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"If someone's going to go through all of the labor to make a copy of groupon or an iFart app or a twitter API mashup just for the cash, they should just write a Forex trading algorithm."

You mean writing one that makes money? That's infinitely harder than the examples you provided.

Quite a lot of smart guys put nontrivial effort into that. You need to be as good as them, preferably even a little better. Good luck.

Smart guys don't trade Forex.

A location-based fart app that leverages the social graph of my friends? Call Sequoia!

"Find out who's farting near you!"

So writing Forex trading algorithms, according to you, will innovate to "change the world"? How? A common critic to the financial sector is that their "innovation" helps only to get themselves rich.

A lot of real innovation still happens in semiconductors, medical, energy. I think that's a better contrast to the 'bullshit app' hype.