker 1: In lieu of headlines today, we wanted to share an
Speaker 1: episode of tech Stuff from February twenty twenty four about
Speaker 1: some of the biggest apps to ever flop. The tech
Speaker 1: industry moves really fast. It always has, but now it
Speaker 1: feels like it's moving in hyper speed given the popularity
Speaker 1: of vibe coding programs like Cursor, Codex, and Copilot. With
Speaker 1: these tools, you no longer have to be an expert
Speaker 1: software engineer to write code, and now you have to
Speaker 1: be a designer either. Last week, Google launched Stitch, a
Speaker 1: program that can help you build web or mobile app
Speaker 1: front ends. But just because you can, it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you should. In the episode you're about to hear, Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland reminds us that not every pitch is a promise,
Speaker 1: and sometimes the most compelling apps can fail. Take a listen.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 2: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 2: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts. And how the
Speaker 2: tech are yet? So, once upon a time, we used
Speaker 2: to have these things called programs. And I say that
Speaker 2: because now we don't call programs programs anymore. We typically
Speaker 2: call programs apps. I think that really started to become
Speaker 2: a thing upon the ascent of the consumer smartphone, which
Speaker 2: was sparked by Apple, which was then cranked up by Android,
Speaker 2: and that we really had the era of the app.
Speaker 2: At that point. We used to, like I said, call
Speaker 2: them programs. Now they are applications, whether it's for a
Speaker 2: phone or a computer. I guess app stores sounds better
Speaker 2: than program emporium anyway. For thousands of entrepreneurs, the dream
Speaker 2: is to build an app and to become rich beyond
Speaker 2: your wildest dreams. Right, You design an app and then
Speaker 2: the money rolls in. Maybe it's because some bigger fish
Speaker 2: out there, like some Google or Apple or Meta, decides
Speaker 2: that you're just too good to be left unacquired. And
Speaker 2: then they spend a bucket load of cash on you,
Speaker 2: hopefully ten times more than what you're actually worth. Or
Speaker 2: maybe you actually figure out how to be profitable all
Speaker 2: on your own, you actually have a business plan and
Speaker 2: you have a way of generating revenue. You would be
Speaker 2: the rare Silicon Valley project that actually works as a
Speaker 2: business business on its own. That again is the dream.
Speaker 2: But dreams don't always come true, and sometimes even apps
Speaker 2: that seem to be strapped to a rocket for success
Speaker 2: end up blowing up and going up in flames. So
Speaker 2: this episode is about apps that fall into that category,
Speaker 2: apps that at one time seemed like they were a
Speaker 2: sure thing, only they flamed out down the line. One
Speaker 2: of the apps I originally planned to put on this
Speaker 2: list was four square, but as it turns out, that
Speaker 2: app and the company behind it is still chugging along,
Speaker 2: just in a slightly different role than it was before.
Speaker 2: See I remember when four square launched and folks would
Speaker 2: use it to check in to locations that they were
Speaker 2: visiting in the real world. So some places would even
Speaker 2: start to offer special discounsel right, like twenty percent off
Speaker 2: your first drink if you check into the bar via
Speaker 2: four square. Because it was seen as a kind of
Speaker 2: viral marketing. Other folks were worried about the privacy issues
Speaker 2: of this kind of behavior. In fact, some folks created
Speaker 2: a website called Please rob Me, and this site satirically
Speaker 2: would scrape data off Twitter for four square check in notifications,
Speaker 2: so please rob Me would then list people who were
Speaker 2: saying they were not currently at home. Now, the whole
Speaker 2: point wasn't to actually inspire a wave of burglaries, but
Speaker 2: rather show why it's dangerous to broadcast your location to
Speaker 2: the world in general. Then it might not be a
Speaker 2: good idea, and maybe people should think harder about their
Speaker 2: personal privacy. In twenty fourteen, for Square actually changed dramatically.
Speaker 2: The company launched a companion app called Swarm Now. This
Speaker 2: app contained all the social networking features that for Square
Speaker 2: used to have, so all the check in stuff, all
Speaker 2: the geolocation stuff that was kind of seen as the
Speaker 2: critical element of four square and the one that you
Speaker 2: should be worried about that went to Swarm. For Square
Speaker 2: meanwhile became four Square City Guide, which became a discovery
Speaker 2: and recommendation app, and it would help you figure out
Speaker 2: places that maybe you should visit based upon your past experiences, right,
Speaker 2: It would say, Okay, I see that you're in downtown
Speaker 2: New York, and because of the places that you used
Speaker 2: to go to in your hometown, here are some places
Speaker 2: we think you should probably check out because you'll really
Speaker 2: like them. You didn't have to use both of the
Speaker 2: apps if you didn't want to, but they did compliment
Speaker 2: one another, So if you used Swarm, four Square would
Speaker 2: tap into that check in data to help inform what
Speaker 2: recommendations it should give you. Those apps are still available today.
