Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer
Speaker 1: at how stuff Works and I love all things tech,
Speaker 1: and today we're going to continue our discussion about companies
Speaker 1: and services that launched after tech Stuff became a podcast
Speaker 1: and just kind of get perspective on what has happened
Speaker 1: since we started this show ten years ago. If you
Speaker 1: haven't heard part one of this series, you should probably
Speaker 1: do that because we're gonna start right back up where
Speaker 1: we left off and away we go. Another thing that
Speaker 1: is younger than tech Stuff is Kickstarter, and boy, this
Speaker 1: is a big one. Kickstarter launched in two thousand nine.
Speaker 1: It was co founded by Yancy Strickler, Perry Chen, and
Speaker 1: Charles Adler, and the concept behind it is pretty simple.
Speaker 1: Creators pitch a project and set a financial goal, and
Speaker 1: if it's picked by Kickstarter, if it meets the the
Speaker 1: requirements that Kickstarter sets and doesn't violate any rules, it
Speaker 1: can then go up on the page and you you
Speaker 1: choose a fundraising campaign duration typically a month is very common.
Speaker 1: They then invite people to come and contribute money. To
Speaker 1: this campaign for whatever it might be, and often it's
Speaker 1: in return for promised deliverables should the campaign fund. Campaigns
Speaker 1: are an all or nothing affair on Kickstarter, so if
Speaker 1: the campaign funds, Kickstarter takes that percentage of the overall
Speaker 1: campaign and the rest goes to the creator. If it
Speaker 1: does not fund, then people are not charged for their pledges. Ideally,
Speaker 1: the creator would use the money generated from their Kickstarter
Speaker 1: campaign to complete his or her project and then send
Speaker 1: the deliverables to the appropriate backers. That's not always how
Speaker 1: it works, unfortunately, and there's no shortage of Kickstarter camp
Speaker 1: aims that funded successfully but failed to deliver a product. Now,
Speaker 1: someday I'm gonna have to do a roundup of some
Speaker 1: of the more notable failures in the tech sector on
Speaker 1: the Kickstarter, whether they were true failures or hoaxes, because
Speaker 1: I've backed a couple of them and I'm still a
Speaker 1: little salty about it. On a similar note, there's Patreon,
Speaker 1: and that's another way creators can fund their work. This
Speaker 1: is an ongoing means of funding work, as opposed to
Speaker 1: an all or nothing campaign. It involves rewarding backers or
Speaker 1: patrons with various rewards backers select an amount of money
Speaker 1: they wish to contribute every month to the creator, and
Speaker 1: creators can make tears of rewards for different levels of
Speaker 1: monthly contributions. So you could say, for a dollar a month,
Speaker 1: you will get access to this exclusive content that no
Speaker 1: one else has access to. For five dollars a month,
Speaker 1: I will make content for you for ten dollars, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And Patreon is used by people who continue to make
Speaker 1: something typically, so it ten to be ongoing projects as
Speaker 1: opposed to a one and done affair. So it might
Speaker 1: be a podcast, it might be artwork, it might be
Speaker 1: a cosplay, it might be photography, it could be any
Speaker 1: sort of creative endeavor. Really. In January two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: Maker Bought launched uh Bray Pettis, Zach Hoken, Smith, and
Speaker 1: Adam Meyer were the co founders a Maker Bought back
Speaker 1: in New York City, and it was a company aimed
Speaker 1: at bringing three D desktop printing to consumers. So three
Speaker 1: D printers had been around for a bit already, and
Speaker 1: additive manufacturing had proved its usefulness in the industrial world
Speaker 1: several times over, but very few folks in the consumer
Speaker 1: world had very much experience or even knowledge of three
Speaker 1: D printers. Back in two thousand nine, Maker Bought founders
Speaker 1: wanted to change that. In two thousand thirteen, Stratusists Incorporated
Speaker 1: acquired Maker Bought in a stock deal worth six hundred
Speaker 1: four million dollars, another princely sum. So wow. Now, in
Speaker 1: recent years, the company has had to weather some pretty
Speaker 1: difficult times, including layoffs, the departure of the founders of
Speaker 1: the company, and backlash from the maker community that had
Speaker 1: loyally supported this company in its earlier years. And I'll
Speaker 1: have to do a full episode on maker Bot someday.
