you're right technically I was threatened with a lawsuit which I mentioned in the first line of the article but it didn't make any sense to elongate the title to make the distinction.
Haha "or your mother-in-law coming to live with you." I enjoyed that. I agree for the most part there are a small number of things worth panicking about.
I completely agree. Not to be too self promoty because thats what we are aiming for at my site www.varely.com but I think everything can be better through more people expressing themselves. There are so many different experiences that we've all gone through and we should be sharing those. In my cases it can help people so much just by knowing people have gone through situations that you have.
For selfish reasons being a good writer and communicating well lets you expose your true talents and intelligence. I honestly think evaluating someone through their writing for the most part can be a more effective test than looking at a persons resume. Anyone can bring a resume and hit all the write points but writing well lets you communicate your interests and passions. You can really show how passionate you are about a subject and how well you an articulate your ideas. In start ups I think thats one of the most important things and in general its valuable.
I also agree when you say you are going to write you conduct your life as if you are going to write. I think it makes you a little more present in your situations because you realize that you want to take note of life. You want to recognize the small things in life that may go unnoticed but are significant.
That definitely is a monetization route and incentive that we've considered using to attain users. Going forward with a larger user base that is definitely something we can pursue. The goal is first to get to that user base because obviously now that is the difficult part. Our main concern now is gaining traction and a following. Thanks for the idea, I appreciate the help.
That definitely does help, I appreciate the tips. As far as the Why Varely sentence at the top of the page do you mean like the home page where the content is you think it should be at the top there?
I was torn between doing that or just leading with the content to peak interest and then having them inquire more about the concept. Thanks for the help!
yeah I agree I need to create more incentives, like you've mentioned I have more coming in the future but the difficult part seems to be to get the following necessary to make those things possible.
I would say some of the benefit, and again this comes more with scale is that the content will be arranged mainly in two ways being by popularity and newest which when compared to reddit is similar though the culture for reddit is more of posting links and discussing other peoples content where I'd like original content on Varely. Definitely do need to think of clearer incentives.
Also the topics are just popular ones but you can post about anything you'd like and tag your post with it. I should also clear that up too. I really appreciate the feedback!
TheFacebook also had no idea what a large social network they could become and never had the expectations to be what they are now. App.net is mirror itself off Twitter so they obviously know how big its possible to grow. Also TheFacebook was using exclusivity as a motivator to get people to join and request the service for their schools. App.net isn't exclusive its just a paid service and since its not a luxury item its not something people will pay for just for the sake of paying.
The ads are sponsored tweets, if you are using an extension like adblock then you probably don't see them but regardless they are very unobtrusive ads that don't pose much of a nuisance.
The argument is that App.net has a business model that isn't going to work, not that it has a business model at all. A business model doesn't guarantee revenue, here is a business model I am going to sell rubberbands for $1000 a piece and it only costs me $.05 to make them. Great business model but that isn't going to get many people to buy. This is a very niche product that will work if the expectations are kept in check and they understand what they have is a niche product. There is nothing wrong with having such a product you just have to make sure your goals are aligned with that. I wouldn't consider myself the average user for these services (Twitter, Facebook) at all as my knowledge on tech is far beyond the normal user and I have absolutely no issues with the way these services are monetizing. The average consumer who uses the services couldn't care less about the ads nor would they pay anywhere near the amount being proposed.
Something that you're forgetting to consider in your analysis is that while Instagram is a mobile first company right now, there is demand and a place for them to have a stronger web presence. There have been other media outlets to speculate on this topic but obviously before the acquisition they did not have the resources to dedicate time to a better web experience. Now that they will be given significantly more resources they will now be able to deliver such an experience. As you've noted web advertising is far more effective of a method and therefore will be an area for revenue generation. Instagram would also have the possibility of creating a platform for people to sell their photos or have them made into art like other companies do right now. Things like promoted pictures could be implemented much more easily to work with brands. In the same way that Facebook generates a primary amount of its revenue while leaving mobile untouched for the time being I believe the same can be done for Instagram. Mobile is the bread and butter for Instagram and still will be as it continues forward but a web based experience can greatly help the company both grow its user base and grow revenue.
Yeah older employees do tend to be more skilled thats why I specifically said older employees who were not skilled leave the workforce, obviously people who don't exist under this umbrella are highly skilled computer programmers that work at Google, of course in their situation it is better to be older.
