"Check ages outside of the US -- say, UK or Canada. Much closer to general demographics. Keywords that users are supposed to enter into their interests are garbage, which is why there is no premium in targeting for particular ones. If you have an investing app, fetch interests of its users and look at fraction who have entered "investing". Other than you, anyone? There's clearly carrying capacity for serious apps. Different estimates range from pessimistic 5% of users ("just" a few million) to 30%. Giggly apps are more viral, but if they competed in separate categories, this would not matter." - Stanislav Shalunov

"Serious apps exist: http://blog.shlang.com/post/40...... There would be more if they could spread and developers would have a reason to make them." - Stanislav Shalunov

"Yes, the giggly and serious parts of Facebook indeed resemble MySpace and LinkedIn. But look closer: serious Facebook >? LinkedIn Most people basically only use LinkedIn when looking for a job. Serious Facebook offers much more and gives you a reason to visit often. Currently, however, because of the giggly noise, serious Facebook does not live up to its promise of facilitating day-to-day networking and keeping in touch with people instead of job-hunting. (Yes, LinkedIn cloned a bunch of Facebook features and this made LinkedIn more useful. My point exactly.) giggly Facebook > MySpace Giggly apps make Facebook fun. Infinite supply of quizzes, fun pokes, great mechanisms for forwarding pics. Facebook could solve the ">?" problem for serious users without heavy-handed TOS police. And it would actually make Facebook *more* fun for the giggly users, because developer incentives would be better to create more glittery quizzical pokes for them. I do agree that it's a branding challenge. But..." - Stanislav Shalunov

Do you want a search engine to be ignorant and rude, just like random strangers on the Internet? - Stanislav Shalunov

no wonder: a man with a latest sports car has a large ego and possibly is compensating for small dick size, as conventional wisdom says. what a woman has to talk with him about, anyway? :) - 9000

"Jen: Socialization, as in becoming socialist like the teacher, is, of course, harmful. Having friends and peers who inspire you is very important for most people, because people tend to define their goals and references relative to peers. Which is why being able to read a book a week or do elementary algebra or program a simple game are supposed to be achievements for kids her age rather than matter of course. Randomly selected peer group is, of course, less desirable than one she can choose." - Stanislav Shalunov

btw, compare to medieval apprenticeship: not paid (but fed) by master, doing hard work, all for gaining experience. - 9000

hmm, why site design does not include a much-expected icon of a pale fire? - 9000