Speaker 1: In Spiro was under development and it was first shown
Speaker 1: off at ce S two thousand eleven. I was actually
Speaker 1: there that year. I got to see it, even got
Speaker 1: to drive one of the little things. It was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: The original Sphiro ball robot is ball shaped, has some
Speaker 1: electronics inside it, including a little motor that allows the
Speaker 1: ball to roll around in a controlled way, and you
Speaker 1: would send commands to Spiro through an app on a smartphone.
Speaker 1: It would turn your smartphone into a controller. Spiro's designs
Speaker 1: got the attention of Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney,
Speaker 1: who saw the potential to do a licensing deal in
Speaker 1: which Spiro would make a remote controlled version of a
Speaker 1: little robot that would feature in an upcoming Star Wars movie.
Speaker 1: And that robot was, of course b B eight, and
Speaker 1: the spher O b B eight is absolutely adorable. UM,
Speaker 1: two of us here at the office, at least two
Speaker 1: of us have one of those. Holly Fry would be
Speaker 1: one and I'm the other. The Verge and Polygon are
Speaker 1: both younger than tech Stuff. These are two related websites.
Speaker 1: They are owned by a company called Vox Media, and
Speaker 1: The Verge covers tech news and Polygon covers video game
Speaker 1: industry and pop culture news. Joshua Topolski was the founding
Speaker 1: editor in chief of The Verge, a job these days
Speaker 1: held by Kneeli nil Patel, who uh is a really
Speaker 1: fascinating person to Topolsky left his previous position as editor
Speaker 1: in chief of Engadget after Engadget's parent company A O
Speaker 1: L released a document that stressed profitability metrics over other concerns,
Speaker 1: and he just felt that the integrity of reporting under
Speaker 1: A O L was in dire jeopardy, so he and
Speaker 1: several of his former Engadget coworkers left to go try
Speaker 1: and do something else, and ultimately they founded The Verge,
Speaker 1: which launched in November two thousand eleven. Polygon grew out
Speaker 1: of the Verge and launched in October two thousand twelve
Speaker 1: with a primary focus on video games, though in recent
Speaker 1: years the site has expanded to cover lots of areas
Speaker 1: of pop culture. And two other companies that are actually
Speaker 1: younger than tech Stuff are Uber and Lift. Both of
Speaker 1: these car hailing services launched after tech Stuff did. Uber
Speaker 1: launched in two thousand nine, Lift in two thousand twelve.
Speaker 1: Then I've covered Uber and tech Stuff, but haven't done
Speaker 1: the same for Lift yet. But these car hailing services,
Speaker 1: which sometimes are referred to as ride sharing services, but
Speaker 1: longtime listeners know I have a problem with that particular
Speaker 1: way of describing them. They have been incredibly disruptive businesses.
Speaker 1: They also both have a reputation for not being too
Speaker 1: terribly concerned with playing by the rule book, with Uber
Speaker 1: in particular gaining a reputation for a somewhat cavalier business
Speaker 1: practice attitude, not to mention a corporate culture that until
Speaker 1: recently sounded pretty toxic. And then we have one last
Speaker 1: one I want to talk about before we go to
Speaker 1: break and that is Soilent, which really isn't a tech company,
Speaker 1: but a lot of folks in the text here kind
Speaker 1: of glammed onto it when it launched in two thousand thirteen.
Speaker 1: It was originally sold as a powder, and now you
Speaker 1: can find in a few different forms, including liquid bottled forms,
Speaker 1: and it's a meal replacement product and cleverly called named
Speaker 1: after the fictional soilent that appears in a short story,
Speaker 1: but is mostly known from its appearance in the movie
Speaker 1: Soiling Green, where we find out it's made from people.