Speaker 2: Like I just thought that four Square had come and
Speaker 2: gone because I haven't personally used it in a decade,
Speaker 2: But the fact is it's still a thing. One really
Speaker 2: interesting thing to me is that forour Square's business largely
Speaker 2: involves licensing its technology to other companies, which include Uber, Airbnb, Snapchat,
Speaker 2: and lots more. The check in feature that four Square
Speaker 2: developed powers numerous other apps. So while our perception was
Speaker 2: that four Square was a relic of the past, that's
Speaker 2: just not true. That's totally my misconception there, and again
Speaker 2: it's because I haven't really paid attention to four Square
Speaker 2: in a decade. But it is interesting to me that
Speaker 2: you know, they found success in a different way than
Speaker 2: what they set out to do. I still don't have
Speaker 2: any real desire to read download either four Square or Swarm. However,
Speaker 2: on a related note, there is also the story of
Speaker 2: yik Yak. Now, this app actually did flame out, but
Speaker 2: then it was resurrected again just a few years ago,
Speaker 2: so for those of y'all who do not know the story,
Speaker 2: A couple of guys launched an anonymous location based messaging
Speaker 2: platform back in twenty thirteen, and the way it worked
Speaker 2: was that you would open the app and you would
Speaker 2: connect via putting in your phone number. This would end
Speaker 2: up allowing you to post to the platform, but you
Speaker 2: would only be able to read messages that had been
Speaker 2: posted by people within a certain distance of your physical location,
Speaker 2: such as within a five mile radius, and you could
Speaker 2: post a message anonymously, and again only people who were
Speaker 2: in a five mile radius of your location would be
Speaker 2: able to read your message, So as you would travel around,
Speaker 2: you would see new messages, while ones that were now
Speaker 2: out of physical range would disappear from view. The focus
Speaker 2: on geolocation, coupled with anonymity, made the app extremely popular
Speaker 2: with school campuses, and Yakyak largely catered to that audience.
Speaker 2: This also meant there was a lot of abuse. There
Speaker 2: was no accountability, right, There was no connection to a
Speaker 2: specific person, so people could post the platform and they
Speaker 2: could bully other folks or worse. So there were these
Speaker 2: stories popping up all around the United States about how
Speaker 2: the app was bringing out the absolute worst in people
Speaker 2: and endangering folks right Like, let's say that you belonged
Speaker 2: to a minority population in a particular campus university of
Speaker 2: Even if someone's not specifically calling you out, it might
Speaker 2: be easy to figure out who people are talking about,
Speaker 2: which could definitely hurt your mental health, or they could
Speaker 2: even be calling for more extreme acts that could endanger
Speaker 2: your physical health. So pressure built against the company, and
Speaker 2: eventually yaikyak cave to it. So in twenty fifteen, Yayik
Speaker 2: made a massive change and required users to register a
Speaker 2: handle with the site. So all messages now would be
Speaker 2: attributed to a handle. They wouldn't be fully anonymous. Now,
Speaker 2: it was still a handle, not your name, so it
Speaker 2: wasn't exactly the same thing as signing your name to
Speaker 2: your own words, but it was a lot closer than
Speaker 2: what had come before. Hardcore users hated this change, and
Speaker 2: eventually yak Yak kind of backed off a bit and
Speaker 2: made it an optional feature, but by then the user
Speaker 2: base had been alienated and had dwindled, and in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: the company announced that the app was shutting down due
Speaker 2: to that dwindling user base. They actually did a sell
Speaker 2: off Square, the company that is behind online payment systems.
Speaker 2: They purchased essentially the IP but really more like they
Speaker 2: purchased the engineering talent of YikYak and brought them on board,
Speaker 2: and it was for reportedly like just a million dollars,
Speaker 2: which is still a lot of money. Don't get me wrong.
Speaker 2: A million dollars is a lot, but it's nothing compared
Speaker 2: to what yik yak was valued at a few years earlier.
Speaker 2: And so yak yak effectively stopped being a thing in
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, and it stayed in the grave for four years.
Speaker 2: But then in February twenty twenty one, a group of
Speaker 2: new owners who remained mysterious and unnamed. Like everywhere I
Speaker 2: look to find out who the heck owned yaikyak between
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one and twenty twenty three, didn't have information
Speaker 2: about that anyway, They purchased yak Yak and announced plans
Speaker 2: to relaunch, and sure enough, late in the summer of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, the app came back. Now two years later,
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three, another company called side Chat scooped
Speaker 2: up yik Yak now side chats. Shtick was essentially the
Speaker 2: same as yak yak. Sidechat had an anonymous posting platform
Speaker 2: that largely was targeting college campuses. Side Chat was not
Speaker 2: as popular as yak yak. A lot of yak yak
Speaker 2: users felt that Sidechat's user interface was inferior, and initially
Speaker 2: yak yak users were getting messages where they were being
Speaker 2: urged to migrate to side chat and they hated it.
Speaker 2: Eventually that would change, where yik yak would remain a thing,
Speaker 2: but effectively transformed into side chat. You know, its interface
Speaker 2: became more of side Chat's interface. By the way, I
Speaker 2: based this all off of blog posts and articles and
Speaker 2: message boards because I wasn't onn yik yak at the time,
Speaker 2: so I had no idea of what was going on.
