Buying rights to provide telecom service to an area and not actually providing service.
Wait that’s a thing? In TV broadcasting?
I’ve heard of how Comcast Did New York state dirty many years ago. IIRC, they walked away with nearly half a billion dollars, which I believe was about 2/3 of all the money the state had given them to connect small towns and clusters of rural communities to DSL internet.>
Netflix killing password sharing despite how easy piracy is. Massive increase in subscriptions
I suspected Netflix to lose sub counts for two years after they enacted their ‘No Account Sharing (outside the household).’ policy. But it seems that they have been able to bounce back quite quickly, compared to my guess.
Someone once made a mountain of cash selling pet rocks.
I have an official USB pet rock I got from a thinkgeek back in the day. Has a little box with air holes and everything.
Exactly as functional as the original pet rock, but has a short USB cable attached.
I have a major curiosity about how this actually happened. I’ve watched a video or two about it but it still baffles me to this day that SOOOOO many people bought it as a x-mas present for their kid(s).
I’ve wanted to learn a couple of things about this.
A. What did the parents think of their kids asking for such a stupid present?
B. What did the parents who refused to purchase a Pet Rock, have to deal with at home, when their kid(s) were informed that they were not getting one ever?
C. (On the flip side of B.) What did the parents of those who did purchase them notice or deal with at home?
D. What psychological reasoning would anyone have to desire to purchase a Pet Rock, instead of making their own?
E. What psychological marketing/influencing was involved in this scheme?
A. They were always more of a novelty gift rather than a child’s gift.
B. I was 12 when the trend hit and I had no desire to get one. Neither did my younger siblings.
C. N/A as my parents didn’t get me one.
D. The novelty of a gag gift that was pre-packaged.
E. That’s the million dollar question.
All the ones where the idea was to “just start something, grow grow grow, then figure out monetization later” is wild to me.
E.g. reddit. It worked. CEO is rich, site is still online. Somehow they got investors probably, presumably.
I get not having profit. I get not having income, if it’s in some prototype phase. But having no plan or idea whatsoever for how to monetize and still getting VC? Wild.
I get not having profit. I get not having income, if it’s in some prototype phase. But having no plan or idea whatsoever for how to monetize and still getting VC? Wild.
It’s called “growth-first” or “growth-at-all-costs” strategy. I don’t recall what video I was watching when I learned it, but it’s a dying strategy for business now (IIRC). It had its rise in popularity in the late 2000s to about 2018. Think Netflix, WeWork, Uber, etc. These are huge businesses to prop up, so they (literally) bank on the idea that with a huge user base, they can sooner or later, make a profit to make it worth all of the risk.
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/
Enshittification. Once you learn it, you see it everywhere. It’s depressing.
Just curious about what does VC stand for, don’t know anything about business
Viet Cong. Bad news. Never get out of the boat.
venture capital / investor cash cannons
The software company I work for is killing all legacy on-prem software in 2025 and replacing it with a modular AWS based system of single-page websites. Many customers are old-school and hesitant about anything cloud-related, but it worked out beautifully so far. The shutdown hasn’t happened yet tho, so we’ll see how many lawsuits roll in when it does lol
Roblox. If you were there in the beginning then you know how empty it was. Now, that’s mostly what my son plays to what just make the most money/things? I don’t get it myself (I’m old, lol).
They knew what they were doing. They knew that Minecraft needed a strong competitor in the video game market, and bet big on the ‘long game.’
Noticing that you are a parent of a person who plays Roblox, I feel obligated to share two investigative videos about Roblox Corporation practices or lack thereof, the exploitive practices they have to paying third-party in-game content “developers” (that are often kids/tweens/teens), and the issues Roblox have had with pedophiles/adults grooming young people/kidnappings.
The following videos are from People Make Games on Youtube.
Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers
Roblox Pressured Us to Delete Our Video. So We Dug Deeper.
[Just so we are clear, I am not telling you how to parent your son or person. I am just informing you to the best of my ability, about the issues that have arisen on and off Roblox.]
Appreciate the heads up. Will watch.