Speaker 1: Soiling Green is, anyway the other versions of soilent, we're not,
Speaker 1: but I think most people think of Soilent as it's
Speaker 1: made of people. The company has backed off the messaging
Speaker 1: that you could have soilent for every single meal of
Speaker 1: the day and get rid of quote unquote real food
Speaker 1: and still maintain a healthy lifestyle. They kind of retreated
Speaker 1: on that a little bit, but it's supposed to contain
Speaker 1: everything you need to keep bond trucking, and the fact
Speaker 1: was it was it is a very convenient and fast
Speaker 1: way to get some calories and maintain the basic nutrients
Speaker 1: you need. And people who are working ridiculous hours in
Speaker 1: tech companies started using the stuff like crazy because it
Speaker 1: was convenient. As for me, in August of decided to
Speaker 1: experiment by only having Soilent for breakfast and lunch for
Speaker 1: a month, and it was the beginning of my weight
Speaker 1: loss journey. And while I no longer regularly drink Soilent,
Speaker 1: I do still have the occasional bottle when I need
Speaker 1: something convenient and fast. Now that's all these companies and
Speaker 1: services that have launched since tech Stuff, and of course
Speaker 1: there are tons more. I just grabbed a selection that
Speaker 1: I thought were interesting. We're gonna go into a break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, I'm going to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about some companies that launched after tech Stuff
Speaker 1: but aren't around anymore. But first let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. Okay, so let's talk about
Speaker 1: some stuff that launched after tech Stuff and now don't
Speaker 1: exist no more. Go boom. First, we're gonna start with Vine,
Speaker 1: and I have to do a full episode on Vine
Speaker 1: at some point because that story is also really interesting.
Speaker 1: But in short, the summarized cliffs Notes version. I don't
Speaker 1: even know if cliffs Notes still exist. A Cliff's Notes
Speaker 1: still exist. It used to summarize stuff anyway. Vine was
Speaker 1: created in two thousand twelve by russ yusup of Dom
Speaker 1: Hoffman and Colin Kroll, and the apps started out as
Speaker 1: a program that would let people cut videos together using
Speaker 1: a mobile device, so you could edit together a video,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't terribly stable, and it had no time
Speaker 1: limit attached to the videos. You can make very long videos,
Speaker 1: but that meant the videos were very difficult to share
Speaker 1: because the file sizes were so large, it was difficult
Speaker 1: to send it to someone else to watch. That's when
Speaker 1: the co founders figured that if they created a time limit,
Speaker 1: if they made sure that the videos could only be
Speaker 1: a few seconds long, they could make it a share
Speaker 1: double experience because the file sizes would not be too
Speaker 1: large to send over cellular networks or WiFi. Sort of
Speaker 1: the video version of what Twitter was, where you could
Speaker 1: record short social videos for your friends. And Twitter loved
Speaker 1: that idea. They presented it to Twitter and Twitter said,
Speaker 1: this is a great idea. We like it a lot,
Speaker 1: and they purchased Vine, reportedly for around thirty million dollars.
Speaker 1: And Vine had not yet launched yet, and just as
Speaker 1: Twitter had started out as one thing in the minds
Speaker 1: of its creators and then turned into something else. If
Speaker 1: you're familiar with the story of Twitter, you know that
Speaker 1: they originally were thinking about a service where you could
Speaker 1: send out a text message to a group of friends,
Speaker 1: and that was really the only use case they were
Speaker 1: thinking of with Twitter was just I'm gonna go do something.
Speaker 1: I wanna let my friends know what I'm about to do,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna blast us them all with this Twitter message.
