Does Amazon make any significant revenue from Goodreads? I can see how it might be something that boosts their kindle sales but other than that they probably have a good reason not to focus on it like... because it isn't a business breadwinner. Why work on Goodreads when you can make more money on AWS? Does anyone really believe they are going to become the next hot social network because they nailed the market for people who read books in the most transparent/ community accessible way possible?
Also I want to give a bit more info about why rec.music.phish was special. Phish, like the Grateful Dead, allow people to record and distribute concert recordings as long as they didn't profit from it. So people would offer free "blanks and postage" deals to other people on rec.music.phish who would mail cassette tapes with return envelopes and get recordings of live concerts back in the mail a month later. That whole process is completely irrelevant now but it was a unifying fan experience that had real meaning to everyone involved. Going on a bittorrent site (bt.etree.org) doesn't compare in the development of meaningful relationships with total strangers even though it is far more efficient.
https://www.phantasytour.com is one of my favorites. Phish in particular has a very vibrant community, if you enjoy their music you can find lots of other people who are passionate about them on just about any social network. For people who are easily offended there is also a forum on phish.net that prefers to avoid hostile conversations. Phantasy Tour has a lot of obscene discussions that most people would find offensive but is tolerated on this forum.
Every comment submitted here is kept by Y Combinator and they own it in the same way facebook or "applebook" would own it, except they don't run ads. But if you were to apply to their accelerator they would use your comments to determine if they want to accept your business idea so there is definitely added value to them of your data being surrendered to them freely.
If the person who walks by did something memorable and unique then we do own that experience and it very much translates into meaningful data. If I was a witness to a crime happening on the street I can convey that information to the police or media as a witness. Even if it was something silly I witnessed it might make a good story to tell friends about. I own the decision to tell others or not.
The mobile app Whisper can be useful to some for finding friends although there are tons of creepy people who primarily use it to try to hook up with women so if you can tolerate occasionally dealing with that sort of behavior then you can anonymously chat with total strangers and potentially make friends from those conversations.
I'm not affiliated with Taproot, but am aware of them and that they have been successful with their model.
Taproot Foundation - WHAT WE DO: The Taproot Foundation connects nonprofits and social change organizations with passionate, skilled volunteers who share their expertise pro bono. Through our programs, business professionals deliver marketing, strategy, HR, and IT solutions that organizations need to achieve their missions. https://taprootfoundation.org/
What about entrepreneurs starting a business that is not yet profitable? Is that something the government doesn't care about or are the numbers just too small?
I have an application set up with Devise handling authentication for me and Devise allows me to create multiple accounts with the same email address. Considering how commonly used Devise is for setting up a site with Ruby on Rails, this is a huge open hole for a lot of websites who might not appreciate multiple user accounts tied to the same email.
http://www.taprootfoundation.org/ - If you live in New York City, Washington DC, Chicago, San Francisco, or Los Angeles this could be an option, as well as the sort of model for finding ways to help in your community. Although this is focused on nonprofit work not government work, I don't see why it wouldn't be just as rewarding.
Wouldn't these sorts of issues be solved more easily if the Gemfile listed specific versions of the gem dependencies? I don't like the idea of allowing a Rails app to just download whatever is the most recent version of a gem for this exact reason.
My top priority when working on a side project is to work on something meaningful to me in ways that a full time job don't allow. Both on the technology side of getting to use tools I don't use full time, and working for non-profits or other organizations that would not have the ability to hire someone like me full time.
Thanks for the link to Calagator. I have been looking for any sort of open source alternative to meetup and had not found anything. I really don't understand why there isn't anything comparable that is open source already. I've seen a few other software as a service companies that basically just mimic meetup's business model, but I am especially interested in seeing an open source alternative to meetup.
Installing software on a VPS is close enough to "putting a little skin in the game" and having any sort of social marketing strategy of your own takes real effort even if someone is not getting paid for doing it. The only compelling reasons for using meetup seem to be the marketing association to the meetup name and that there isn't any other comparable software that is primarily focused on face to face meetings.
It seems to me like meetup has its hands full with the magnitude of hosting so many organizations and having a smaller install base from an open source project would eliminate the scaling complexity and allow an open source project to not only compete as a cheaper alternative, but also innovate in ways meetup can't. There are so many features that I don't understand why meetup hasn't built into their site, especially since they are making money from every organization that is hosted on their site.
There are so many other methods of advertizing outside of Meetup that I don't think that using Meetup is the greatest marketing tool ever. If I were trying to organize a group of people, I don't know that I would especially want to target other people who already use meetup for other meetings. I would rather recruit on the basis of whatever the focus of the organization is. There is a lot of scarcity of meetups outside of major cities too. It is sort of like Craigslist in that regard. I think it would be especially compelling to launch a site around a given community and use that brand to promote meetings, sort of like how people use ravelry to communicate with fellow knitters.