5 major technologies killed by Silicon Valley in 2016 by Mike Orcutt on Jan 1, 2017, 8:19 PM Advertisement
 At MIT Technology Review we try to keep you informed as new technologies and products emerge. But just as important as the new things that are born are the old things that die. And in 2016, we saw several high-profile tech ideas die in Silicon Valley. SEE ALSO: 33 startups to watch in 2017, according to VC investors Vine  Launched in January 2013, Vine’s popularity grew with each new looping six-second clip it gave the world, like the one of a very angry woman at an Apple Store, the one that originated the term “on fleek,” and “Ketchup Mount Rushmore,” just to name just a few. Twitter’s app also created many stars, some of whom were able to parlay their popularity and Vine-making prowess into real fortune by fashioning clips for marketers. But alas, the service peaked in 2014, and competitors like Instagram Snapchat drew away many of Vine’s users—including many of its stars. By 2016, more than half of those who had been in the top 1 percent of users in 2013 had stopped posting. In October, Twitter finally said it was turning off the lights. This month, it said it will replace Vine with a new app that will let users continue to make six-second loops and post them directly to Twitter.
Google Fiber  Some are still scratching their heads over why Google ever got into the fiber-optic business, investing heavily in Fiber, its high-speed Internet and cable television service. And it turns out that perhaps Google itself never knew the reason for investing billions in it (according to a recent estimate, it costs at least $1 billion to add a new market). In October, the CEO of Access, the Alphabet division in charge of its gigabit broadband initiative, announced that the company would not expand beyond the nine cities in which it is already up and running and four where construction has already begun. The firm will now likely focus on using newer, less expensive wireless technologies to deliver high-speed Internet. But maybe it hasn’t been all for naught. As James Surowiecki argued in MIT Technology Review last June, Google’s broadband offerings have pushed private companies to improve their services by “forcing competition when regulators won’t.” Without Google, the quality of broadband options today might not be as high, he wrote. In that sense, Google provided a public good “whose spillover benefits are likely to be immense, and one that neither the government nor the private sector was doing much to deliver.”
Pebble  The rise and fall of Pebble coincided with the rise and fall of our interest in smart watches. The Kickstarter darling’s first watch shattered records in 2013 by raising $10 million, gave crowdfunding a much-needed success story, and helped inspire a resurgence in wrist-worn computers, which we called one of the 10 Breakthrough Technologies of that year. But back then MIT Technology Review’s Rachel Metz also warned that if smart watches didn’t become more versatile, they risked becoming “just another irritating gadget.” How true. Though Pebble released a few more watches, interest in smart watches waned, and Apple’s entry made it very tough to compete. This month, after being acquired by Fitbit, Pebble announced it would no longer exist and had stopped making or selling watches. In a “Dear Pebblers” letter, it did offer refunds for any dedicated backers still waiting for their newest watches.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
| 
0 comments:
Post a Comment