Is this the new natural unemployment rate? No. Is the unemployment rate ever going to return back to 5-6%, highly unlikely. Yes, similar things were said after every revolution like the industrial revolution or the invention of agriculture but what you have to realize is that once we got over those job issues they didn't simply vanish. With more and more efficiency from these revolutions comes more and more difficulties for the common worker who has no particular skill set. The real issue that this latest recession displayed is that people who are running these small businesses and even large corporations alike have learned what running "lean" really means. They have now realized their most bare essentials to make it through these hard economic times and now that the bar has been set it will be incredibly difficult to lift it to the previous level.
I had a discussion with a Fixed Income Desk Manager when I visited MorganStanley a few months back about this very issue and we both agreed that companies will never return to the previous level of employment. The job market is fundamentally changing and this idea that everyone has that jobs are around the corner I feel is naive. Could their possibly be an uptick in highly skilled areas of the market? I think so but besides those areas I think unskilled laborers are in for a difficult time. There will always be room in the economy for people that can do hands on jobs because somethings cannot be left up to technology alone i.e. construction or landscaping but beside these things we are moving towards a more skilled society and I think the only way the economy improves is if older unskilled workers eventually leave the job market and make way for younger more technologically savvy employees.
The cool argument is the wrong way to go with why Google+ will fail. The real value that Facebook provides is information. Free and open information about anyone and while some people view this as an invasion of privacy they are kidding themselves. The reason Facebook has become so addictive is because of the things you can find out about people, different people who aren't necessarily your friends. I understand that people have this idea that they only want to share things with their friends and there is an easy and simple way to do that on Facebook, only add your friends. In reality we don't want to or really we don't mind that people who aren't our closest friends know the things about us we put on Facebook. Facebook's lack of "privacy" is its most valuable asset not only to their own business model but to their user base as well. As someone in another comment said its the college kids that push the adoption of sites like this and from my own perspective and that of people I know, Facebook's privacy issues have never been the big deal they are portrayed as by the media. Google+ is shooting themselves in the foot by focusing on creating "real friendships" and closed information circles because in reality the reason many people like Facebook is because of the openness it inspires.
A feature that I've seen a lot of the media cover as well, Hangouts, is one that while useful in certain situations I think displays how Google is missing the overall concept of social networking. Hangouts is a great feature if you're in a pinch and need to for some reason host a multi-person video chat but so is oovoo, another group video chatting fad. Its a feature that while nice is not a hook for many people and really doesn't relate to the overall theme of social networking. Social networking's goal is not to create the most realistic online portrayal of your life. It's really, from the perspective of the company, to make managing your network of friends easier and make connecting with them easier and more efficient. Video chatting is not the most efficient way to manage these relationships and is not a unique way to conduct it either as there are many video chatting services that are widely adopted such as Skype. While video is still an important part of our lives with streaming content and live broadcasts, in the sense of the video chatting it is more closely relatable to the phone call which we all know is not favored today like the text message. Which should tell Google something, we as consumers don't want "real relationships" on our social networking site. We want like the text message to have our social network be an efficient and fast way of sharing information, something Facebook has mastered.
Overall Google+ does not bring a bad platform as much as it brings an unnecessary platform to the table. Could there be a cult following by older people who want to strictly share content with their family members? Possibly but more likely than not I see this idea getting a long for a while on its Google name and then folding. The best application I see for Google+ would be a simple collaboration tool for small businesses through the use of group chat and video chat along with the rest of Google Apps.
I read an article pertaining to a similar topic to this about why, for the most part, all the services that Google offers the public are free and it really is the fact that Google, at its heart, is a marketing firm first. Every feature they offer you is designed not to generate profit so much as it is to keep you with them. By giving away their services for free it obviously increases their brand name, encourages brand loyalty, but also levels the playing field. They set the bar by offering these services for free. No one will pay for a service that is at least comparably offered for free. For this reason if Google makes gmail free then every other website has to offer their mail services for free, the same goes with Google Calendars, and all of the other apps they offer. Why would they want everyone to offer their apps for free? Because then the difference between them and Yahoo or Bing or any other site is on marketing abilities and few companies in the world come close to challenging Google's marketing capabilities.
The difficulty I see here, if you're not incorporating officially, is that you are assigning equity on future actions that neither of you know what the value will be. What I mean by that is that say for instance he is given 60% equity with the idea in mind that he will do x amount of work. If three months down the road you think he's not doing x amount will you feel satisfied in giving this type of equity. I understand you do not want to be taken advantage of in this scenario as much of the benefit from a start up is gained in the equity but attempting to decide the equity decision so early on especially if neither of you is bringing something particularly unique and/or valuable to the equation is difficult. For that reason I agree with your partner in that you are probably better of waiting until later on to decide the equity split. As long as you have the general agreement that you are both in a partnership and are going to execute on whatever idea I believe the equity question will more or less work itself out as the work is completed.