OK, this is tangential to your post and the OP but … using Groupon as an example of anything other than shell games and Ponzi schemes strikes me as more than a little bit naïve.
I think you may have misunderstood. I wasn't agreeing with the OP. And I wouldn't be naïve to recognize that Groupon is in the business of selling. There are a lot of skeletons in the closet for MySpace as well (their cursor icons that you downloaded in the 90s would be labelled as spyware today since they snooped on users and sold the information). I am not discounting that, but if the OP is to say that our solution to our stagnation is to simply "make software more meaningful" and has an Amy Hoy quote to back up his claim, then I would have to respectfully disagree with some examples below:
From YC's recent batch, sure, we've got Makr.io and ReelSurfer that would be classified as "startup porn" by the OP, but you cannot discount Double, Dreamforge, Coco Controller are in the business of selling, addressing customer's pain points and actually being meaningful to its users. Customers are not naïve. His gross oversimplication of the startup industry by quoting Pinterest as dumbification of society is what bothers me.
OK, thanks for the clarification. On my bad days, I crabbily agree with the OP's general contention that the software startup industry is cramped and largely idea-poor. Most of the time, though, yeah. It's a pants argument.
