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Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

>What am I missing?

You're not missing anything, but that doesn't mean this won't be successful. There were tons of ride ordering/sharing apps before Uber; Uber just had the right interface at the right moment. AIM long predated Whatsapp and Skype. These are just a few examples of not-so-original products that became hugely successful because of some very slight twists on relatively old concepts.

Not being original in concept is far from a disqualifier for success. In all but a tiny fraction of cases, "first mover advantage" is a myth. If your goal is rapid, widespread adoption of your product, it's generally better to iterate on something that has proven acceptance by the market.

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Sure, but Talko isn't the second mover in messaging apps, it's more like the millionth. This is a pretty mature market by now, and I'm still not seeing any obvious hook that would get me to switch.

There are a few innovations in Talko itself (telling people if you're driving etc.). That may be enough, and it may not. It takes a fair amount of pixie dust for these things to work out, so no one knows. But it does have a chance.

In a world where "Yo" gets more than 1 user (and a $10M valuation), I don't discount any app until it's removed from the app store.

I would never use an app that has the "feature" of broadcasting my current location and movement to friends and colleagues.

I feel the same way, but I get the impression that "kids these days" love that kind of thing, so the fact that you or I wouldn't use this isn't necessarily a bar to success.

That's the crux of the problems I see with this. I can believe it's a very good implementation of Skype, but the genuine novelties (location broadcast and record-by-default) are the first thing any remotely privacy conscious person is going to turn off most of the time.

Is a setting that [unless turned off] tells people what form of transport I'm using really better at avoiding unwanted intrusions than a status update? Am I going to be more or much less likely to leave it on in the background in case any of my friends choose to come and socialise with me if everything is being recorded in the background?

I can certainly imagine edge cases where those capabilities would come in useful, but it sounds like they're more likely to generate negative hype and corporate bans than encourage adoption.

Telling people my location or if I am driving is not a feature I want just like never used the status feature on any IM/text client ever had...

People should never expect an instant reply to any IM, text, or phone call. The receiver's status is totally irrelevant. Society is going to hell from this type of technology.

>People should never expect an instant reply to any IM, text, or phone call.

Why is synchronous, remote communication disallowed? You seem to have ruled out instant responses to any form of remote communication, which greatly impedes, well, communicating. If I have a chain of questions that rely upon previous answers, it's either going to be woefully inefficient to send as asynchronous communication (I have to enumerate all possible questions, which also means all possible answers to previous questions) with respect to either data (one massive email) or time (one question per email, wait for response).

>The receiver's status is totally irrelevant.

Not at all. If I need information that any one of 5 of my contacts have, I can narrow down who I need to ask based on status rather than sending out 5 questions and getting 5 responses. Alternatively, I could ask them one at a time and wait 5-10 minutes for a response before moving on, but that's a large time sink and doesn't scale well at all. A simple available/busy goes a long way.

Huh?

"Why is synchronous, remote communication disallowed?"

No one said that... I am just saying it's the choice of the receiver of the message when to reply. To many people today seem to have the expectations if can send a message under a second they should receive a reply back in under a second. Ummmm No.

"Not at all. If I need information that any one of 5 of my contacts have, I can narrow down who I need to ask based on status rather than sending out 5 questions and getting 5 responses."

So your contacts status is needed for your convenience? What about theirs?

You sound young and really narcissistic. It's not all about you. To make it more clear for you... It's none of your business what I am doing and I will reply back when I f*cking feel like it.

At work, its all about the job. So as an enterprise tool its still valid to want timely responses, and to expect them.

Downvote? My mistake, we should be slaves to our technology like the young folk and conform. I said nothing and everything is all right.

My mistake, I am at work and hadn't read the article in question (until right now) but seen the comment about the app giving the status if driving or not which set me off.

My remarks were about personal communications which this app does not seem to be about. I do feel sorry for people in jobs who do have to reply at all hours of the day. That's not for me...

> Telling people my location or if I am driving is not a feature I want just like never used the status feature on any IM/text client ever had...

That makes you the minority view.

Status's in IM apps were hugely popular, that you are unable to see the value to others indicates a lacking of either imagination or empathy on your part.

> People should never expect an instant reply to any IM, text, or phone call. The receiver's status is totally irrelevant.

If my SO is waiting for me to come home to turn on the oven, then being able to see that I am driving, versus calling me and having me not pick up (I typically do not answer the phone when driving), is a huge value add.

If I have one last thing I want my friend to pick up at the store, seeing "walking" versus "driving" lets me know if it is futile to call him.

These features are useful. Are they something that I'd always want to share with everyone? Of course not, but in the right situations they add value to communication.

"That makes you the minority view."

So what? I was giving my opinion... You do realize the majority view has been often wrong though out history?

"Status's in IM apps were hugely popular, that you are unable to see the value to others indicates a lacking of either imagination or empathy on your part."

I didn't say it may not have value for others but once again it has no value for me. The last thing I want to do is update my status in my IM/chat program every time I logon.

Your scenarios are totally irrelevant... In either case why does it matter if the receiver is driving? They could send a text or leave a VM if don't pick up (which would then assume maybe driving or just busy). What do these scenarios have to do with my point the sender shouldn't expect an instant reply to every communication?

It's not about the second mover advantage anymore (and certainly not about the first mover advantage). It's all about the LAST mover these days. Doesn't matter how many others have tried something before your or how successful those somethings are. Can you create an app / a business which will be the LAST to dominate its space?

Right. Google is successful because it was the last search engine. It provided a completely novel way to do search (links vs. keywords) and Facebook will be valuable if it turns out to be the last social network. However, to be the LAST MOVER you have to provide a value at some arbitrary, but huge, number. Let's say a 10x improvement over the incumbant (or various substitute products). That is why email is difficult to dethrone. It works well, is relatively secure (you can sort of choose your level of security) and spam settings make it reasonably painless. So this app is going to have to be a much better experience than hangouts (probably easy, hangouts is shit), or whatsapp, or email, or a phonecall, or instagram etc. This can be done, but the execution has to be perfect, the value proposition has to be 10x better than the one or two substitute services it replaces (largely phone & messaging) and it has to have a growth pattern that is substantial enough that it can be reasonably assumed that at least 80% of my contacts are using it.

so to be last mover here they probably need

>a product that is 10x better than a combo(or stand alone instance) of SMS/messaging apps/email/facetime/phone etc

>widespread user adoption

>trust/security

>a revenue stream

It seems cool, but it is a tough space to dominate.

um... didn't it become the 'last search engine' because it was so successful rather than vice versa?

I meant successful in financial terms. It is past edit, so I can't change it to valuable. This is basically an adoption of things Peter Theil says. Googles value (financial) has largely been realized many years after founding (prob 10). So if they did not have last mover inertia, then they wouldn't have been around long enough to extract the value from the market.

You are missing a beat here. The last mover is the winner of a space. It's kind of like saying I found my car keys in the last place I looked. Of course you did.

But how do you stay the last mover? This is about building a moat.

To continue your analogy: How do you prevent yourself from losing your car keys again?

I think there's something to be said for picking up on something popular and doing it well; you don't necessarily have to reinvent the wheel.

I recall Pogue's article on walkie-talkie apps (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/technology/personaltech/ze...), and how even the best apps had the most god-forsaken interface design.

Being incumbent in a space doesn't mean you do a great job at something. Whether this makes Talko interesting and useful remains to be seen (I'm reserving excitement personally), but I definitely think there's a lot of room for improvement that Talko is taking advantage of.

> Uber just had the right interface at the right moment

and the right branding and a huge amount of backing and a giant pair of balls.

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