717 karma · joined October 3, 2010
The only alternative is to apply to the Partner Program, which will likely be denied given LI's history.
We're always happy to see more companies set up shop in this space. It helps to keep us on our toes.
At first blush, it seems that EveryoneAPI is focused primarily on phone numbers. Conversely, our focus with FullContact is much more in line with social profile and public social data. Though you certainly can query the FullContact Person API via a phone number, that's never been our primary focus.
With relation to the comment about speed, it's worth noting that greater than 95% of Person API queries are returned in 30ms or less. But to the end user, depending upon where they are hosted, network latency can play a large role in the actual response time, which is a factor for any http based API traffic.
Like EveryoneAPI, we prefer to compete on merit rather than slinging mud. If you have a project that you're building, I'd love to see how we can help. Our APIs are always free to get started, so you can see your results before ever having to pay.
We love Vibe. It's a great app and carries a lot of the same features. I think that the advantage of using FullContact for Gmail is being able to interact with your FullContact address book, and then automatically sync that information back to your Google Contacts. But ultimately, it's whatever works best for you. We know that the Vibe team shares our passion for making you awesome with people, and we're happy that they're making great products.
As for how we compare? That's a matter of personal preference.
While I like Evernote a lot, and use it daily, it's just not where I want to store my contacts. Nothing about that makes sense to me. My contacts need to be where they're the most accessible, from the device that I'm going to use to get in touch with them.
I don't use a CRM, but if I did, I'd want to scan cards into it because that's where it makes sense for those contacts to live. I'd want to segment them and I'd want to pull them into my phone when I needed them. None of these things are easy to do when you use Evernote as your repository. It's great for being your "second brain", but not so great for being your phone book.
Because we use real people to transcribe the cards, we found that we were having trouble with accuracy when the cards are in languages other than English. As such, we flagged the app to countries that have English the primary language.
As we scale the app, we're going to enable more countries. But right now we wanted to make sure that we're providing the best possible experience, even if that means to a smaller base of users.
Very sorry for the inconvenience.
As to your second point, sure, we'd love to have people use FullContact. But the post points to many more options than just our own:
"If that’s iCloud, Google Contacts, Outlook.com or heck, even FullContact, great."
As I said in the post, we just want people to use a safe system that makes sense to them. It's our job to make sure that FullContact is the logical choice.
1: Free EcoPass and/or free parking - EcoPass is a pretty killer bus pass that lets you take the express routes and you can even do long trips for a severely discounted price. The airport from downtown, for instance, runs $11. With EcoPass it's $2.50. We've found that many people would rather take the bus than drive, even if driving and parking in Denver isn't nearly as much of an inconvenience as it is in SF. It also solves the "car trouble" issue for most people.
2: $7,500 each year for vacation - In a startup, you're going to work harder, probably for a bit less money, than anywhere else. Burnout will happen. This is our way to combat it. We remove the obstacle of "can't afford a vacation" by actually paying you to take one.
3: Powder Day Policy - There's 8 inches at Vail and you can't stand to be inside? Go. Take the day. Just don't screw over your team and make it up in the next two weeks. The same holds true when it's 72 and sunny for the first time in a month and you need to just get away.
What we found - First, the obvious. Recruiting engineering talent isn't easy. The same can be said for just about every position that a company needs to fill, but engineering is especially difficult. By way of comparison, we have 9 positions open right now and almost 3,000 applicants. Of those, only 2 percent have applied for the engineering positions.
79 percent have applied as "I just want to work at FullContact".
While that's a drastic difference, it's also better than what we were seeing prior to adding the "non-traditional" benefits as part of the recruiting/retention plan.
The real questions that will hit ZenPayroll (as they have us) are these - You're going to start getting a LOT more applicants. How much time do you have to put in to filter them? Are you going to start getting a lot more GOOD applicants? How many of them just want to game the system for a year to get a taste of the good life? Are your processes good enough to weed them out?
As an outsider with common ground, it's good to see even more companies taking this approach. But as an insider to the turbulence that they can create, I would urge them to make sure that they're as prepared as they can be for those bumps.
It was 100% about the context. Dave used the word in a derogatory, very serious fashion, from a position of power. The word has gotten tossed around so much over the past few years that I think people have begun to lessen its severity, and that's dangerous.
Just as two gay men may jokingly call each other f__, or two black men may choose to use the word n_____ to refer to one another, that's a right that's afforded to them because of their position. At no point will it ever be OK for someone on the outside of that circle to throw these words at someone on the inside.
To be fair, I can't stand any of these three words, and I wish that they'd be completely forgotten from within the English language. But I'm on the outside of all three of these circles, so it's not my place to say what is harmful to those within them.
Screenshots to brad@thenextweb.com would be greatly appreciated. This is definitely not the experience we want you to have on our site.
Edit: Also, it's been verified and taken offline. http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/11/06/machine-turns-vote-for-obama-...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfkg0VWx3rM
I'm not certain that I agree with him in full. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was in my early 20s. The ability to deeply focus on a project was helpful to me as well. I certainly don't think that we can call it a "cure" for ADD, but it can absolutely be a positive byproduct.
brad@thenextweb.com
Now translate that to a tablet. For $200 you can get a device that has, inarguably, the best apps marketplace, at its disposal. Android tablets will have an especially difficult time keeping up with that, except for the ones that are purchased by people who simply don't like Apple and its ecosystem.
Gruber has a pretty good summary of how this will likely go down. The HN thread is here: