ecommercematt

New York, NY

Then what did you do?

Since we have a new medium, are there new monetization methods available beyond subscriptions and/or advertising?

The dinosaurs are only scared of their profit disappearing.

There is more than one dinosaur in the room.

I predict that internet enabled computers (of some form - I'll borrow pg's footnote #3) will also be the dominant delivery medium for radio and telephone service.

Submitting your site to Hacker News can yield insightful comments, new users, and potentially result in an investor taking some notice. That isn't the same as deliberately pitching investors, though. I don't see how charging a specific fee for a specific service in an up-front fashion like this is predatory. A barrier to entry such as the fee charged probably makes the quality of applications and applicants better. That being said, at this point, I can't imagine myself paying for such a service. I prefer to network the old-fashioned way.

In no particular order, here are some desirable features:

1) Version control. 2) Access restrictions and permissions. BONUS: Responsibilities, a la Siebel and other CRMs. 3) Simple drag and drop manipulation of data, such as concatenation. 4) Wufoo-like ease with building data entry forms. 5) Dummy data mode, so you can get help with customizing a complicated spreadsheet without revealing sensitive data. 6) Example use cases for sophisticated features, with well-written instructions, INOW a good, non-linear tutorial.

Am I missing something, or wouldn't =sum(C:C) work?

Deleting cookies is also an effective weight loss method!

Any particular niche within the construction industry?

Assumptions: They have limited funds. They lack the ability make a presentable site based on one of the many open source commerce platforms. Their lack of skill (and presumably cash, too) prevents them from gaining traction with Google Adwords and/or equivalent(s).

This leaves public marketplaces such as eBay, Amazon, Overstock, Etsy, etc.

eBay and Etsy sound like the best options. Etsy will be good because of its focus on small, handcrafty items. eBay will be good because of the sheer size of its user base. I don't have any experience with Etsy, but I'm assuming it is similar to eBay in many ways. The key to success with eBay is to not just pick what you want to sell and list it and hope for the best. Instead you need to spend time analyzing how other people are selling identical and similar items. What are they titling them? When are they scheduling the auctions? Are they bundling multiple items? How long are their auctions? Fixed price? eBay store?

Analyze the hell out of your competition, and experiment. You can use one of the bulk listing and schedule management tools like Turbo Lister, but you'll likely want to record information in Excel (or equivalent) and start parsing what's going on. The improvement yielded by careful analysis and experimentation over simply listing what you want to sell is tremendous. The people who succeed on eBay by selling a lot of items have optimized their strategy based on detailed research. They don't simply use custom html templates for their auctions, and diligently respond to customer inquiries. They analyze everything to death and adjust their methods based on what they learn from their extensive analysis.

Exactly. There might be room for this site, just as there's room for Digg, Reddit, and plenty of other social news aggregators, but this appears to be in no way ground breaking. It barely enhances one's ability to use, learn from, and enjoy books, in basically the same way as several other sites with similar functionality (LibraryThing, Shelfari, Goodreads, etc.).

Despite the headline containing the word "Obama," this piece is almost entirely apolitical. Worth a read, IMHO.

This is poorly written garbage based on meaningless stereotypes.

There are some interesting stories in this write-up.

I lived in the former Bell Labs headquarters in Manhattan (Greenwich Village) that the author referenced for about a year and a half (until early '08). Since about 1970 the building has been used as subsidized housing (work/live loft space) for "artists." The residents rarely move out because they pay mere hundreds of dollars per month for huge loft spaces that would otherwise rent for many thousands. Since they were picky about who they selected to live there initially, (they chose "artists" with established careers, most of whom were 30+ in 1970) today it has the vibe of a really eccentric retirement community. I'm not sure what the people (private philanthropists and NEA bureaucrats working together) thought would become of the community they funded/founded, but I doubt its present state is what they envisioned. I'm grateful for the ultra-cheap sublet opportunity I had nonetheless.

I haven't read this lengthy article completely (I might never have time to finish it), but thus far I've found it to be thought-provoking, and unusually in touch with its subject matter. Most articles about Facebook seem to be written by people who are mystified by its appeal, its users, and the broader changes in technology and society that are enabling its success.

Perhaps this is explained somewhere later in the article, but this bullet point confused me:

"Giving users 'ownership' over the information they enter on Facebook is the worst idea of all; it empowers them to run roughshod over others' privacy."

How would giving ownership over the information a user enters on Facebook empower that user to run roughshod over others' privacy? Am I misinterpreting something, or missing something?

What about helping your co-founder with motivation? Perhaps you could have a meeting and talk about where things stand, what your next steps are, and define the paths you can take at this point. You listed two of them above, and the third is that you both step up and bring your A game, and accomplish your goals. Slumps should lead to comebacks, not retirements.

There should be a way to check the # of times a text message has been read, along with timestamps.

We'll definitely help people out with this kind of stuff. If I were to describe my first New York apartment, you wouldn't believe me.

We're based in New York, so this interests me. What sort of extra help do you think we should give to people relocating here?

GW-BASIC

Are you able to discuss this further? My email address is in my profile.

I have several additional questions beyond the few in the original post. My contact info is in my profile, in case anybody would like to discuss this more directly.

Some of the methods are similar, although the goals are quite different.

You might be referring to this, or a similar article:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/16/is-this-the-future-of-s...

And here's Wikia's reaction to that story:

http://search.wikia.com/blog/2008/07/17/google-tries-to-copy...

My contact info is in my profile. Be in touch.

A post-founding co-founder?

I'll try to attend, as will my co-founder. As somebody else mentioned, a 21+ venue might prevent some people from participating. Manhattan is preferred, although Brooklyn is no big deal.

Neither would I, however he offered other reasons for changing his opinion on the value and prospects of Ning well before their recent funding round.

Example: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/26/ning-in-full/

There are 2 comments praising the site you link to, both from user names created at the exact same time as your own.

Coincidence?