Speaker 1: It turned out the Twitter turned into something much different
Speaker 1: where you had celebrities, news outlets, brands, all these different
Speaker 1: entities that were blasting out information to the general public
Speaker 1: and creating a new means of communication. It was not
Speaker 1: that was not Twitter's mission at the beginning. The same
Speaker 1: thing was true for Vine. They wanted to create a
Speaker 1: way for people to make very short, socially UH focused
Speaker 1: videos that could be easily shared. But people began to
Speaker 1: take that six second limitation as a challenge to create interesting,
Speaker 1: super short form video stories. But Vine didn't stick around UH.
Speaker 1: Instagram and Snapchat both took a lot of wind from
Speaker 1: vines sales. Instagram did it by creating longer form videos
Speaker 1: and by longer formament that at first they were fifteen
Speaker 1: seconds long than they ended up being a bit longer.
Speaker 1: Snapchat did it by making it easy to share videos
Speaker 1: with friends that would later those videos would disappear, and
Speaker 1: it would keep it very social and timely, And so
Speaker 1: Twitter chose to shut down Vine in two thousand and sixteen.
Speaker 1: It is no longer a thing. Although you can still
Speaker 1: watch previously created Vine videos, you can't make new ones
Speaker 1: because the service doesn't exist anymore. Or how about cool
Speaker 1: cool as in c U I L I remember doing
Speaker 1: an episode about this way back in the day. In fact,
Speaker 1: before it launched. Cool launched in July two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: just a month after tech Stuff went live. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was shortly after Cool launched when we did our episode,
Speaker 1: but Cool was the search engine that claimed to have
Speaker 1: the largest number of indexed web pages among all search engines. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, they said, hey, if you want to
Speaker 1: find the information on any topic, trust us. We're gonna
Speaker 1: have it because we've indexed more pages than anybody else.
Speaker 1: And it would present search results with longer entries about
Speaker 1: those specific results, as opposed to maybe the sentence or
Speaker 1: two you might get from Google. You would get longer ones,
Speaker 1: and also you would get thumbnail pictures of various sites
Speaker 1: that were supposed to be relevant to whatever the search
Speaker 1: results were. But things were rocky for cool from the start.
Speaker 1: One month after it launched, the head of the technology department,
Speaker 1: essentially the person in charge of the search technology, quit
Speaker 1: the company after getting into disagreements with the CEO about
Speaker 1: the company's direction. It made a bit of a splash
Speaker 1: when it debuted, but it didn't gain momentum and by
Speaker 1: the fall of that year. By the fall of two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, and had already dropped to nearly no traffic
Speaker 1: at all, the amount of traffic going to cool Head
Speaker 1: gone to a tiny, little trickle. The company continued along
Speaker 1: until September and then cool unceremoniously shut down, laid off
Speaker 1: all the employees who were told there would be no
Speaker 1: more checks, they would not be getting paid for their
Speaker 1: last few days of work, and the servers all went offline.
Speaker 1: This despite the company raising more than thirty million dollars
Speaker 1: in venture capital over the course of its existence. Also,
Speaker 1: it gained a reputation for irrelevant search results, sometimes presenting
Speaker 1: very inappropriate images in response to search results, and other
Speaker 1: major problems. And like I said, did an episode on
Speaker 1: cool back when it launched, but maybe a full story
Speaker 1: could be an order. I might. I might revisit it
Speaker 1: because it is again another interesting study in how tech
Speaker 1: can go wrong. Next, I want to talk about Pebble,
Speaker 1: and this one hurts. I was a fan of the
Speaker 1: idea of Pebble all the way back to when the
Speaker 1: Kickstarter campaign launched in the spring of The campaign was
Speaker 1: a wild success and it raised more than ten million dollars.
Speaker 1: It made it the most successful Kickstarter campaign up to
Speaker 1: that point, and unlike lots of other tech crowdfunding campaigns,
Speaker 1: Pebble actually shipped their promised watches starting in January. So,
Speaker 1: in case you aren't familiar with it, Pebble is sort
Speaker 1: of a semi smart watch with a connect via Bluetooth
Speaker 1: to a smartphone and you could get notifications on it.