Speaker 2: But while the initial yik yak was popular with campuses,
Speaker 2: this new version specifically focused on university students, like almost
Speaker 2: like exclusively, as opposed to it being a community based
Speaker 2: thing or a regional based thing. It was specifically a
Speaker 2: campus based thing, and occasionally it sounds like it would
Speaker 2: even make mistakes and accidentally assign someone to a university
Speaker 2: that was not the one they actually went to, which
Speaker 2: could be really hairy, right because if I were to
Speaker 2: join Yak Yak and it suggested I was a student
Speaker 2: at Georgia Tech, that's fighting words because I attended the
Speaker 2: University of Georgia. Now that probably means nothing to most
Speaker 2: of you, but just know those two schools have had
Speaker 2: a long standing rivalry that goes between being you know,
Speaker 2: good natured ribbing and genuine, deep seated loathing. So if
Speaker 2: you had one student misidentified as going to the other school,
Speaker 2: that could be fighting words. Now, I should say that
Speaker 2: Yak Yak currently is only back for iOS users, as
Speaker 2: I record the podcast. Now, the relaunch did at one
Speaker 2: point include Android, and apparently it was only active for
Speaker 2: a very short while before in the spring of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, the company said that they were shutting down
Speaker 2: Android support in order to focus on building out features
Speaker 2: for the iOS version. Now, again, I can't check this
Speaker 2: app out. I'm an Android user. Plus I'm not a
Speaker 2: college student, so I have to rely on articles and
Speaker 2: Reddit posts to read up on it, and it sounds
Speaker 2: to me that in the past you could register for
Speaker 2: yik yik just with your phone number, but now since
Speaker 2: the side chat acquisition, you have to supply a university
Speaker 2: email address to create an account university or college email address,
Speaker 2: and if you don't have one of those, you can't
Speaker 2: have an account, and that has upset a lot of
Speaker 2: users because it meant that they're one. If they're not
Speaker 2: in college, they can't be part of this anymore. Though honestly,
Speaker 2: I don't see why you would necessarily want to be,
Speaker 2: but then that's probably because I feel a lot of
Speaker 2: empathy for the folks who were bullied, but it all
Speaker 2: so is a reason. One reason they don't want to
Speaker 2: do it anymore is because their actual identity would be
Speaker 2: associated with their account, maybe not directly, like the actual
Speaker 2: posts would be anonymous, but the site would know who
Speaker 2: you were because you would have an email address tied
Speaker 2: to your identity to register for the site. Arguably, you
Speaker 2: could say the same thing is true because for the
Speaker 2: old version, because you had to supply a phone number,
Speaker 2: So unless you're buying burner numbers just for yekiyak, it
Speaker 2: would be pretty easy to figure out who you were.
Speaker 2: But it also means that if you're not a college student,
Speaker 2: or you're not on faculty or staff, then you're completely
Speaker 2: out of the loop. There's a lot of competition in
Speaker 2: the anonymous message board space these days. Seems to me
Speaker 2: that a lot of the companies behind these apps typically
Speaker 2: will reach a level of success that brings more attention
Speaker 2: to their activities and perhaps their flaws, let's say, and
Speaker 2: then they feel pressure to change things in order to
Speaker 2: make their apps less prone to abuse because now people
Speaker 2: are paying attention to them and calling them out. And
Speaker 2: then subsequently, after making these changes, the apps decline in
Speaker 2: popularity because it turns out the user base the stuff
Speaker 2: that they really liked happened to be the same stuff
Speaker 2: that also facilitated abuse. Not to say that users all
Speaker 2: enjoyed and piling on folks and abusing people, but that
Speaker 2: the same features that made it easy to abuse folks
Speaker 2: were also the features that people just really liked. That
Speaker 2: kind of seems to be the life cycle for these
Speaker 2: kinds of applications. They launch, they go viral, they get
Speaker 2: really big folks notice that sometimes really awful people are
Speaker 2: using that app to do really awful things. The app
Speaker 2: then ends up making changes in an effort to not
Speaker 2: be held accountable for these things, and then it alienates
Speaker 2: the user base, both the good and the bad users.
Speaker 2: It then declines in popularity, then it fades into memory,
Speaker 2: your rents and you repeat. Now, I can't say for
Speaker 2: certain that's what's happening with ya Yak. There are a
Speaker 2: lot of users who say that it's not as good
Speaker 2: as it used to be, that they don't see the appeal.
Speaker 2: The fact that it doesn't it's not available for Android
Speaker 2: users is a huge thing. It means that a large
Speaker 2: amount of the population can't even access it. Maybe the
Speaker 2: company will manage to relaunch for Android and regain some momentum,
Speaker 2: or maybe it's on the path back toward obsolescence. Okay,
Speaker 2: we've got more failed apps to talk about. Before we
Speaker 2: do that, let's stop for a moment and thank our sponsors. Okay,
Speaker 2: we're back. So no list of failed apps would be
Speaker 2: complete without Quibbi. Holy cats, this was a massive whiff
Speaker 2: with a whole lot of money and some really heavy
Speaker 2: hitters in both the entertainment and tech industries at the wheel,
Speaker 2: and it's still crashed and burned. It was the brainchild
Speaker 2: of Jeffrey Katzenberg, who had forged a legendary career in Hollywood.
Speaker 2: You know, he became really well known at Disney and
Speaker 2: then created dream Works. And Quibi was hoping to tap
Speaker 2: into that same magic that Hollywood success and also the
Speaker 2: same magic that TikTok moosts. That was the key was
Speaker 2: can we make something inspired by the success of TikTok,
Speaker 2: and that was namely short form content, And in the
Speaker 2: case of Quibi, the short form would be videos that
Speaker 2: would last ten minutes or less. However, unlike TikTok, Quibi
Speaker 2: productions would have some serious money behind them. We're talking
Speaker 2: about really high production values, stuff that you would see
Speaker 2: that would be akin to a television or film studio.
Speaker 2: And if TikTok could knock him dead with diy shorts
Speaker 2: created by just any Yahoo out there, surely an entertainment
Speaker 2: app with serious Hollywood credentials could make a killing right now.
