Developer strikes it rich with iPhone game: Makes $250K profit in two months.
cnn.com
cnn.com
This former banker taught himself a new platform, realized an idea, and created a game that obviously many people are entertained by. The real-world impact? He got to quit a job he (apparently) didn't like very much, created a product that entertains people, and got to start his own company.
What real-world impact are you looking for, exactly? What's the "next big problem?" Should we all be trying to cure cancer? Save the environment? Create true AI? This may come off condescending, but I truly do want to know.
I have yet to find a single useful Facebook app, but that doesn't mean there are no apps which other people, perhaps thousands, consider to be useful improvements. Presumably, every successful product solves some sort of real world problem for some number of people, otherwise why would anyone pay for it?
Seriously, what should I be doing instead? I'm not smart enough to create SKYNET and since I'm not a pharmaceutical company there's no money in finding the cure for cancer. If entertainment and "poking" aren't enough for Tim and you, then that's on you guys to do something more with your lives. As for me, I'm perfectly happy to help people find cheaper tickets.
There is no doubt that this man has been successful and he seems to have changed the course of his life for the better. I am happy for him. However, consider the long term impact of cases like these. It's not about his success, it's about the type of behavior his success will inspire. People will look at him and they wont see someone who started his own company, they will see someone who made $250K in two months. Above all, people are attracted to short term profits (it's what got America into the current economic crisis). Someone who might have tried to start his own company will instead go for the quick profit creating Facebook and iPhone applications. He may be happy with his large payday, but the loss to society is large. At the end of the day, I'd rather have people starting new companies.
My concern is that cases like these will be sensationalized in the media and result in the incorrect perception that "social networking application things" are the best thing to go into. Hell, maybe this guy has real world impact. After all, people who don't normally play games are emailing him to tell him how much they enjoy it. But the way the media has presented his example will not inspire people to create value, rather, it will inspire them to go for the quick profit via the next big Facebook app.
I will admit I was a bit careless in my first post. Even entrepreneurs not skilled enough to come up with "the next big thing" should still strive to work towards solving real world problems. At TicketStumblr, you do have a real world impact. You are solving a situation that cause markets to fail: when people have incomplete information. Your service allows people to find cheap tickets because you give your users enough information to judge the market accurately. That is the type of real world impact I am talking about.
Did any of the following 'solve the next big problem'?: Jerry Seinfeld, Seth MacFarlane, Claude Monet, Francis Ford Coppola, Kubrick, the list goes on...
This guy made something that entertains people (although he's probably not yet in the league of those above ;). It seems to me that you're not valuing works of entertainment as highly as some other works. That's a judgment on your part, which makes your, "should still strive to work towards solving real world problems" sound quite judgmental. I like to think there is more to life than efficient markets (even though I love efficient markets)
I will say this: entrepreneurs are people with particularly powerful talent; with that power comes a responsibility. Imagine the choice between developing a Facebook application that lets friends buy digital icons of drinks for their friends (why not just real drinks :-p) versus an Facebook application for FreeRice [1]. A responsible entrepreneur would develop the FreeRice application, even though profit might be smaller. A more concrete example can be seen in Google. They own the most valuable piece of real estate on the internet (their homepage), yet they don't monetize it. Their restrictions on content on AdSense are stricter than they are required to be by law. The list could go on.
As tdavis pointed out, there will always be people looking for a quick buck. Let them monetize the things that don't really matter. Instead, skilled entrepreneurs should tackle the more difficult problems and monetize things that create value and have real impact on lives.
I may be stretching your analogy, but I would compare Google search to the works of Claude Monet and most Facebook/AppStore applications to paint by number. If the media keeps sensationalizing paint by number, eventually people will believe in it.
Anyway, that is a bit off-topic. Yesterday I had a discussion with friends who were all very depressed about their prospects on the job market. Basically they saw it as a given that everybody would either be jobless or be forced to work 60 h weeks and take shit from their bosses. So apart from the entertainment (which I personally value, too), I think it is a worthy achievement to show that there can be an escape from living as a drone. (Too bad none of my friends were programmers or engineers, but that is another problem).
As for trading drink icons on facebook, I don't know. But maybe it would serve the networking and socialising of human beings, which in turn might yield other positive effects. Maybe Unicef could win some sponsors for rice by giving out free drinks to people on Facebook, for example.
those above are not in the same league either...
Of course, it's personal opinion, but I'm interested... Don't knock Seth ;)
...the loss to society is large.
There will always be people looking for the quick buck, quick fix, quick... everything. From FB app overnight success stories to sculpting your abs while watching TV, most everybody wants to exert the least amount of effort for the most amount of gain; usually so little effort that the gain they think they can achieve is nigh impossible.
These are not the types of people who start businesses, period. They don't spend 6 days a week at the gym. If they want to "get rich quick" after reading an article such as this, it stands to reason they wanted to do the same thing before reading it. The only possible outcomes for these types of people are, (a) failure or (b) short-term success with long-term failure.
The author doesn't strike me as that type of person, even if he does inspire subsequent lazy people to be just un-lazy enough to jump on a bandwagon created by the media. Finally: Thanks for the compliment ;)
I'm not trying to compare fun from science and fun from iPhone apps;
As a species, we probably haven't figured out the purpose of our existence yet (is there one?). We managed to reach the current state of progress because different people did different things, and in the process figured out stuff that we now consider important. Few thousand years ago, someone who spent time trying to understand nature instead of hunting, might have looked like wasting time to his contemporaries.
That said, I do agree that solving the class of problems that you were talking about is in general more valuable than writing a game. But people have their own skill levels and personal choices, and we should respect their choices.
Also, from my little understanding of economics, in an advanced economy services sector is supposed to account for >>50% of GDP, with entertainment contributing to a significant chunk of those services revenues. So, we should probably get accustomed to more of these iPhone games and 'sheep throwing'.
I also agree with you that mainstream media can do much better than glorifying these kind of things.
Further, I think that change is best effectuated through being rich. Money makes the world go round, and it's a hell of a lot more effective than just prancing around thinking about ways to make the world a better place out of college. Think about if Bill Gates devoted the first half of his life to just changing the world, he would have done a lot of good, but probably nothing that $50+ Billion can't overcompensate.
Are complete crap apps making tons of money? Probably not. I don't see the surprise in well-made or original apps being successful.
I guess the surprise may come from the fact that this amount of success is relatively unheard of in the mobile market. Shows that the iPhone is a new ballgame, or at least an old ballgame prettified and brought to the masses. Mobile sucked before, now someone's created something that doesn't, and there's not much to compare it to.