I'm 27 and identify more with the over-30s. Then again I've never really grokked the new wave of smartphone-based social media. I never use Twitter, I deactivated my Facebook, and I consume 99% of my internet time at a desktop computer.

I feel like an old fogie and like I'm missing out on something. I like text messages and wish everyone would go back to using AIM -- it worked better than most social communication apps do now.

I agree with you there: AIM was great and more solid than many of the new services.

I'm still a bit puzzled as to how re-inventing instant messaging (WhatsApp) can be the hot new thing worth billions of dollars.

Wow, that's the first time I've heard of Venmo!

Personally, I prefer to keep my phone and my banking completely separate. Actually, the only "important" account I log into on my phone is my email. Anything else? I'll just wait until I get home or go to work.

I personally enjoy this comment the best:

> venmo is great also because it is sort of a social network too, like you have to put in a sort of “memo” field and so you see a news feed of what your friends paid each other for

Um... WHY? I don't see why I should care? I guess that's just part of an over sharing culture.

Here comes the old fogie... If I owe someone money I just give them cash. What's wrong with cash? I hope cash isn't going the way of the personal check... (which, hilariously, I still use personal checks)

Perhaps it has to do with individualism? My friends and I operate on a more informal method. If Joe bought the cab then John pays for the beers. Then Jake pays at the next place or the next time. This isn't stated or organized in advance, just everyone seems to go by it by default.

I personally set all my Venmo payments to private - but it does offer a very slight form of entertainment giving the news feed a quick scroll whenever I make a payment. It's certainly not something I check unless I'm already using the app though. Funny to see "John paid Christy for 'Moldy cheeseburgers'" or whatever your friends come up with.

The actual use of it is absolutely amazing though. When I needed to pay my sister for my share of our parents anniversary gift I was out backpacking in Europe, it took all of 5 seconds to send her the money across seas from my bank account and for her to receive it.

I'm not a venmo user, but it reminds me of the ease of money transfer that my circle of friends had when we were all big time into playing online poker. We used the simple and free money xfer systems to pay each other back for heaps of things.

Then of course the US decided that online poker was evil and it all went to hell :(

Who cares about social? It's convenient to be able to pay people electronically. You can turn sharing on and off.

Sure there's a generation gap on privacy, but that's totally tangential to value the service has.