Speaker 2: On the tech side, former HP CEO Meg Whitman was
Speaker 2: on board, and Whitman and Katzenberg brainstormed the structure and
Speaker 2: execution of Quibbi. They also are argued a lot Witman
Speaker 2: would later essentially say that Katzenberg would undermine her decisions
Speaker 2: and was micromanaging, and there seemed to be a lot
Speaker 2: of bad blood at the top levels at Quibbi, which
Speaker 2: was just one of many problems. But the company signed
Speaker 2: on various actors, directors, writers, and associated people to create
Speaker 2: content for the site. They poured approximately a billion dollars
Speaker 2: to that effect. Some of the content created consisted of
Speaker 2: standalone short videos right like it was just a one
Speaker 2: and done ten minutes or less video, but some were
Speaker 2: actually serialized. They were longer pieces and divided up into
Speaker 2: ten minute long chapters. This in turn was a really
Speaker 2: tricky because, like, if you're gonna divide a movie into
Speaker 2: ten minute long chapters a way to entice people to
Speaker 2: continue after a chapter is over, and in my opinion,
Speaker 2: it becomes like a Dan Brown novel where every chapter
Speaker 2: ends in a cliffhanger to try and incentivize people to
Speaker 2: go to the next chapter. And personally, I find that
Speaker 2: kind of narrative exhausting and not very satisfying. I am
Speaker 2: not a Dan Brown fan, nothing against him, I just
Speaker 2: it doesn't appeal to me to end every few pages
Speaker 2: with another cliffhanger. Anyway, they also made a really odd
Speaker 2: decision when it came to framing, because the whole point
Speaker 2: of Quibi was that it was intended to be consumed
Speaker 2: on smartphones. And as I'm sure you're aware, we're used
Speaker 2: to watching television programs in landscape format, that is, the
Speaker 2: picture is wider than it is tall, right, But for phones,
Speaker 2: we often hold phones in portrait mode, where it's taller
Speaker 2: than it is wide. Otherwise you have to turn the
Speaker 2: dang phone on its side, and there's a chance you'll
Speaker 2: end up watching a tiny video with huge black bars
Speaker 2: above and below it. So one choice Quibi's founders made
Speaker 2: is that all content should be viewable in full screen,
Speaker 2: whether the user was holding their phone in portrait or
Speaker 2: landscape mode, and that you could switch back and forth.
Speaker 2: So you could hold it in portrait mode and then say,
Speaker 2: you know what, I don't want to see this in
Speaker 2: wide screen, turn your phone landscape. It would switch, and
Speaker 2: in both versions the image would completely fill the screen
Speaker 2: of your phone. That's a big deal, even though it
Speaker 2: might not sound like it, because if you're a director
Speaker 2: or cinematographer, part of your job is making sure all
Speaker 2: the important information for the viewer is available within the frame.
Speaker 2: Obviously that's going to be different if the finished product
Speaker 2: is to be viewed in portrait mode rather than landscape.
Speaker 2: You need to figure out how are you going to
Speaker 2: frame the image so that it works in both formats,
Speaker 2: or you might have to use things like pan and
Speaker 2: scan or switching view to get the information across. Right, Like,
Speaker 2: you might have a scene where you have two characters,
Speaker 2: one far left and one far right on the screen.
Speaker 2: They're talking to each other, and then landscape mode, that's fine,
Speaker 2: you can see it, but you switch into portrait mode
Speaker 2: and now there's not enough room on the screen to
Speaker 2: get both characters in frame. What do you do? Do
Speaker 2: you have an empty frame where both characters are off screen,
Speaker 2: one off screen left and one off screen right. Do
Speaker 2: you just focus on one character and then you switch
Speaker 2: whenever the dialogue changes so that you get a different
Speaker 2: view when character one speaks versus character two? Do you
Speaker 2: pan back and forth? Which is that swimmy effect you
Speaker 2: often get if you watch like old old home video,
Speaker 2: not home video, but you know videos that were made
Speaker 2: for home video use, you will often get that scanning feature.
Speaker 2: Because televisions were in the old four to three aspect
Speaker 2: ratio and they couldn't incorporate a wide screen picture unless
Speaker 2: they did the bars at the top or bottom or both,
Speaker 2: and a lot of people hated them. They wanted to
Speaker 2: have the image take up the whole screen. So you
Speaker 2: end up having this digital panning, which I absolutely detested. Well,
Speaker 2: you have to make those decisions, or do you end
Speaker 2: up blocking all of your shots so that all the
Speaker 2: relevant information can be seen in one view, even if
Speaker 2: it's portrait, in which case you might just have a
Speaker 2: lot of unused space, like negative space in the frame
Speaker 2: if you're watching it widescreen, or maybe you shoot with
Speaker 2: multiple cameras so that way, one camera is taking the
Speaker 2: landscape version of the shot, one camera's taking the portrait
Speaker 2: version of the shot. Like, there's a lot of complex
Speaker 2: things you have to think of behind the scenes from
Speaker 2: a content creator standpoint, beyond just the technology of if
Speaker 2: you turn your phone, you want the frame to be
Speaker 2: completely full. So this was a real issue that goes
Speaker 2: a technical challenge, and they did not have enough time
Speaker 2: to figure out how to deal with that in a
Speaker 2: way that was satisfying anyway. That whole design decision became
Speaker 2: a big hurdle. But another hurdle was that Quibi was
Speaker 2: meant to be mobile only by design. It was not
Speaker 2: intended to be an app that you would access on
Speaker 2: a computer or smart television or streaming box or anything
Speaker 2: like that, and something that was outside the control and
Speaker 2: not predicted by the folks at Quibi when they were
Speaker 2: putting together their business plan was the COVID nineteen pandemic,
Speaker 2: which took a lot of us totally by surprise. So
Speaker 2: Quibi was really intended to be used for a world
Speaker 2: that was on the go, right. The use case was
Speaker 2: that you would be out in the real world and
Speaker 2: you would have time to kill. Maybe you're waiting in
Speaker 2: line of the bank, or maybe you're sitting on a
Speaker 2: subway and you're on your way to work and you
Speaker 2: just need something to distract you from the tedium of life. Boom.
Speaker 2: Quibi is there to save the day. High production value,
Speaker 2: scripted entertainment or you know, like game shows or whatever,
Speaker 2: but still high production value, not the type of stuff
Speaker 2: you would see typically on a site like TikTok. Except
Speaker 2: the app launch just as the world was shutting down
Speaker 2: and going into quarantine in twenty twenty, so the use
Speaker 2: case for the app was no longer relevant at least
Speaker 2: not for the several first months of the app's existence.
