We're making the world a better place...

A few days ago, Ron posted about the Social Media app Periscope, which allows you to live stream your life anywhere you are connected to your cellular network.  I've heard about Periscope before, but my impression of it was always that it was a dumb thing that people used a dumb reason, like livestreaming going to Taco Bell (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfDyQ3gh9tg).  So imagine my surprise when Ron is discussing that the stated purpose of Periscope is to allow you to see the world from a different perspective.  To the world through new eyes.  But its just a livestreaming application.  Maybe there are some cool uses (as Ron outlines), but it seems like those aspirations of making the world a better place were glued on to make the product seem more important.

This reminds me a lot of the HBO show Silicon Valley (I haven't finished season 2 yet, so no spoilers).  In the first scene of the show, a tech startup CEO get up on a stage and states that “We’re making the world a better place through constructing elegant hierarchies for maximum code reuse and extensibility.” It's an utterly ridiculous statement, but one that seems pierce the ridiculousness of so many social media apps and tech startup. I could easily imagine the CEO of Periscope doing the exact same thing. I've grown to love the show because it pokes fun at all the stupid stuff that comes out of the Web 2.0 era.  For example, in another episode, a character creates an app whose only function is to send the word "Bro" to other people.  I recently discovered that that app actually exists ("Yo"), and is fairly popular. 

But this leads me to wonder the reasons that people create new social media tools to begin with.  Do people generally create something that they think is cool, and then try to attach some larger meaning onto it?  Or do Web 2.0 creators, like the creators of Periscope, really want to find solutions to the worlds problem?  The answer is obviously a little of both, but based on what I've experience, there are more people trying to staple meaning and purpose onto tools than you might think.