What I like about Slingshot is that it gives me little slices of people's lives, like Twitter did in the early days, and now no longer can because we all follow too many people.

If you want to understand products like this, you have to go through the steps. It's not apparent at first how it will evolve. The lack of apparency is what makes it evolve in interesting ways. At first, the people have no idea what to do with it, but you have to post something or you can't participate. So, at first, people just take pictures of the nearest thing at hand. A coffee cup. A kid. Lots of dogs!

But then you're out and about and you see something outside your usual environment. It becomes one of your Slingshot tokens. I do it, and I can see other people doing it too.

It's good for early-adopter types. People who dismissed it are missing something. Just like Secret, btw, which ebbs and flows. Sometimes it stagnates, or gets caught in a certain way. Then boom, another door opens, and we're trying out new ideas.

I love platforms that attract early adopter types. That's why it took me so long to glom on to Facebook, because it was already established before I got a chance to play. Which is kind of ironic, because I was on the Harvard campus, with a valid identity, to be one of the first people that used Facebook when it started up. But I was miles away, figuratively, booting up my own network of bloggers and podcasters.

PS: I'm always a contributor on early systems. I like that I get to hear from people I love who usually stay silent on these systems. Makes me feel like I'm getting more for my effort.