Speaker 2: Plenty of critics said that even without the pandemic, Quibi
Speaker 2: would have just totally failed. But certainly the lockdown was
Speaker 2: a massive blow to the service when there were plenty
Speaker 2: of other options folks could access when they were at home.
Speaker 2: Why use Quibi if you have access to Netflix or
Speaker 2: one of the billion other streaming services that are out
Speaker 2: there now. The Verge has an article going through other
Speaker 2: reasons why Quibi flopped. The writer Julia Alexander argues in
Speaker 2: that piece that one big reason is that none of
Speaker 2: the shows on Quibi were particularly good, and that is
Speaker 2: a really tough problem. It is hard to convince folks
Speaker 2: to flock to your streaming service if the stuff you're
Speaker 2: streaming isn't very entertaining or compelling. Alexander actually says, quote
Speaker 2: most titles felt like jokes straight out of thirty Rock
Speaker 2: end quoteff if you don't know what that means. Thirty
Speaker 2: Rock was this sitcom, a satirical sitcom about creating a
Speaker 2: late night comedy variety show akin to Saturday Night Live,
Speaker 2: and often the show was joking about different shows that
Speaker 2: the network was launching, and they were always ridiculous, and
Speaker 2: you know, you would never really expect to see such
Speaker 2: a show in the real world. Well, Quibi apparently brought
Speaker 2: those kinds of shows to the real world. Initially, Quibi
Speaker 2: offered a free subscription for a few months to early users,
Speaker 2: kind of a trial period, but once that trial period
Speaker 2: ran out, users were then given the option to subscribe
Speaker 2: to the service either for five dollars a month, which
Speaker 2: was an ad supported experience, or eight dollars a month
Speaker 2: if you wanted to be free of ads. But since,
Speaker 2: as Alexander points out, there really wasn't much compelling content
Speaker 2: on the streaming service, most folks declined the offer once
Speaker 2: it stopped being They were like, that's it, I'm out,
Speaker 2: there's nothing here to keep me here. Julia Alexander also
Speaker 2: argues that Quibi was doomed even if there had never
Speaker 2: been a pandemic, and it's quite possible that she was right, because,
Speaker 2: as we do know, Katzenberg and Whitman were at odds
Speaker 2: with each other. There was a lack of good content
Speaker 2: on Quibi, there were a lot of other competing services
Speaker 2: already out there, and there weren't a lot of good
Speaker 2: arguments to say why use Quibi when there are these
Speaker 2: other alternatives, right, And to Alexander's point, the people at
Speaker 2: Quibi never really settled on what Quibi actually was, or
Speaker 2: what it was for, or what its mission was. And
Speaker 2: because there was this lack of clarity, there was really
Speaker 2: little chance of success. Now we'll never know if Quibi
Speaker 2: would have succeeded had there not been a pandemic, or
Speaker 2: if it would have survived, but we do know that
Speaker 2: Quibi launched on April sixth, twenty twenty, and it was
Speaker 2: shut down by December of twenty. It didn't even make
Speaker 2: it a full year. And considering how much money was
Speaker 2: behind that app, like, remember, this is an app that
Speaker 2: spent a billion dollars just on the content, that's not
Speaker 2: even on the engineering or anything else. Well, that's a
Speaker 2: massive flop, like big time flop in the tech world.
Speaker 2: And while we're on the subject of short form entertainment,
Speaker 2: let's talk about a precursor to TikTok, something that kind
Speaker 2: of was forging the path that other services like TikTok
Speaker 2: or Instagram reels would follow. And I'm talking about the
Speaker 2: venerable and missed app Vine, at least it's missed by
Speaker 2: some people, including me. So in twenty twelve, Don Hoffman,
Speaker 2: Colin Krol, and russ Yusupov developed and launched the app Vine. Now,
Speaker 2: for those of y all who have never experienced Vine,
Speaker 2: it was a short form video app where you could
Speaker 2: record and then post a six second video clip and
Speaker 2: it would automatically loop once it reached the end, so
Speaker 2: it would play out the six seconds or however long
Speaker 2: it was. It could be less than six seconds, and
Speaker 2: then once it was at the end, it would start
Speaker 2: over again until you scrolled to the next you know, Vine.
Speaker 2: And this made the app ideal for meme worthy content,
Speaker 2: so it was great for stuff like pranks or funny
Speaker 2: visual gags or amazing feats of skill, like if someone was,
Speaker 2: you know, shooting a basketball from half court and sinking
Speaker 2: it perfectly, nothing but net perfect Vine, right. And it
Speaker 2: also meant that folks started to get really creative. They
Speaker 2: started to look at Vine as sort of a challenging
Speaker 2: platform and they wanted to create content specifically for it,
Speaker 2: and they would create six second long stories, typically comedic. Right.
Speaker 2: You'd have a setup and then a punchline and it
Speaker 2: would all take place in six seconds, but sometimes it
Speaker 2: would include things like scene changes. This was not easy
Speaker 2: to do in Vine because there were no real editing
Speaker 2: tools to speak of within the app. You could record,
Speaker 2: then you could pause recording, and then you could start
Speaker 2: recording again. But you had just that six seconds to
Speaker 2: do everything, and you couldn't cut and edit clips together.
Speaker 2: So if you had like a really good take in
Speaker 2: the first three seconds of one version and a really
Speaker 2: good conclusion in the last three seconds of another version,
Speaker 2: you couldn't pair those together. You had to get it
Speaker 2: all done in one go, which meant if you made
Speaker 2: a mistake, your options were either post the imperfect version
Speaker 2: or keep trying till you got it right. Even so,
Speaker 2: with these restrictions, folks flocked to Vine to make some
Speaker 2: pretty amazing short videos, and they ranged all over the place.
