I think most have missed the point of the massive upside of aggregating Facebook data. Sure the initial experiment may have selected some low value categories, however the site shows the technology works. Is anyone here using twitter or Facebook data for commercial purposes?
A lot of good points in this article. The main elements that stand out are:
An idea isn't everything. You don't just think up an idea and incorporate. You need to build a genuine business model that warrants going through the incorporation pain. Get serious. Only start the paperwork if you are committed to pursuing the idea into a business.
Craigslist, Plenty Of Fish plus some others are examples of sites that took a really minimalist approach to design but managed to pull in a massive market share through fulfilling a customer need. Revenue from advertising paid the bills.
We wrote about ugly design before, how in some cases it actually increases conversion rates. It's odd but sometimes ugly is beautiful...
> "Blogging mistake #1: Not prominently linking to your main site
> Blogging mistake #2: Not integrating with social properties
> Blogging mistake #3: Making it harder to subscribe to, and regularly follow, your blog
> Blogging mistake #4: Only blogging about product announcements
> Blogging mistake #5: Hiding what your product is about"
Agree in part to these but blogging and social media are overplayed. Building and integrating all these elements, and building a sufficient & quality following is tough work.
These tips certainly point novices in the right direction, but even doing these well doesn't mean you will succeed - at blogging or at your startup.
In a recent fictional book about poverty in the UK, two types if poverty were identified.
One was unintentional poverty- someone falls into trouble due to no fault of their own. Maybe illness, trauma etc
The other is intentional- individuals taking full advantage of government benefits. In the UK generations of families have been stuck in this category.
It's a great story however skeptical of these retrospective views. I wonder how much of her motives were driven by protecting the mortgage holders and the economy; or protecting her career prospects.
Saying this, Hunt seems much more deserving than the former banker in this article:
1- When logged in comments and submissions (by logged in user) should be highlighted in a distinctive colour.
2- Comment karma should be shown publicly rather than privately. ie each comment should show value.
3- Comments within a thread should be able to be sorted by comment score.
4- Submitted links for same news stories should share karma points. Several times you submit the same story only to see someone else collect karma hours later.
5- Increase transparency on how comments ranking works.
6- Increase transparency on max submissions and comments allowable per day.
People always dismissed it, when I told them - if only I was born x years earlier I would have graduated at the start of the boom cycle. I would have landed a high paying role out of college/Uni and earned enough cash by the end of the cycle to see me through the bust years. With the work experience I would have a better chance competing against new grads. Considering the value of money etc, benefiting from a 2/3 boom cycle could put you well ahead financially.
While this is rather simplistic and exceptions to the rule, timing can make one hell of a difference.
> Why are Rails people so obsessed with accelerating the trivial?
From a Rails beginner perspective...
Having spent days trying to get Rails up and running on a Windows box, this product looks absolutely awesome.
Even the so called out of the box solutions still needs hours of customization. Every new release of Rails means starting from scratch with limited documentation.
Anyone who has struggled with installing Rails on Windows, then finding a decent IDE, installing all the other packages etc etc will appreciate being able to get to that point in 60 seconds via their browser.
I am sure some Rails experts and Mac Users may disagree but getting started in Rails takes a lot of effort.
This post basically summarises the challenge with any idea. I have a great idea BUT.... It will take time, effort, money, the market place, the code, the people etc
And claims of billion dollars are typically baseless. Anyone would commit 10 years to a project if it would be worth a billion at the end.
So appreciate the authors musing on the next big thing, the problems described are the day dreams of any entrepreneur.
Sites look similar, but how different is this from using the same Hacker News orange colour scheme and aggregating stories directly from Hacker News?
"Hacker Monthly is a print magazine version of Hacker News — a social news website wildly popular among programmers and startup founders. The submission guidelines state that content can be “anything that gratifies one’s intellectual curiosity.” Every month, we select from the top voted articles on Hacker News and print them in magazine format."
> "Another example: the Internet usage of depressive people tended to exhibit high “flow duration entropy” — which often occurs when there is frequent switching among Internet applications like e-mail, chat rooms and games."
Surely most people switch between applications and mediums? If not, then I fall within the 'depressive' category. Dual monitors plus smart phones and an iPad don't help things.
I like Ash and his approach to lean but this recent post feels like overkill. The lean canvas (based on the business development model) was meant to simplify planning and decision making, not make it complex and time consuming.
I would have googled "three horizontal lines" but interesting post nevertheless. From the maths prospective;
" A symbol with three horizontal line segments ( ) resembling the equals sign is used to denote both equality by definition (e.g., means is defined to be equal to ) and congruence (e.g., means 13 divided by 12 leaves a remainder of 1--a fact known to all readers of analog clocks)."