So... what's going on? are they shutting it down? if so, why don't they just say, "we're shutting it down". Why make me read 6 shitty paragraphs and in the end I don't know what the fuck I'm reading?
They definitely buried it, but it seemed extremely clear to me that they're shutting it down:
> To that end, we’ll begin winding down the Yik Yak app over the coming week as we start tinkering around with what’s ahead for our brand, our technology, and ourselves.
OP is angry because it's a common occurrence for companies in similar situation to hide behind fluffy language, while OP has the goal to understand what's going on.
If that's the goal, he should know (from the comments on this post, from comments on other shutdown posts in the 100 days he has been here, etc) that this is the kind of language a shutdown post has. It's nothing new.
This was one of the more sincere "our incredible journey" posts I've read since I started spending time on HN.
You should know from ... the 1200+ days you've been around, the huge number of shut down notices in that time, the other posts here, and every single comment that's ever been made about how you should communicate with users, ... that the shutdown notice here isn't great.
Agreed, I enjoyed it. It wasn't needlessly long and they said what they wanted to say. And I even feel a little bad they're shutting down, because Yik Yak seems like a pretty sincere company from the looks of their blog.
Eh dunno, sounded pretty fluffy to me. Dressing up the move to Square as some 'community' thing when it's likely simple pragmatism, and so on. (Though nowhere near as apparently rage-inducing the other guy found it lol.)
Why not show some understanding for the people who worked tirelessly to pursue a common goal that's now come to an end, and their most loyal users who are going to be sad to see it go. As someone else said, nobody forced you to read the "6 shitty paragraphs". It's almost like you're throwing a tantrum at a parent who posted a longwinded obituary in the newspaper for their kid.
Yes, what a selfless act of charity those people undertook in exchange for mere hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Let us have a moment of silence for the millions of man-hours selflessly donated to this organization, which was founded by Mother Theresa herself.
This unassailable high ground certainly warrants six paragraphs of pointless our-incredible-journeying, especially as they go on to describe the future of the organization as 'tinkering around.'
I never alluded to their journey being selfless or charitable...
Just because the team partially did this for profit, doesn't mean they didn't work their asses off and are now sad to shut it down. Nor does it discredit the claim that some of their users are going to be very sad to see it go. That was my point.
People are upvoting it because people were pissed with yikyak. Last I checked (and it was more than a year ago) yikyak was the preferred safespace to be racist on campus. So it is tone deaf only if you are reading this comment alone, but if you know the whole history of the company, this comment hits the right tone it is almost musical.
How many years has it been since people have pointed out twitter is a place where women are being harassed and treated worse like you wouldn't believe. Is the company doing anything about it? Not really. If they did, it would have stopped. I wish twitter also rids itself like this somehow.
We get it, this is a difficult moment for the founders and employees. Having said that, there's nothing wrong with writing candidly instead of assaulting us with marketing speak. If they're trying to spin things at this point, it can be quite annoying to read and I personally would lose a bit of sympathy that I'd otherwise have.
good fucking riddance