Speaker 1: You could run certain apps on it, you could change
Speaker 1: the face on it. It had a very ultra low
Speaker 1: power l c D screen that was monochromatic, so it
Speaker 1: had a really good battery life. It was water proof
Speaker 1: or at least water resistant. Um it was neat. It
Speaker 1: would vibrate whenever you would get a notification, so you
Speaker 1: could actually read things like Twitter messages or emails on
Speaker 1: your watch, and uh it was. It was a kind
Speaker 1: of a low cost smart watch. But Pebble wasn't able
Speaker 1: to make a profit, and in sixteen the company had
Speaker 1: to file for insolvency. Fitbit ended up acquiring most of Pebble,
Speaker 1: though not the actual hardware. Fitbit got the software and
Speaker 1: the assets, meaning the programmers and developers Pebble as a
Speaker 1: company closed shop at the end of Another piece of
Speaker 1: hardware that doesn't exist anymore is uh Yeah oh u
Speaker 1: y a launched in This was originally a micro console
Speaker 1: running on the Android operating system, a gaming micro console,
Speaker 1: that is. It was crowdfunded and reached its goal in
Speaker 1: just eight hours on Kickstarter, and finished the campaign more
Speaker 1: than above its goal, with a final tally of more
Speaker 1: than eight and a half million dollars. The games on
Speaker 1: the console were largely in that casual gaming category, and
Speaker 1: it could run a few other apps in addition to
Speaker 1: running games, but sales of the uh Yeah didn't do
Speaker 1: very well outside the initial crowdfunding campaign. Reviews of prototype
Speaker 1: builds were mixed or some of them were mildly negative,
Speaker 1: but those reviews improved significantly once the retail version of
Speaker 1: the Uyah was ready to ship for customers. They said,
Speaker 1: oh well, yeah, paid attention. They listened to the problems
Speaker 1: we had with this and they addressed it, and the
Speaker 1: new build is much better. Even so, it never really
Speaker 1: cut on in the marketplace, and Uyah accrued debt, it
Speaker 1: could not pay, it could not renegotiate, and eventually it
Speaker 1: was forced to sell off its assets to Razor Incorporated.
Speaker 1: The hardware was discontinued and Razor put the employees of
Speaker 1: Uya and the software assets to use elsewhere under its
Speaker 1: own umbrella, and Uya was no more. Now we have
Speaker 1: more to say about these companies and services in just
Speaker 1: a moment, but before we get to that, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break to thank our sponsor. Now, just before
Speaker 1: the ad break, I talked about Ouyah. Now let's talk
Speaker 1: about on Live, which was first discussed at the two
Speaker 1: thousand nine Game Developers Conference. Users would buy hardware that
Speaker 1: would allow them to access games online, and they would
Speaker 1: pay a monthly service fee for the opportunity to play
Speaker 1: numerous games from an on line library. So instead of
Speaker 1: buying a game, you would pay this monthly fee and
Speaker 1: you would have access to a library of games and
Speaker 1: it would stream to your machine, then you could play
Speaker 1: in the cloud. This is very similar to what was
Speaker 1: pitched as the Phantom console back in the day, except
Speaker 1: this one really had intent behind it. People were really
Speaker 1: determined to make a working service and a working product.
Speaker 1: After a few months of its launch, the company announced
Speaker 1: it would move to a free service model, but you
Speaker 1: would have to pay to access specific games, so you
Speaker 1: no longer have to pay a monthly subscription fee to
Speaker 1: access it, but you would have to pay money to
Speaker 1: either rent a game, meaning you would have access to
Speaker 1: that game for a given amount of time, or I
Speaker 1: believe you could actually quote unquote purchase a game, which
Speaker 1: just meant that you could access that game whenever you
Speaker 1: wanted from that point forward. But in August two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: the company laid everybody off. Everyone got hired, The company
Speaker 1: sold all its assets off, and then formed a new
Speaker 1: on Live company. So essentially it was like a do over.
