Josh, the founder of a TechStars short-kids bus start-up IntenseDebate, already got owned in regular debate. I will give it to Josh for at least having the balls to step down when he knew he had no arguments and trying to carry on a reasonable debate unlike the regular Y Bombinator tools.
Why does Intense Debate fail?
1. Chicken-and-egg problem - for the network effects of blog profiles to be valuable, the install base for IntenseDebate has to be huge. For the install base to be huge, there has to be a compelling reason for bloggers to use it. What does a blogger get from IntenseDebate? Very little. There are 20 companies trying to do the same thing. Yawn.
2. The debate is not very intense. Most social features like up-and-down voting are given to heavy manipulation by those who care a little bit too much. Digg has snipped its own growth because it’s so full of idiots who only believe in their way or the highway. They quickly kill any story that doesn’t agree with their point of view and just 100 Diggtards control the entire “community.” In a blog up-and-down voting system, the sample size will be even smaller meaning that a few, say one or two freaks, could control all up-and-down voting killing the entire point of debate itself.
3. Revenue? Please. We only hire “hackers”. We’ve already outlined why IntenseDebate will fail, but even if it “succeeds”, one has to wonder if there’s a revenue model that could even work here. Advertising will not work here. IntenseDebaters are far and few between and even for a blog like TechCrunch with 500K+ users, the average post generates fewer than 50 comments. Add in the fact that for each 100 comment, there are probably 80 commenters and suddenly you realize that advertising to those 80 commenters won’t really generate you any money. Imagine if you rounded up all the intense commenters in the world, you’d maybe have 5,000. These are tech savvy people who don’t buy much. Good luck trying to sell advertising to them!
TechStars is another bomb like Y Combinator except that it lacks a man smelly enough to make all the flies gather around him. Cohen is working on it, but he’s no Graham yet. He’ll have to improve on his arrogance, write stupid essays, and manage a social news site dedicated towards 22-year olds looking for love and a billion dollar social networking idea.
