It’s great to go to sleep just as America’s news cycle starts up. It means I wake up to a world full of hot takes about silly bad pieces of new tech.
So, Peeple.
Peeple looks like Ello to me.
That is to say: It looks like a pre-failed concept that will appear with a loud proclamation of what it can do, fail to gain legitimacy, and then collapse while the people responsible for it move on to Other Investments.
That legitimacy is the issue. Because I cannot see how this service would ever earn any. I mean who would ever look at Peeple and think ‘this crowdsourced information source is reliable?’ You need a certain sense of momentum. You need some sort of test, some way to actually persist rather than just struggle to exist.
My prediction is Peeple will last for a long time but its entire lifespan will be marked by its creators assuming that tomorrow, tomorrow is the day people take them seriously. Oh they’ll get money, quite a lot, and a lot of Dan Fransiscos will appreciate their services – but it’s like M Night Shyamalan – we give these people money, because we always give them money, and Silicon Valley is awful at knowing what to do with money.