devanti

too bad their hiring practices are flawed

ideas are like a tool. it's only useful if you know what to do with it

history tells me that big companies like Google and Toyota are unlikely to still be around making a huge impact. A newer, younger company is more reasonable

so a master’s thesis in graphic design is just.. a quick project?

Hope to see AMD back in its glory days since the Athlon XP

Because the average person is short sited. They don't do anything (or don't realize how terrible it is) until it directly affects them.

Those companies were making a lot of revenue in a huge market before they expanded. It's comparing apples to oranges.

That could be their goal, but it's a lot easier said than done, especially in markets that haven't been executed before.

For example, Rdio tried to do Vdio with video and look how that turned out.

Off the top of my head, I can't even think of one company that expanded to different categories successfully. It's difficult and really rare.

Ok cool. So RG is way better than songmeanings.

That doesn't change the size of the market.

That is, unless you think the quality or features are so good that it will increase the size of the market. In that sense, I don't think RG is groundbreaking enough IMO.

Songmeanings has been around for over a decade. If the market demand was really there ($15mm investment worth), they would naturally gotten some funding, or enough revenue, to improve their product and soak the $ potential out of the market.

If RG thinks they're so great (and all the bandwagoners on HN), then they should prove it by playing fairly.

My suspicion is that the vast majority of people who search for lyrics don't care about song meanings or annotations. Azlyrics does just fine, which is why they've always been at the top. If people wanted song meanings they would search for song meanings.

My theory is that RG wasn't able to grow as fast as they hoped and have to resort to these methods. How else can RG justify a $15 million investment? Their biggest competitor, songmeanings.com, is bootstrapped with only a couple employees, which shows the true market size of the song meanings / annotations market.

Remember that most consumers want things that are insanely simple and give them immediate satisfaction. I'm not surprised that most people on HN think otherwise as they tend to be deeper thinkers than the average consumer.

Then people should stop claiming that RG is the best "lyrics" site. Lyrics are simply lyrics and RG does no better than AZlyrics in that regard. They can claim they're the best annotations or song meanings site instead.

People build sites that are very good all the time, often 'the best site for X by a mile', but they don't make it to the top because of poor SEO or marketing. Just because they are a good product doesn't mean they get to the top. RapGenius should be no different.

And what about the majority of people who simply want their lyrics, instead of all those messy annotations? The other sites give me that and that's why they've been at the top for the past decade.

i dont see how they can beat azlyrics and metrolyrics in SEO. I've been using them for over a decade

For the wrong reason? What's with all these smartie pants on hackernews? A big hackathon always has some sort of incentive, and aiming for that is wrong?

I don't know about you, but I enjoy winning, and I've won hackathons before. If I just wanted to build something with my hacker friends, I can do it any weekend I want.

This is why I don't attend hackathons anymore. At the bigger events, there's always bound to be controversy, cheaters, questionable criteria, etc.

someone misused mongodb, and now they're blaming mongodb for it.

A social network will have a lot of relations -- so you should use a relational database.

Other web apps may not need as many relations (most mobile apps), in which mongodb is a superior solution

right on. a large of big companies don't have things like automated testing

your response just proved dalton's point about MBAs thinking they're higher beings

and stop "hacking" everything

this is old, but it's great. my favorite one

"hacking" this, "hacking" that. the word is being way overused. just because you came up with a solution you think is good for you doesn't mean you 'hacked' anything.

It would be more interesting if he could talk about how to take advantage of a bubble

i probably should have. but whatever, I'm not participating in theirs again

one of the angelhacks

I find it interesting that they are actively pursuing it.

Kind of like watching a lion, king of the jungle, fighting and clawing furiously against a roaring avalanche to reach the top of a mountain

enjoy the show

woah, woah, hold on there. I never said it was bad

after money, fame, what else? the google founders desire to live forever

the google founders' quest to live forever begins

they already sucked the money out of it (what little there was). And hoping making this change will get users back. Too late, Blizzard.

I give up on hackathons. The last one I went to -- the winners presented a power point slide and won. They didn't even make anything. They were just there for marketing their startup, and even brought like 10 team members on stage. And this was a really big hackathon too. 200+ competitors. Such a shame.