I think a more interesting question is what sort of responsibility Gowalla founders had to its employees. I've noticed that a good number of employees aren't staying on with the Facebook transition (by my count, only a small minority are going on to Palo Alto). Maybe they had better offers elsewhere, but considering some people are opting for uncertainty / unemployment, my speculation is that they got the short end of the stick with this one.
I use Facebook to administer our business page on there. We have 70K+ users, and we get a lot of spam that is not automatically filtered out. I'm on there a lot cleaning things up.
Otherwise, I don't really add any content to Facebook much considering how often I log in. Most of my friends (professionals in their mid to late 30s) have more or less stopped using it, except for women with small children.
Thanks! I write them all myself, but I use a lot self-written software at this point to streamline the writing process. And yes, 100% ad based. Adsense actually probably pays us the most we could get for our traffic with the least amount of intrusion.
Exactly. If I look at the recommended friends page, people who defriended me are often near the top (probably because of the high number of mutual friends).
I started Blogthings.com (a personality quiz site) in 2004 by myself, and I've never had a job while working in it. It makes enough money for both my husband and I to live off of, and we split the work on it, which ends up just being a few hours a week (no more than 10). I spend my free time working on my programming / math and figuring out what's next.
I totally agree about the increased noise making discoverability worse. In fact, I have spent very little time on any of the new sites we're talking about just due to sheer exhaustion from market oversaturation. And that's crazy, because I'm probably their ideal customer.They definitely aren't reaching me, and they should be.
I tend to agree with you about curation versus AI, but I am not 100% sure. Years ago I was skeptical that collaborative filtering would ever work at all. As the poster below notes, it does pretty well for Netflix and sometimes for Amazon too. I could at least imagine some sort of AI recommendation system working for the masses, but I doubt it would ever appeal to the highest end customers.
"In fashion, trust me, that are MANY problems that need to be solved: a highly antiquated supply chain, non-standard, un-linked computer systems, non-standard sizing that varies even within the same line, inefficient pricing methods."
I don't see why internet fashion companies couldn't take a crack at solving / mitigating at least some of these. For example, there are some sites (like zafu.com - no affiliation) that help women find jeans that fit. They can't change the sizes on the jeans, but I'm not holding my breath for the fashion industry to make sizing any easier any time soon.
I also disagree with her claim that discoverability is not a problem. A lot of people are trying to solve it, but I don't consider it solved for myself (or other women I know). I find the choices in women's fashion to be overwhelming (to say the least), and I'm still looking for the more efficient ways to find clothes I like.
I agree with her overall point that the number of trendy affiliate fashion sites is getting tiresome, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't be developed in interesting ways. It may be true that affiliate sites need to sell a ton more in order to compete with "click-and-mortar" fashion companies, but I'd argue that affiliate sites can also be more innovative, flexible, and forward thinking. If you're not shipping or manufacturing, you can iterate more quickly.
I haven't gotten my hands on this book yet, but his talk was probably the best thing I saw at SXSW this year. I personally find design to be a hard nut to crack, but the way he thinks is appealing to my very logic-y brain.
I agree, but I don't think that the original poster was claiming to have a conclusive picture. He had a few observations from the first two weeks, and I'm arguing that they were valid. Was it a good idea to act on them so quickly? Possibly. In my experience, (nine years of running the same business) intuition is sometimes enough.
I disagree. The most successful entrepreneurs learn quickly and iterate quickly. You usually can learn something in two weeks - even if it's just that certain language you use is unclear or a turn off. And that's a start.
Wow! Impressive first two weeks. It seems to me that you're doing a lot right here. I like how you sum up your business ("We let nonprofits setup a good-looking, donation-enabled website in about 1-2 minutes."), and if I were a website-less non-profit, I would be very interested.
I clicked over to your site, and your design blew me away. You really build authority with it, but also keep things fun, lighthearted, and modern.
A couple suggestions:
- You might want to test telling people they don't pay you fees after the first X they receive in monthly donations (around $1333, right? maybe make that an even $1000) as opposed to the maximum they pay you in fees. My marketing copywriting intuition tells me that may be clearer / more compelling than people having to do the math themselves. It also gives them a more tangible goal to shoot for and story to tell themselves. ("I'm sure we can get over $X a month, and the service is basically free after that!")
- Possibly test a more prominent mention of Facebook / Twitter integration on the front page (to the point that you don't have to click or mouseover to see it). I have a feeling that these features are pretty important to non-profits, especially ones who aren't savvy enough to have a good web presence yet. I'm not sure - again, probably I would just test it out.
I understand that people get nervous when the pressure is on, but I can't believe how many times I thought to myself, "Answer the damn question!"
This whole video served as a reminder to me to slow down, listen to what people are asking you, and give a thoughtful response. I'm not claiming I'd do any better in this sort of situation, but the amount of marketing speak coming from most of these guys' mouths was practically dehumanizing to PG and Harj.
Seeing that they probably would have never beat Foursquare, I'm glad that they are continuing to iterate. I have to say that I'm a bit skeptical about this new product. It seems a bit murky conceptually, and I'm not sure if travel is the right industry for them to be putting their bets on.
I met a lot of diehard Gowalla fans during SXSW at their party, and they seemed much more keyed into the gaming / object collection aspects of the service. Bottom line - I think a lot of these superfans (many of whom traveled on their own dime to the party) will probably feel alienated by this new app. Gowalla will probably have to find a whole new market, which may not be the worst thing but won't be the easiest either.
No matter what, I think Gowalla has a huge uphill battle to climb. They haven't even really been able to build much excitement here in Austin (even among people I know who are addicted to social media). I think their design and UI is top notch, but they seem to be missing whatever makes consumers super excited.
My story is just like your story except that each time something didn't work, I took a few days or weeks off and then tried another site. And another. And another. It took dozens of ideas until I found a business that worked for me.
Take the lessons you learned and start again. Sooner rather than later. You'll probably fail again too, but eventually you'll stumble upon something that clicks. The key is refusing to give up.
Perseverance is much more important than any idea, programming language, or system of doing things. People who get it all right on the first or second try aren't skilled entrepreneurs. They're just lucky.