<story><title>The Class that built Apps, and Fortunes</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/technology/08class.html?pagewanted=all</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>thinkcomp</author><text>As someone who knows a lot of the people written about here, I think this article says a lot more about the reporter than the people in it. Every now and then the Times publishes a story that completely lacks the kind of level-headedness that one would expect from an editorial process, and this is one of those stories.&lt;p&gt;Most of the people mentioned in the article are smart individuals--I have a lot of respect for Joachim&apos;s programming talent especially--but back in 2007, the amazing growth in their respective applications was due to Facebook&apos;s poorly-thought-out policies regarding application spam (and these apps all sent an unthinkable amount of spam, much of it misleading), not the Stanford class, and not some formula. It&apos;s possible to know this because once Facebook changed those policies (because of apps like the ones mentioned in the article), the growth immediately stopped. Most of the apps haven&apos;t existed in any meaningful form, if at all, for years.&lt;p&gt;Where are the articles about startups that have made great advances in tackling the enormous problems that plague the country? Those are the stories I&apos;d rather read.&lt;p&gt;By way of full disclosure, I was Ed&apos;s co-founder at a startup he was also running in 2007 called Qubescape--not the one mentioned in the article. A lot of that venture&apos;s code became part of FaceCash, which I am currently working on. Ed started new with an app called PhoneBook and then friend.ly.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Class that built Apps, and Fortunes</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/technology/08class.html?pagewanted=all</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Cherian_Abraham</author><text>In an article where many, I am sure, see clear indication of a social bubble, I choose to see unbridled enthusiasm of a young tech community who were quick to see the potential of a growing social network and was equally quick to capitalize on its growth.&lt;p&gt;Sure, many of these apps have no actual depth to talk about, but they stand for &quot;build quick and cheap, perfect later&quot; which resonates with me and many others. Also, what good is a business or technology education that costs you a couple of hundred grand, unless it gives you an opportunity to recoup some of that before you graduate.&lt;p&gt;I really wish there are more &quot;Facebook classes&quot; or just classes where tutors challenge you to build ideas to fruition regardless of whether it makes one a millionaire or not. I am trying to do this in Richmond, Virginia with a couple of others, and trying to signup some patron saints from the business and technology community in the region to help out in this effort. For a region that has three Universities in a 50 mile radius (UR, VCU and UVA), we sure dont have a startup ecosystem here and it seems we have squandered that opportunity so far.</text></comment>