Are we here to build a company or to cash in on the next hype?<p>Both are completely different things. It takes ten years to build a company. You can go jump up and down or left and right but it really takes that long.<p>Twitter is 3rd generation product built on of hype (Myspace->Facebook->Twitter). The first two generation still have to make enough company to be called interesting. Twitter can become big but is it big enough given the hype? The latest trend seems to be building apps around twitter. Two years back it was building facebook apps.<p><blockquote>New Moto: Build something people are willing to pay for</blockquote><p>If they are not willing to pay for it, they dont really need it. Be it a virtual gift or freemium or clean ur toilet service. As long as people pay, you have a business.
"<i>The first two generation still have to make enough company to be called interesting.</i>"<p>I'm not <i>exactly</i> sure what you mean by "make enough company", but a quick google search shows MySpace pulled in revenue of <i>$800 million</i>, with <i>$10 million in profit</i>. Facebook came in somewhere around ~$250 million (admittedly not profitable yet, but that's high revenue. Only a matter of time).<p>That's pretty damned interesting.<p><i>Somebody</i> is willing to pay for services these companies provide; they must not be all hype. Twitter will likely find a revenue model as well (not as high as the other two, I would suspect, but still).<p>I'm sorry if it seems harsh, but these companies have had copious amounts of sweat and blood poured into them, and have grown into huge revenue generating machines. Calling them pure hype seems shockingly cavalier.
Twitter seems to me to have much more in common with IRC than Facebook or Myspace; the primary difference is the persistence of identity across the system.
MySpace has been around for about 10 years, and make large profits consistently.<p>Quite honestly I'm not sure they belong in the same discussion as facebook and twitter.