[thrush]

> In my opinion, Genius is not as compelling of a product to work on as they seem to think.

I guess it could be helpful to define what the product exactly is. Genius is a high traffic transactional site, so they probably have the same problems that any large site has. They're also incredibly text heavy, and I probably wouldn't being going too far if I said that they are striving to eventually have every piece of written text available. Looking at these two qualities alone, I feel that there is enough going on to make their product compelling to virtually any person that has done software engineering, applied statistics, machine learning, or read a book.

[thathonkey]

It started as a way of annotating rap lyrics to explain the content to the uninitiated. Unfortunately, many of these annotations are flat-out wrong (not to mention many of the subject matters are more or less open to interpretation). So right off the bat, the whole notion of calling the platform "Genius" is highly dubious, I feel. Not sure why they think that they can easily expand out into other mediums which will require more, not less, intense analytical thought, intimate knowledge about the subject, etc. as opposed to just being knowledgable about what mostly amounts to slang.

(Stackexchange would make a better Genius.com)

So the original product has now morphed into some sort of "global" annotation system for any kind of text (including literature, law, tech). I just feel like they will have a hard time attracting true experts in these subjects.

I guess I'm also just not a fan of the site's overall aesthetic. The design is very dark and cluttered. Not very inviting.

[tomlemon]

Also soon we're going to take our annotation technology to OTHER SITES! This will allow anyone to create annotations anywhere (and save us the trouble from copying EVERYTHING to Genius.com)