Vidly: Twitvid.io (YC S08) Changes Names, Direction, And Gets Funding | Hacker News Reader

Vidly: Twitvid.io (YC S08) Changes Names, Direction, And Gets Funding

techcrunch.com

32 pointsdrm23711 comments

Definitely deserves props for persistence and constant iteration. Perhaps they have cracked the secret of getting TechCrunch coverage: Just keep changing your name!

Feb 25, 2009: Fliggo Launch http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/25/y-combinator-startup-fl...

May 21, 2009: Fliggo -> TwitVid.io http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/21/twitvid-wants-to-be-the...

Aug 28, 2009: TwitVid.io -> Vidly http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/28/vidly-twitvidio-changes...

If I were competing with vid.ly, bit.ly or any of the other ly's, I think my main strategy would be to post material guaranteed to offend Libyan national pride without offending American sensibilities, and see if I could provoke a ruckus. The reliance on geopolitically shaky TLDs is bound to bite someone eventually.

If I were competing with vid.ly, bit.ly, or any of the other ly's... I would quit, and try something with a business model next time.

It's remarkable that an entire business ecosystem can exist around Twitter's inability to get simple features right.

Why would anyone use them instead of Posterous? Posterous is dead simple, allows me to share all media, and autoposts way more places. It's basically a direct subset of Posterous's features.

let me tell you a story. i wanted to post some images and videos of a new game i was playing. i looked at tumblr and posterous, two platforms i'd never used before. i've also never uploaded images or videos before, either.

i chose tumblr because it looked cooler... posterous is plain and the managing of posts and accounts--at least through their website--is confusing as hell. i still don't know how to delete blogs or my account, and it always took me a handful of extra clicks to figure out how to post a new entry.

this was for Salamander Wrestling, btw: http://salamanderwrestling.tumblr.com

then i wanted to start a development blog for my startup. i stuck to posterous this time, the blog being more of a writing thing, and because tumblr doesn't have comments out of the box (i've since hooked up disqus to salamanderwrestling).

i'm not comfortable using email to make posts. what i want is a powerful markup language (read: pretty prints code) with elegant markup (read: not html).

posterous just didn't cut it for me. things looked...plain and yellow...and i couldn't save drafts. i'd be happy to use emacs to write markup blog posts, but because posterous only allows rich text or html i have to use their web editor.

i switched to wordpress while writing my second post. wordpress makes me feel safe and comfortable. my posts are autosaved. i can upload images. it has themes.

each platform has its niche. here are some reasons why someone wouldn't use posterous (i really tried, though. i'm still rooting for you guys.)

I 2nd you. The only thing I've consistently been able to use Posterous or Tumblr is for my photo blog. The iPhone to blog feature is just awesome.

Yet, for anything else, even for the simplest of blog entries, there comes an occasion you HAVE to post something a little advanced. With both Posterous and Tumblr you end up hitting a wall. I can understand their perspective too: they want to keep it dead simple. But I'm also hoping one day that they can build an obscure page somewhere with all the advance features generally found in a typical wordpress blog.

Interesting.. Today I just got an email that TweetLater is rebranding themselves as SocialOomph: http://www.socialoomphblog.com/

Personally, I think these new names are terrible. Are these signs that the honeymoon with Twitter is over?

The new logo reminds me of something. Vidly for Vendetta?

I didn't get it at first, but you're right; it's uncanny.

http://www.paulgraham.com/saynotes.html (footnote 8), and:

http://www.paulgraham.com/vwfront.html

Leo Laporte is going around shooting people using the word twit? Wow, he sure lucked out with the advent of Twitter and its lexicon.

Edit: Leo Laporte actually has rights to the trademark “TWiT” in relation to audio-visual performances. So, anything that’s outside of the realm of video are not a valid target for him.

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