jwesley

I think you should reconsider targeting more serious collectors. I personally buy 5 or so domains per week, so that adds up to many more sales than the average person who might buy 5 domains their entire life.

So his only argument that Twitter is a protocol is that Seth Godin said that Twitter is a protocol. I think there is some truth to it, but it is nowhere near the level of information control that Google has achieved with Search. It's an invalid comparison, especially since 99% of apps operating on the Twitter protocol are completely asinine.

The mobile payment angle could be true, but its far from a sure thing. I tend to think most payments from mobile devices will be done through mobile web browsers, the same way we do them on a computer.

The piece closes by saying "The true power behind popular protocols can almost never be predicted" and "as Twitter grows it will have to remain observant of emerging trends of its users".

So you write an article predicting twitter will be a cash cow, and conclude by claiming the method of generating cash cannot be predicted? What makes this cash cow such a sure thing?

I strongly believe that Twitter will succeed, but this article is weak. The only real nugget is the Amazon Affiliate angle, and changing user links is borderline unethical and likely not a massive revenue generator.

You're doing it wrong man.

1. Keep the aff links out 2. Push it on social news sites 3. Get links 4. Get ranked in Google for a decent keyword 5. Insert aff links 6. Profit

I'm pretty big domain collector, and to be honest, I see no compelling reason to use this service. Something like Freshdrop.net, which allows sorting by numerous data types, searching, and the ability to get the jump on newly expired domains is much more useful.

Of the 10 most popular domains, only 1 (campdeal.com) is moderately attractive. I browsed through a bunch of the categories and most of them were terrible. There is also no ability to search a keyword and have relevant names appear.

I would be very interested in a service like this, but you will need much more functionality to compete. I think you may have opened up for review before the product was ready.

This guy would have more credibility if the post wasn't filled with affiliate links. The truth is that the right combination services will be unique to every business.

Please don't use the term "eyeballs". It makes you sound like an aging marketing exec.

The thinking behind "getting eyeballs" is the same as "Techcrunch is our marketing plan". It's not about how many people see your product, its about the right people seeing your product at the right time.

Pulling stunts might get you coverage in the tech blogs, but unless those people are your ideal users, it won't be much help.

I've seen a several blogs saying this over the past few months and it's completely true. I think it should also be pointed out the "going viral" is not a marketing plan either. Companies that see enormous viral growth are one in a million. You can't count on it.

I think many hackers tend to underestimate marketing. They look at it as something that's sleazy and below them. I can't blame anyone for thinking this, with marketers making asses of themselves everywhere you look, but it can kill your business.

You need to be trying everything you can imagine with marketing, then testing the results and pumping as much money as possible into the channels that deliver high ROI. The product is only half the business, the other half is delivering it to the right group of people.

I agree it makes my comments better. It leads me to be more polite and try my best to explain my points so comment raters understand the argument.

By the way, this is the only site that I comment on and come back multiple times to see how people respond. Smartest, most sincere community I have found.

This will turn into Kathy Sierra part 2.

I think the most retarded part is where he claims Craigslist is a destructive monopoly. Yea, Craigslist, using its market position to drive up the rates on FREE classified ads. Tell the newspaper industry to round up the anti-trust lobbyists, its on!

There is definitely something lucky about Craigslist. There is an element of luck in everything and CL was the right product at the right time.

You could build a better product right now and it wouldn't beat CL because the timing isn't right.

Side note: I wish TED talks were available in text format. They're always interesting, but most of the time I'm unable (or unwilling) to hunker down and watch a 20 minute video. Web content needs to be scan-able.

I think the heart of problem is ads on NYTimes.com are exactly the same in the minds of marketers as ads on any other website, and that type of web traffic is just not that valuable.

In print, big media brands can use their brand value to drive rates up, which is why you see companies use "see our ad in The New York Times, Time magazine, etc). They need to find a way to leverage that brand value online, or maybe we're just seeing the death of a business model.

His argument could be completely reversed and make the same amount of sense. Could probably even use the same quotes.

Really? You thought Bebo was going to take off, catch MySpace and Facebook, and make AOL billions? To me this was the only way it could end, although I don't think anyone expected a sale this soon.

No.

I kind of liked the idea of this article, but it lost me and I skimmed to the end. I feel deeply alone at times, so I can't agree that solitude is lost.

You'll probably get down modded for not telling their cute little "app" is awesome.

I think calling this a Web App is a bit generous. It's a poll with 2 options. Have you gotten even a single sign up for the service you are trying to promote? Getting a few thousand people to visit a web page and click a button does not equal business value.

This is a good example of creative thinking, but you should have waited until the experiment ran its course and reported on the results. I'm guessing that the number of sign ups won't be worth the 1 hour spent coding the app. You'd be better off working on something worthwhile and buying some traffic through Adwords.

Reading that thread opener was a waste of time. Get to the point.

I've been in a situation similar to this, where management just did not get it. They would ask for our input, but then never act on it.

You are on the right track by looking for a way out. The company is doomed. I left and it has worked out great.

For a company with 50+ employees, $2500 per year is not a major expense, relative to rent and payroll. Still vastly cheaper than MS Office.

I'm glad that Paul is making some cash from his blog, but $1600 a month is peanuts for a 3 year old site. A blog 1/10 as popular in a lucrative niche with some decent search traffic would make 10x as much.

Mashable will truly cover anything.

No, I doubt this could ever be a real business. Even if it catches on, you'd have to sell millions of these dirt packets to ever make any money. There was a thread on HN about a condom key chain business that failed for this reason. Even though they sold thousands of them, it doesn't add up to much when you only make a few pennies per unit.

You need a tagline that explains what the site is and differentiates in from competitors. I would also nix the advertising. For a new site with little traffic it won't make you much money and undermines your brand. I think you'll also find most of your revenue comes from affiliate commissions related to the products you feature. Send your traffic away via ads will probably reduce your revenue.

I would also remove all the bookmark buttons under the items. Those sites aren't really reception to the type of content you have for the most part and power users are quite capable of submitting on their own.

That said I really like the layout and think it's a great idea for a site. If you put effort in more editorial blog style content surrounding the products, you could generate quite a following.

Paper is just more trash, more clutter. It might be worth reading the first time, just to find good local blogs, but why would anyone want a collection of blog posts they have likely already read?

If anything this is free advertising for the blogs included.

Yes, the title is misleading. Simply having a form where none existed before doubled his RFPs. No reason to think there is anything magical about WuFoo forms, although it is a good service.

A few suggestions:

There needs to be a way to sort the results by source so people can see only mentions on twitter, digg, blogsearch, etc. Currently it can be tough to tell where any given conversation was found.

It would be helpful to have negative filters for removing false positives. Some brands have similar keywords, so it's annoying to see the same irrelevant topics coming up.

The positive/negative filters need some work. About half the results in the negative tab were actually positive in the test I did.

You're tracking the keywords by sucking in RSS feeds for search queries correct? You might have a challenge convincing savvy individuals to pay for a service they could basically recreate in an hour inside their own feed reader.

You need to allow brand names to be more than 20 characters. A lot of brands are longer than that, for example school names. "University of Blank" will almost always be too large, and those educational brands spend a ton of money on marketing.