Episode I of Chris Dixon’s Founder Stories interview with Scott Heiferman‘s concluded with Heiferman giving Dixon some of his thoughts on the future of social media. In this episode, Dixon, who is a light Facebook user, seems mildly surprised that Heiferman is a Facebook fan—mentioning privacy as one reason why.
Heiferman tells Dixon Facebook makes “great product (Dixon agrees) … it’s an elegant beautiful product and what else matters?” He then adds, “I don’t trust people in our industry who don’t use Facebook” saying “it’s the soul of how hundreds of millions of people are really experiencing their first time of participating online.” However, as the two round out their conversation Heiferman also expresses doubts that Facebook will maintain its dominance indefinitely.
Their discussion weaves into the topic of the singularity. Heiferman suggests that “the real singularity is when everyone on the planet has a phone and is connected and is on Facebook or however that social networking happens, and what gets unleashed when that happens, we can’t even imagine.”
In the video below, Dixon switches topics and inquires about Meetup’s origins. Heiferman tells Dixon after 9/11 he read Bowling Alone and was inspired to find a way for people to connect and trust one another. Living in what he calls “a coarser, nastier world” Heiferman says Meetup is designed to show folks that “there are people in your neighborhood who would be really damn helpful to you” so “you all should meet up and meet up regularly and a community can emerge.”
Watch both videos for additional insights, along with episode I of Heiferman’s interview. Past episodes of Founder Stories including interviews with Dustin Moskovitz, Kevin Ryan, Christopher Poole and Dennis Crowley are here.
Episode III is coming up.
Scott Heiferman is a Co-Founder and CEO of Meetup, the world’s largest network of local community groups. Over 50,000 Meetups (self-organized community events) happen each week. Millions of people in over more than 100 countries “use the internet to get off the internet” using Meetup, which is built on the idea that every town needs support groups, playgroups, bookclubs, business circles, running groups, community action groups, etc. Previously, Heiferman co-founded Fotolog, a photo sharing network where over 30...
Chris Dixon is a Partner at and co-founder of Founder Collective. He is also a contributing writer for TechCrunch. He previously was the CEO and Co-founder of SiteAdvisor, which was acquired by McAfee, and Hunch, which was acquired by eBay. In addition to his work with Founder’s Collective, Chris is a personal investor in early-stage technology companies, including Skype, TrialPay, DocVerse, Invite Media, Gerson Lehrman Group, ScanScout, OMGPOP, BillShrink, Oddcast, Panjiva, Knewton, and a handful of other startups that...
Meetup is a local community organizing network that makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face. Over 9.5 million people have created and joined long-lasting local Meetup Groups around shared interests and purposes. A Meetup starts somewhere on the planet every 13 seconds. Meetup’s mission is to revitalize local community and help people around the world self-organize. Meetup believes that people can change their personal world, or...
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