Speaker 2: I mostly think of the comedic ones, but there were
Speaker 2: other ones too. There were some that weren't, you know, comedic.
Speaker 2: They were like heartwarming or you know, they might make
Speaker 2: you weepy, depending upon the content. Vine was a phenomenon
Speaker 2: shortly after launching in of twenty twelve, and it was
Speaker 2: enough to convince Twitter to acquire the company in October
Speaker 2: of twenty twelve for thirty million smackaroos, which is not
Speaker 2: bad for a newly launched app. A couple of years later,
Speaker 2: in twenty fourteen, some successful Vine creators all banded together
Speaker 2: to move into an apartment complex which became kind of
Speaker 2: a ragtag collaborative studio in a sense, and they found
Speaker 2: further exposure on mainstream media. Like their success on Vine
Speaker 2: translated to larger platforms like classic ones on television. But
Speaker 2: even by twenty fourteen, things were starting to get rocky
Speaker 2: for Vine. One major reason is that Vine was in
Speaker 2: trouble due to hefty competition. You see, the same year
Speaker 2: that Vine launched, back in twenty twelve, Meta which at
Speaker 2: that point was just known as Facebook, acquired Instagram for
Speaker 2: a billion smack aarreous that's really a princely sum. And
Speaker 2: then in twenty thirteen, Instagram introduced the ability to post
Speaker 2: video clips of up to fifteen seconds in length, so
Speaker 2: already more than twice as long as a Vine. Instagram
Speaker 2: also already had a huge user base, which was made
Speaker 2: even larger by Facebook's integration, and it took a big
Speaker 2: old gulp of Vine's milkshake as a result. Now, this
Speaker 2: move should not have surprised anyone, because even Back then,
Speaker 2: Facebook already had a reputation for scooping up companies that
Speaker 2: could otherwise distract Facebook users. Instagram was actually a great
Speaker 2: example of this. Instagram was one of those acquisitions where
Speaker 2: Facebook says, Oh, this other app is starting to get
Speaker 2: people's attention, which means their attention isn't on our website,
Speaker 2: which means we're not making money from them. I don't
Speaker 2: like that. Let's fix it. And Facebook typically had one
Speaker 2: of two ways that they would fix this problem. They
Speaker 2: would buy the company and incorporate it into Facebook's corporate structure,
Speaker 2: and thus it became a bonus. It was added to
Speaker 2: Facebook's value, it was no longer taking away. Or they
Speaker 2: could copy it, and if they copied it, then they
Speaker 2: could undermine their competitor. And in the case of Vine,
Speaker 2: Facebook shows that option. They would just mimic the defining
Speaker 2: features of the competitor, either in Facebook or in one
Speaker 2: of their other properties, and they would try to sap
Speaker 2: the user base back over to Facebook without having to
Speaker 2: buy the competition. That's kind of what was going on
Speaker 2: with Vine, and it worked. The money began to shift
Speaker 2: from Vine to Instagram, and that money was largely coming
Speaker 2: out of marketing departments. So brands were partnering with popular
Speaker 2: creators in an effort to manufacture some viral marketing campaigns.
Speaker 2: And these could be really cost effective, right, Like, if
Speaker 2: you're a creator, a deal might land you a ton
Speaker 2: of money, but that ton of money would still be
Speaker 2: tied up compared to what a traditional mainstream marketing campaign
Speaker 2: would cost a company. So then there you go. That's
Speaker 2: where the money was for Vine. But then Instagram was
Speaker 2: offering a longer form factor, right, more than twice as
Speaker 2: long as what a Vine was, and that was far
Speaker 2: more attractive to a lot of marketers out there. Like
Speaker 2: when you're talking fifteen seconds, you're talking half of a
Speaker 2: traditional television commercial. So the shift of money and influence
Speaker 2: meant that creators would also jump ship from Vine to
Speaker 2: Instagram or in some cases to other platforms like YouTube. Now,
Speaker 2: not everyone did it, but it was really challenging to
Speaker 2: go in for that small pool of money that was
Speaker 2: still available for Vine creators. And it was also scary
Speaker 2: to port your work from one platform to another because
Speaker 2: there was no guarantee the audience would follow. Right. Just
Speaker 2: because you were popular on Vine doesn't mean you're going
Speaker 2: to find the same success If you move over to
Speaker 2: Instagram or to YouTube. You know, some folks could do that,
Speaker 2: and maybe they would lose some of their audience, but
Speaker 2: they would have enough to be able to not lose
Speaker 2: too much momentum. For others, it would mean having to
Speaker 2: start from scratch, and there's no guarantee that you'll strike
Speaker 2: gold twice. But since that pool of money was getting
Speaker 2: smaller and smaller over at Vine, most creators didn't need
Speaker 2: a lot of convincing they had to switch or else
Speaker 2: they weren't going to make any money anyway. So Vine
Speaker 2: went into further decline, and in twenty sixteen, Twitter announced
Speaker 2: it was going to shut down Vine, which happened in
Speaker 2: early twenty seventeen. And we can still feel the influence
Speaker 2: of Vine today in the form of Instagram reels and
Speaker 2: TikTok videos, and it's possible that neither of those things
Speaker 2: would have happened without Vine. And I know lots of
Speaker 2: folks who to this day lament the loss of Vine.
