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Ridicule to Success

From an interview on ReadWriteWeb with Dens, this bit about the future of Foursquare:

The challenge isn't really that dissimilar than some of the growing pains and hazing that Twitter went through. For a long time, Twitter was "oh, it's just people tweeting what they had for lunch, or that they're going to the movies." That wasn't interesting for a lot of people.

Then they hit a moment that was a little bit of critical mass and a little bit of clarity, where people started using it to break news and share headlines and spread information. And that's when it started clicking for a lot of people.

It is reminiscent of Fred Wilson's post from a couple months ago, Mocked and Misunderstood, where he posits that the most ridiculed services could be the most successful. It's an over-simplification (hello, ChatRoulette), but there's definitely something to this.