Speaker 1: It was a control alt, reset, control delete, where you
Speaker 1: you you say, well, we had this company, We're getting
Speaker 1: rid of everybody. We're dissolving the company. We're forming the
Speaker 1: new company and the Louder Partners l A U D
Speaker 1: E R. We're the new owner of on Live. That
Speaker 1: company continued on until two thousand fifteen. Then Sony Entertainment
Speaker 1: swept in and bought up most of the company's assets
Speaker 1: and online service shut down in April, so not a
Speaker 1: big success. And I remember talking about on Live back
Speaker 1: in the day with Chris Billett two where we were
Speaker 1: both kind of skeptical about the prospects of a cloud
Speaker 1: based video game company at that time. These days, I
Speaker 1: would actually think it'd be not that difficult to do,
Speaker 1: and in fact, Microsoft is doing this over on Xbox.
Speaker 1: You can pay to be part of a Microsoft service
Speaker 1: where at least the Microsoft games, you can have access
Speaker 1: to those month to month as long as your service
Speaker 1: subscription is active, so it does still kind of exist,
Speaker 1: although you are downloading at least part of those games
Speaker 1: to your Xbox console, so it's not exactly the same thing,
Speaker 1: but we're seeing some similar business practices that are in
Speaker 1: place today. Next, I'll chat about yik Yak. This one
Speaker 1: hits a little close to home because I once had
Speaker 1: to um to uh moderate a panel with the yik
Speaker 1: yak founders. That would be Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington
Speaker 1: and yes those are their actual names, and that service
Speaker 1: launched in twenty thirteen here in Atlanta. It was a
Speaker 1: location based anonymous messaging service, So you would log into
Speaker 1: yik yak and you could read messages written by other
Speaker 1: people that uh are in the same general location that
Speaker 1: you were in same general region of your city or town.
Speaker 1: So um as you moved around the city, the messages
Speaker 1: you could read would change because it was all proximity based.
Speaker 1: So if you happen to be near a college campus,
Speaker 1: you could read the messages from that college campus because
Speaker 1: you were close enough to it. But as you moved
Speaker 1: across to the other parts of the city, you would
Speaker 1: see messages from other areas. Users could post about just
Speaker 1: about anything, and again, because it was anonymous, at least
Speaker 1: at first, you didn't really have a lot of accountability there,
Speaker 1: and that caused a lot of issues. It got a
Speaker 1: lot of criticism from people who said the platform enabled
Speaker 1: harassment and bullying. Yek yek used geo fencing techniques to
Speaker 1: create blackout zones around places like middle schools and high schools,
Speaker 1: So if you were an administrator of a high school,
Speaker 1: you could use that to black it out the service
Speaker 1: around your high school so that students wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to use it while they were on campus. UH there
Speaker 1: were a lot of issues with with students using this
Speaker 1: um while in school and causing issue use, and critics
Speaker 1: pointed at instances of mean spirited pranks, destructive gossip, and
Speaker 1: hate speech on the platform. K attempted to respond to
Speaker 1: these issues in a few different ways, including creating mandated
Speaker 1: handles so you no longer could be completely anonymous, but
Speaker 1: saw its user numbers decline and eventually the company shut
Speaker 1: down the service in the spring of tween. Then there's
Speaker 1: r d O or r d i O, the online
Speaker 1: music streaming service that one launched in twenty ten, very
Speaker 1: similar to other streaming services like Spotify or in some
Speaker 1: cases like Pandora. There were two main tiers of r
Speaker 1: d O service. There was a free tier that was
Speaker 1: AD supported, so you could listen to music and occasionally
Speaker 1: an AD would be inserted in between songs. And then
Speaker 1: there was a subscription add free tier that you could
Speaker 1: uh subscribe to and so you'd pay a monthly fee
Speaker 1: and you'd be able to listen to music without ads.