Speaker 2: So farewell Vine. We hardly knew Yee, Okay, we're going
Speaker 2: to take another quick break. When we come back, We've
Speaker 2: got a couple more examples I really want to talk about, Okay,
Speaker 2: let's talk about some more fails, and this next one
Speaker 2: is one that I absolutely loved, even as I recognized
Speaker 2: that it was a hot mess from the get go
Speaker 2: and it probably wasn't a practical solution for ninety nine
Speaker 2: percent of the population out there. So I'm talking about
Speaker 2: Google Wave, And honestly, I could do a full episode
Speaker 2: just about Google apps that have come and gone, and
Speaker 2: in fact, I actually have done that at least once
Speaker 2: or twice in the past. But Google Wave has a
Speaker 2: special place in my heart. So Google launched this bizarre
Speaker 2: app back in two thousand and nine, and it was
Speaker 2: a real time online collaborative tool, and it was kind
Speaker 2: of like a Frankenstein's Monster of features. There were elements
Speaker 2: of email worked in there, Instant messaging was worked in there,
Speaker 2: online word processing, and lots more.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: You could create a document in Google Wave, you could
Speaker 2: invite online collaborators and all of you could work within
Speaker 2: that document at the same time, and you would be
Speaker 2: able to see what others were doing in the document,
Speaker 2: like word by word. You could watch as they made
Speaker 2: typos and corrected and stuff. It was all going at
Speaker 2: the same time, and the app would also keep a
Speaker 2: history of all the changes made to the document. So
Speaker 2: maybe someone's going off the rails right and you're like, no, wait,
Speaker 2: we can't none of this is working for this document.
Speaker 2: You could actually wind things back to an earlier version. Now.
Speaker 2: I only used Google Wave with one other person, who
Speaker 2: was my former co host, Chris Pillette. We used Google
Speaker 2: Wave to build out a run of show for a
Speaker 2: streaming video series we used to do way back in
Speaker 2: the day. So once a week we would do a
Speaker 2: streaming video that was kind of like a tech news
Speaker 2: program live on TV in the middle of the day
Speaker 2: Eastern time, and we would use Google Wave to organize
Speaker 2: our show and even to make changes on the fly
Speaker 2: while streaming our video content. And it was an ideal
Speaker 2: tool for that situation. The trouble was, I couldn't figure
Speaker 2: out any other use case where it would really makes
Speaker 2: sense for me, just this one thing I would do
Speaker 2: once a week for my job. For a lot of
Speaker 2: folks out there, they never found a good use for
Speaker 2: Google Wave. By the way, I really miss that streaming
Speaker 2: video show. One of the fun things that we used
Speaker 2: to have and that show is that occasionally either Matt Frederick,
Speaker 2: one of the hosts of Stuff they don't want you
Speaker 2: to know would do this, or sometimes Tyler Klaig, who's
Speaker 2: now like the head of our podcast production. Both of
Speaker 2: them are still with the company. I would do a
Speaker 2: tweet of the week segment and they would hold up
Speaker 2: a little bird on a stick. They would be out
Speaker 2: of frame and they would poke a bird out stick
Speaker 2: to be in front of my face and they would
Speaker 2: make a tweet sound, which just shows how far those
Speaker 2: guys have come since we were doing the streaming news show. Anyway,
Speaker 2: features in Google Wave would eventually find their way into
Speaker 2: lots of other Google applications, but Google Wave itself was
Speaker 2: just not very long for this world. Google supported it
Speaker 2: for about a year. Then they essentially he said, you
Speaker 2: know what, this isn't working for us, and they shifted
Speaker 2: it off to the Apache Software Foundation in twenty ten.
Speaker 2: Folks suggested that Google's decision was due to lots of
Speaker 2: converging reasons, ranging from just a confusing interface that was
Speaker 2: turning away new users to internal conflicts that were happening
Speaker 2: within the development team, especially at the leadership level. There
Speaker 2: were stories that there were leaders who were disagreeing on
Speaker 2: what Google Wave was even supposed to be, which meant
Speaker 2: that the development team was put in this really difficult
Speaker 2: position in the middle to try and create all things
Speaker 2: for all people, which was impossible, so they ended up
Speaker 2: creating something that was for nobody. But even the Apache
Speaker 2: Wave version is no more. The nonprofit group had Wave
Speaker 2: in an incubator status for almost a decade, but in
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen the Wave became still waters because development ceased
Speaker 2: and Wave just never graduated out of that incubator status. Now,
Speaker 2: I can't say that I would still be using Wave
Speaker 2: to this day if it were still around, but that's
Speaker 2: mostly because tech stuff is a pretty simple project. I research, write,
Speaker 2: and record all the episodes, and then super producer Tari
Speaker 2: she edits and publishes the episodes, so there is collaboration there.
Speaker 2: Tari and I do collaborate, but it's divided really neatly
Speaker 2: into a production phase and a post production phase. Perhaps
Speaker 2: if I were more actively working on shows that had
Speaker 2: multiple collaborators, I would feel Waves loss more keenly. But
Speaker 2: I really liked using it, even while I recognized how
Speaker 2: weird and janky it was. Now this list could go
Speaker 2: on much much longer, but I figure I'll conclude with
Speaker 2: a rock Star like story, and that story involves a
Speaker 2: company called pay by Touch. While most of the apps
Speaker 2: I've talked about so far were ones that you would
Speaker 2: either use on your phone or on your computer, pay
Speaker 2: by Touch was different. Okay, it was an app that
Speaker 2: was a service, and this service would let you pay
Speaker 2: for purchases at a point of sale, primarily in places
Speaker 2: like supermarkets here in the United States. You had to
Speaker 2: do was swipe your finger on a fingerprint sensor at
Speaker 2: the cash register, and your biometric data would correspond to
Speaker 2: your pay by Touch account, and an electronic transaction would
Speaker 2: take care of your grocery bill by deducting it from
Speaker 2: your checking account or from a credit card, and you
Speaker 2: could go on your merry way without ever having to
Speaker 2: hand over cash or write a check or use a
Speaker 2: credit card physically. Just swipe your finger, good to go.
