But aren't there services that address their needs.
Groupon, despite all it's criticisms does that. It gives people a deal on local goods and services. Mint helps them get a better overview of their finances. Airbnb may help them find a reasonably priced place to stay should they travel. This is just a short list. There's more out there than photo sharing apps and social games.
In fact, I think some of these tools serve people in places like these better and, at least in the case of Groupon, may do more for a merchant in a small town than a big city. Personally I've never understood why someone would want to pay high rents to live in a city like manhattan and then look for a deal on a sandwich.
His friends are a lawyer and a teacher. There are also tons of startups in the education space, and a few relevant to lawyers. I think it is a good reminder that photo sharing gets a disproportionate amount of coverage inside the echo chamber relative to its actual importance.
>But aren't there services that address their needs. Groupon, despite all it's criticisms does that. It gives people a deal on local goods and services. Mint helps them get a better overview of their finances. Airbnb may help them find a reasonably priced place to stay should they travel.
I don't think he was saying that there weren't. What he is saying is that if, say, GroupOn turns out to be, as has been predicted by a recent swarm of articles, a failure, it has an overall neutral impact at best for the Tupeloids despite having an excellent impact for its founder, who by this point is clearly going to walk away laughing all the way to the bank even if the IPO tanks or something else happens. He's basically saying to remember that what we do has consequences for people whom we usually never encounter.