Speaker 1: But the service failed to survive in a very crowded
Speaker 1: space and eventually had to file for Chapter eleven bankruptcy
Speaker 1: and so selling off some of its assets to its
Speaker 1: former rival Pandora as a result. Then let's talk about
Speaker 1: Juice a Row. Juice a Row is one of those
Speaker 1: things that kind of makes me scratch my head. Sometimes
Speaker 1: venture capitalists irritate the heck out of me, and that's
Speaker 1: the case with juicer Row. It was a WiFi enabled
Speaker 1: juicer that relied on a subscription service. You would subscribe
Speaker 1: and receive single serving packets that had cut up fruits
Speaker 1: or vegetables or both, and you would put this packet
Speaker 1: inside the juicer, which would squeeze the packet and produce
Speaker 1: a fresh glass of juice for you, which all in
Speaker 1: itself doesn't sound that bad, but there are other issues.
Speaker 1: So the company received more than a hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: in venture capital funding I think a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: millions since it's founding, but in the company said it
Speaker 1: would suspend sale of the juicer and repurchase juicers that
Speaker 1: had been sold to customers up to that point while
Speaker 1: looking for a buyer for the company. The juice packets
Speaker 1: all had QR codes on them, and you were supposed
Speaker 1: to scan your juice packet QR code before you pressed it,
Speaker 1: and the company said this was to make sure that
Speaker 1: you never were getting juice from expired products. You would
Speaker 1: scan it and the juicer would say, oh, well that
Speaker 1: was put in that packet just three days ago, so
Speaker 1: it's still good. You should be able to use it.
Speaker 1: Or no, that's a month old. It's bad. They'll make
Speaker 1: you sick. Don't use it. That was what they were
Speaker 1: saying it was for, but other people said, no, this
Speaker 1: is really a method of digital rights management. In other words,
Speaker 1: it was a way to prevent you from using your
Speaker 1: juice a row from pressing any other juice packets made
Speaker 1: by anyone else. So it's kind of like the idea
Speaker 1: of a Curig, the Curig coffee makers that use those
Speaker 1: single canisters to make a a single cup of coffee.
Speaker 1: Other manufacturers started making canisters that could work with Curiggs,
Speaker 1: and then Curig wanted to change its design so that
Speaker 1: only its packets would work in its machines, and other
Speaker 1: people said, well, you can't do that. That's you know,
Speaker 1: it's anti competitive and it's a type of DRM that
Speaker 1: I'm not comfortable with. People were making the same claims
Speaker 1: about Juicer Row, although the company denied that was the purpose,
Speaker 1: and Bloomberg published a pretty damning report in two thousand
Speaker 1: seventeen that said, you can get the same result as
Speaker 1: the Juice Row if you just took the packet that
Speaker 1: that would come when you subscribed and just squeezed the
Speaker 1: packet by hand and squeezed it into a glass. Uh.
Speaker 1: A venture capitalist named Ben Einstein took a Juicer row
Speaker 1: and dismantled it and said it was incredibly sophisticated. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was too sophisticated. He said, there was way too complicated,
Speaker 1: unnecessarily complicated, and that jacked up the price of the
Speaker 1: juicer but did not provide additional value. And this was
Speaker 1: backed up by other reviewers of the same product. So yeah,
Speaker 1: not not the best showing of a brand new product.
Speaker 1: And also one of those where people said, why does
Speaker 1: this need to be a smart such and such? Right,
Speaker 1: why does it need to be a smart juicer? And
Speaker 1: people point at this and say, yeah, this is not
Speaker 1: a valid argument. I don't know that we need such
Speaker 1: a thing. The last example I want to give about
Speaker 1: a company that launched after tech stuff and no longer
Speaker 1: exists is Cloud. Now. Cloud was an app, an extension
Speaker 1: really that was meant to measure a person's social influence
Speaker 1: or their reach using a cloud score, and a cloud
Speaker 1: score would link to many different social networks, primarily Twitter,
Speaker 1: but you could also link into stuff like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, ETCETERA.
