4chan founder Chris Poole will try to fix social at Google(techcrunch.com)
techcrunch.com
4chan founder Chris Poole will try to fix social at Google
http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/07/mootgle/?ncid=rss&utm_content=bufferd29f1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
14 comments
I think techcrunch should be congratulated for not spelling it "4Chan" for once.
I can't decide if this is a stroke of genius or one of the stupidest things Google has ever done.
The title is misleading, there hasn't been any statement about what he's going to be working on.
The way I see it Poole is just a good programmer who has experience working with a large user base. I think if you ignore the controversy over his user base, he's a good addition to any engineering team.
The way I see it Poole is just a good programmer who has experience working with a large user base. I think if you ignore the controversy over his user base, he's a good addition to any engineering team.
I put my money on the former. 4chan is... itself. But it is definitely a vibrant community. And Poole himself has some thoughtful, unique insight into what makes a community vibrant and what kills it.
Maybe. Creating successful online communities has a huge luck element to it. I don't think there's anyone who can reliably create new online communities out of nothing.
Indeed. That, and timing. It seems like Google with all its money and talent and unbeatable built in audience, pushed so hard and still couldn't get it done with Google+, it'll be interesting if they can get it done now.
It's a bit hard to 'lurk' into a theme related community in Google+.
Everything is too personal, too related to a particular individual and in that sense there are no communities, only egos.
Everything is too personal, too related to a particular individual and in that sense there are no communities, only egos.
Would you mind elaborating on his insight into online communities? I'd love to read his perspective in depth
His TED talk, for one:
http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for...
That's an impressively on-topic username you've got there.
Can't be worse than when they hired Kevin Rose.
I dislike real name policies, but I do want to push to fix some of the problems with using real names. This includes moving the business world closer to Cluetrain for example.
Vacuous e-celeb worship. All noise, no signal.
"Mediocre coder gets a job at Google." Big deal.
"Mediocre coder gets a job at Google." Big deal.
Misleading headline aside, I doubt he will have much impact in terms of revamping Google's social platform. 4chan became a thing because of the community it attracted (and then evolved into), combined with the preservation of anonymity in a world becoming less anonymous. The site's success is not due to some crazy genius foresight, just a matter of supplying a need for an insanely niche community and then becoming a space for all sorts of inside jokes and (not so decent?) content to reside, again all catering to a niche community.
As much as I enjoyed lurking 4chan back in the day, it's very difficult for me to see most of its innovations or ideas actually transfer to the mainstream. Google may have been better off buying Digg and turning it into a more accessible version of Reddit, and even that's a terrible idea.
As much as I enjoyed lurking 4chan back in the day, it's very difficult for me to see most of its innovations or ideas actually transfer to the mainstream. Google may have been better off buying Digg and turning it into a more accessible version of Reddit, and even that's a terrible idea.