Speaker 2: This was the future, and it was all in two
Speaker 2: thousand and two. The idea of having your financials directly
Speaker 2: tied to your own identity was one that had been
Speaker 2: around for a while but not really accomplished. So again,
Speaker 2: it was really considered to be convenient, and you could
Speaker 2: even tie your biometrics to things like a store loyalty account.
Speaker 2: So by using your fingerprint. You could then apply discounts
Speaker 2: or coupons to whatever it was you were buying. And
Speaker 2: this was coming out in two thousand and two, you like,
Speaker 2: five years before we would get the first iPhone, So
Speaker 2: these d You know, obviously, we have lots of contactless
Speaker 2: payment solutions, mostly tied to mobile phones, but back in
Speaker 2: two thousand and two, this was really revolutionary. Now, the
Speaker 2: services did face challenges. One big one was that folks
Speaker 2: were a little anxious about having their money tied to
Speaker 2: their fingerprints. There seemed to be something invasive about that. Heck,
Speaker 2: if you're the type of person who prefers to use
Speaker 2: cash for your transactions, it absolutely goes against your preferences. Also,
Speaker 2: the thought of a third party company potentially having insight
Speaker 2: into your purchase history seemed creepy. But despite the slow
Speaker 2: going and low adoption rate, pay by Touch did grow
Speaker 2: and got lots of investors. It expanded its business into
Speaker 2: various supermarket chains. But then the company would ultimately declare
Speaker 2: bankruptcy in two thousand and eight. So what happened, Well,
Speaker 2: part of what happened was a failure to communicate to
Speaker 2: the public the benefits of this system. Just really bad
Speaker 2: marketing and education the concept again including things like tying
Speaker 2: biometrics to loyalty programs and stuff that just didn't really
Speaker 2: get communicated effectively in most locations, and some stores were
Speaker 2: just using the system for loyalty programs and customers would
Speaker 2: still pay for their purchases using more traditional means. So
Speaker 2: there was this element of distrust that the company was
Speaker 2: never able to overcome, possibly for good reason, because another
Speaker 2: big reason for the company's failure was in its leadership.
Speaker 2: The CEO of the company was a guy named John P. Rogers,
Speaker 2: and he had had some trouble with the law that
Speaker 2: largely went unnoticed when he was getting investments for his company.
Speaker 2: At least a couple of women had accused him of
Speaker 2: violent behavior, one saying that he had abused her, the
Speaker 2: other saying he had trashed her home. Both of them
Speaker 2: had been connected romantically with him. He had also been
Speaker 2: pulled over by police and arrested on suspicion of driving
Speaker 2: under the influence of cocaine, and apparently he was known
Speaker 2: to have had issues with drug addiction. Investigation suggested that
Speaker 2: Rogers had been rather extravagant with corporate funds that he
Speaker 2: had spearheaded efforts to convince those with really deep pockets
Speaker 2: to invest in Pay by Touch that paid off in dividends.
Speaker 2: He raised around three hundred and forty million dollars, but
Speaker 2: by two thousand and eight the coffers were empty, and
Speaker 2: the investigation suggested that one reason for this was that
Speaker 2: Rogers appeared to have been dipping into corporate funds to
Speaker 2: pay for an extravagant lifestyle, complete with drug use. And
Speaker 2: when I say extravagant, I mean that the investigation suggested
Speaker 2: he was burning around eight million dollars a month, which
Speaker 2: is a lot of money. And it would turn out
Speaker 2: that Rogers had a history of failed businesses, something that
Speaker 2: no one had really noticed when Pay by Touch was
Speaker 2: just getting off the ground. He had managed to keep
Speaker 2: his history kind of out of the spotlight, and investors
Speaker 2: didn't ask any tough questions. They just were excited about
Speaker 2: this potential opportunity to completely revolutionize the way we pay
Speaker 2: for stuff at retail locations. Obviously that was key to
Speaker 2: him securing investments. Ultimately, pay by Touch went could put.
Speaker 2: Some investors pursued civil litigation against the company and against Rogers,
Speaker 2: but he never faced criminal charges. For how things went
Speaker 2: down which is kind of wild. I wasn't there, so
Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe the evidence was all circumstantial, maybe
Speaker 2: there was not a solid case against him, But it
Speaker 2: does seem to fall in line with the perception that
Speaker 2: the rules are different depending upon who you are and
Speaker 2: your station in life. I don't know if that's actually
Speaker 2: the case in this particular instance, but on the surface
Speaker 2: it seems to reinforce that idea anyway. That is just
Speaker 2: a quick list of some major apps that received a
Speaker 2: lot of attention but ultimately flamed out. As I said,
Speaker 2: we could go on much much longer with this list.
Speaker 2: There are tons of other examples, and I'll probably do
Speaker 2: more episodes about them in the future. And you should
Speaker 2: expect these kind of things, right because again, creating an
Speaker 2: app is seen as one of those gateways toward insane
Speaker 2: so excess in Silicon Valley, like it seems like everyone
Speaker 2: in Silicon Valley is behind some sort of app, and
Speaker 2: we might only hear about a small percentage of them.
Speaker 2: Some of those cases are because the app is just
Speaker 2: so incredible and useful that it's undeniable how valuable. It is.
Speaker 2: In other cases, it might be that it's a peculiarity,
Speaker 2: and it gets some momentary notice, and then ultimately that
Speaker 2: doesn't stand the test of time, and in a few
Speaker 2: cases it may just be notorious and infamous, as I
Speaker 2: would argue the pay by Touch story ultimately became once
Speaker 2: the history of Rogers became more public knowledge. Anyway, I
Speaker 2: hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you are all well,
Speaker 2: and I will talk to you again really soon. Tech
Speaker 2: Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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