Speaker 1: Cloud launched in two thousand and eight after tech stuff
Speaker 1: was live, and cloud scores were but mean one and
Speaker 1: one hundred. The higher your score, the more effect of
Speaker 1: your social reach was said to be. I was always
Speaker 1: in the eighties, by the way, uh the average I
Speaker 1: think was somewhere in the thirties. But for a while,
Speaker 1: companies would offer perks to cloud members who had scores
Speaker 1: above a particular threshold, with the idea that the receiver
Speaker 1: of the perk would talk up his or her experience
Speaker 1: using the service. I heard about people who got like
Speaker 1: crazy deals on hotel rooms things like that. And the
Speaker 1: whole expectation there was the provider of the service or
Speaker 1: the product would get a benefit from the person with
Speaker 1: a very high cloud score saying, Hey, this company is
Speaker 1: the bomb dignity. You gotta go and buy their stuff
Speaker 1: because it's amazing, And it would be like a marketing campaign.
Speaker 1: And when you think about it, marketing campaigns get very expensive.
Speaker 1: But if you can get effective word of mouth from
Speaker 1: somebody who's very influential, and it just cost you the
Speaker 1: price of a product that you're already selling. That's a
Speaker 1: pretty efficient marketing campaign. So that was going on for
Speaker 1: a while. Eventually Cloud would get rid of the perks
Speaker 1: program because it received a lot of criticism and uh,
Speaker 1: there was questions about how effective the perks were that
Speaker 1: came from both users of Clout and from the providers themselves,
Speaker 1: and critics said that Cloud was kind of a social evil,
Speaker 1: that it was leveraging social status anxiety and it promoted
Speaker 1: bad online etiquette because people were just trying to find
Speaker 1: fast ways to jack that Cloud score up higher and higher.
Speaker 1: And eventually the service would end officially on May twenty,
Speaker 1: two thousand and eighteen, so just uh, a short while
Speaker 1: before this podcast was recorded. So Clout is no more
Speaker 1: as of like a couple of weeks ago. And like
Speaker 1: I said, this is just a sample of some of
Speaker 1: the services and companies that have launched since tech stuff
Speaker 1: became a thing. It's funny to think that my show
Speaker 1: is older than a lot of these famous companies and
Speaker 1: services are and outlasted some of them. That's pretty amazing
Speaker 1: to me. And Also, it's amazing to me that you
Speaker 1: guys have been supporting this show, and I love that.
Speaker 1: It's I deeply appreciate all you listeners out there, the
Speaker 1: ones who write to me, the ones who just listened
Speaker 1: to my show and look forward to the next one.
Speaker 1: All of you guys have been incredible, and thank you
Speaker 1: for supporting the show and for letting me do something
Speaker 1: I love to do, which is I love to learn
Speaker 1: and then I love to talk about the stuff that
Speaker 1: I've learned, and you guys have made that possible. So
Speaker 1: thank you so much. Thank you for ten years of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. I can't wait for the next ten. I'll
Speaker 1: be talking about robots, possibly two robots. I look forward
Speaker 1: to my robotic listeners. Anyway, for you humans out there,
Speaker 1: if you have any suggestions for future episodes of Tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: why not send me a message. It can be about
Speaker 1: a technology, a company, a person in tech. It could
Speaker 1: be a suggestion for someone I should interview or have
Speaker 1: on as a guest host. I look forward to hearing
Speaker 1: from you guys. The email address you can use is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you
Speaker 1: can drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter to
Speaker 1: handle it. Both of those is tech Stuff hs W.
Speaker 1: And finally, make sure you follow us on Instagram. It
Speaker 1: is a great way to get a behind the scenes
Speaker 1: look at what's going on at tech Stuff. And uh,
Speaker 1: I really look forward to doing tons more episodes for
Speaker 1: you guys, and I'll talk to you again really soon
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com two