Ding Ding Ding … We Have a Moron! – Branch Part 2

The Latest Web Start-Up That is Not Needed & Doomed to Fail

My inaugural post was about a new web start-up named Branch. Yesterday evening I was watching the Bloomberg Business cable channel when they had an interview with one of the co-founders of Branch. Unfortunately, my Hauppauge WinTV software wasn’t working, so I couldn’t get a direct digital video, so I resorted to an analog recording by putting the camera in front of my TV. It still came out ok, You can see it at the end of this post.

Evan Williams and Biz Stone, the co-founders of Twitter are backing Branch, which is probably why they are getting so much media coverage for such a stupid idea. Evan Williams was also the co-founder of Blogger, which never made any money, lost all of it’s employees, and nearly went out of business before he lucked out when Google bought Blogger in February 2003 for an undisclosed (probably ridiculously huge) sum.

We don’t really know if Twitter is profitable since they are still privately owned, but the rumors from supposedly leaked data, reported on Gawker aren’t surprising.

Bloomberg interviewed Josh Miller, who dropped out of Princeton to co-found Branch. He says he would read a newspaper and felt he had nowhere to express his opinion. Really? Apparently, he couldn’t figure out how to blog, participate in forums, post on Facebook, or Tweet. Josh states; "We’re trying to replicate the types of conversations that happen in the real world, online."

Whoa! Like that’s totally never been done before.

The posts on Branch are called "Branches" and when you are the one posting, you are "Branching".

I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.

Here are some of the popular "Branches", along with my answers –

Q: Are we currently in a tech bubble?
A: Yes. I figured this out more than 6-months ago dumbass.

Topic: Bad restaurant website design.
A: Yes, there are a ton a terrible restaurant website designs, but the one I did for the restaurant with The Best Italian Food in St. Pete is awesome.

Q: Is too much focus put on going to university?
A: Yes. You should quit and invent something totally new for the Internet, like Pop-Up Ads.

Q: How do blogs need to evolve.
A: They need to die.

The interviewer asked; "What makes you think there’s room for something else?"

Josh says; "All the other sites are broadcast platforms … we think there’s room online for direct intimate conversations…"

Wow. If only someone could have invented vBulletin like ten years ago, that would have been awesome.

Josh says that "Branches are going to create really, really interesting content."

Uh … yeah … user-generated-content. That’s so awesome.

What’s the deal with so many starry-eyed supposed Internet Entrepreneurs wanting to "change the world" while not having any actual business model getting hundreds of millions of dollars dumped on them?

What ever happened to business basics and fundamentals? How come the Internet businesses that don’t have any (except Google, Apple and Amazon) are the ones that get all the media attention?

I love when she asks him how they are going to make money … watch the video below, and read my other post if you want more info on how completely retarded Branch is.

Video Rendering