I first tried out something like this in the early 1990s at VPL Research - one of the originators of the VR industry. They had a visual programming language called Body Electric for controlling how things behaved in VR. Some details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22788773
I interned at VPL Research[1] in 1992 and they had a Mac-based VPL for controlling objects in VR called Body Electric[2] that was really fun to use - especially since I'd never seen anything like it. I implemented gravity for objects and a virtual arm using it. If I remember correctly, debugging could be a challenge. It was later interfaced with Macromedia Director[3] to control desktop apps.
"For instance, Secret’s failure to quickly address the bullying on its network eventually led to its downfall." - this is pure conjecture being presented as fact...
There's a great documentary by Greg Maletic called "Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball" - http://www.tilt-movie.com/ - highly recommended, and it blows my mind that he made the whole thing himself.
"Do they know they're competing in the wrong race, and that the right race is not office space or number of employees, but revenue growth?"
Exactly. I would add "... or amount of money raised, or number of customers, or networking events attended, or conferences spoken at, or product features added, or mentions in the press."
I still think there's a lot of room to do something interesting with social and mobile on the spectrum of Real Identity (Facebook) <-----> "Complete" Anonymity (Whisper).
Yik Yak and After School have taken a small step to the left by focusing on specific geographic areas (schools) and that has worked well - a community centered around a shared context/life experience. Secret also took a step to the left with the "Friend" and "Friend of a Friend" concept - one which was ultimately unsuccessful, I think because it threatened to pierce the veil of anonymity, so many people didn't feel safe posting their real "scandalous" content.
And of course with all of the anonymous apps you have the problem of bad behavior. So far we've seen community solutions to this (flagging, downvoting, karma - like here, Reddit, Yik Yak) and company solutions (moderating with 100 people in the Philippines, like Secret and Whisper - http://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/). It would be interesting to think if there might be others.
So the current "anonymish" apps have started from the right (anonymous by default) and either stayed there or moved to the left a bit. One of the things I've been thinking about recently is what would happen if you started from the left (Real Identity/FB) and moved to the right? Would the outcome be any better? I'm actually going to try it out and see with a new mobile app I've been working on - http://www.IAmOffTheClock.com
And as for them taking money off the table in their funding round - good for them. They weighed their offers and took one that eliminated their risk while giving the company enough cash to grow and still giving them a chance for a big payday. If Secret had hit it big, that would have been a very expensive $3M they took off the table. Investors wanted more stock, founders wanted some small amount of liquidity, and at the time everybody was happy, everyone believed, the graphs were all up and to the right, and nobody had a perfect crystal ball.
