louisadekoya

I kind of admire Mashable because one could argue that they have in fact done what every business hopes to do - start niche and then grow to serve a mainstream market/audience. There is however always a risk that in doing so you alienate the very audience you initially set-up to serve. But if as a business you are comfortable with that then that's ok.

I do feel however that because of its undeniable success on Twitter, Mashable tends to show a little bit of bias in favour of Twitter and sometimes against Twitter's biggest rival Facebook - just my opinion.

Check out http://www.ideatagging.com and see if one of the ideas there grabs you.

Thanks for the thoughtful post. Wow - that much huh? It really feels like a fairly basic app to me but I guess that shows how much I know. I did have someone build me a comparably complex app for me for $600 last year though - but no facebook integration with that one.

Yes, it had occurred to me that storage could be an issue with this one.

By the way, do you know any good resources for finding good but affordable copywriters?

Still keen to read others' thoughts.

I hadn't considered that but you are right, Facebook's pages are kind of similar. A Twitter version would be better though because it will be more interactive and real time. And since it will revolve around messaging, it should be easier to monetise on an ongoing basis.

I too do not agree that ideas are worthless. About a year ago, I posted that I was amazed at the number of idea-bashing posts that I found in the blogosphere. I have taken the following excerpt from my post:

"... whilst an idea that is not executed is not worth anything in itself, it is worth something if it sparks other ideas that do get executed, whether by the originator or someone with whom the originator shares the idea.

Another point that these idea bashers make is that a well executed poor idea is worth more than a poorly executed brilliant idea. Whilst this may be true, I contend that a good execution of a poor idea is itself a good idea that was sparked by the poor one. In other words, to execute an idea you have to come up with an idea of how to execute the idea you are trying to execute. And the idea you want to execute is what sparks your brilliant execution idea.

So to my mind, ideas rule.So people, please stop the idea bashing. Ideas rock and are the seeds of innovation, change and progress."

Thanks Sheriff, I am aware of the wish list approach but it doesn't work for me. I don't want people to be restricted to what's on a recipient's wish list.

Thanks. Yes, the problem you are highlighting did occur to me after I posted my question. I note though that Amazon has kind of a social network feature where you can add friends and family and set privacy options on that basis. I guess receiving random gifts from people or having them add items to one's wish list would need to be limited to such 'friends'.

Not being a hacker and not having enough money just yet to hire one for my startup. So I spend a lot of time looking for and trying out shortcuts that tend not to amount to much.

I am in the U.K - Milton Keynes, which is less than an hour from London. I dabble but I am no hacker by any means. I do however design software for a living and I am looking for a hacker co-founder for a startup. So if anyone is interested, do get in touch - initially by reply here and we'll take it from there.

Not one for me personally but I think it might turn out to be very sucessful. All the best with it.

I am not a big fan of advertising-only business models but I think this is one idea that would be better off relying on ads than on paying users. To be frank, I just don't think that users will pay for answers. They will exhaust other avenues first and even then most won't be able to bring themselves to pay.

As I explained in a recent blog post (http://www.ideatagging.com/a-facebook-and-yahoo-partnership-...), after search, questions are the next best thing for detecting users' intent and therefore are a good basis for tageted ads. So my advice, much as it pains me to say it, is to ditch the paying users idea and instead focus on ad revenues.

By the way, I have some interesting angles on the whole questions and answers thing. Contact me via my blog (link above) and I would be happy to share. Good luck.

Not catching per se. I just let the scammer know that I was on to him. My account of it is at:

http://www.ideatagging.com/domain-name-scam/

Many thanks.

Your site seems to require Open ID and Firefox or Safari. Why ostracize a large number of people this way?

I own buzztricks.com; whatilooklike.com; alterpay.com; legitmp3s.com and peerquit.com.

Thanks but it is just as hard to forecast how many concurrent users the app will get as it is to predict costs.

Thanks - this is useful. I will check out the Causes app.Any ideas on what this kind of setup might cost? Would an ad-network targeted at facebook apps need this much hardware or less - or more even? I have no idea.

Check out Lunarr - I think they do something similar.

Thanks - seems like good advice. So did you end up applying to AppFactory and if so how did it turn out?

You may well be on to something there - I think this would do very well as a facebook app.

I think this is actually quite a good idea - better than truemors certainly. I recently had an idea to notify people when new series of their favourite tv shows hit the screens - I know there are usually many promos but for some reason I still tend to miss them. What you are proposing takes the concept beyond just TV shows and I think it could very likely work. I say go for it.

I recently read about partnerup.com but can't join - apparently because I live outside the U.S.

As I have already stated in another thread, I think the idea of your app is good and I got it straight away. I agree with most people here though that you could do with a better design and layout of the site. I think you should invest some time in this, no matter how daunting it might seem now.

That said, as long as the site works, I think you should unleash it right now to the public. Don't wait to get it perfect. Release it and carry on working to improve it - using feedback you get from users. Prepare to be very busy though and I would suggest a comprehensive FAQs/Glossary section before you launch. If you don't add one then you might get swamped and not have time to get on with your improvements. Also, I think the yellow highlight is too bright across the top of the homepage.

Finally, to aid comprehension, I suggest that you replace the text in the yellow highlight with: "Take notes (stickies) from any resource including books (both printed and online), videos, podcasts, and more. Share your stickies or keep them private. Learn from others." or similar.

All the best.

Your site appears to be down right now but I stumbled upon it once before and not only did I grok it straight away, I also thought it was a great idea. That said, if some people are saying they don't get it, you should do something about that.

I recently posted on dealing with rejection in your startup venture. You may find some encouragement in my short story towards the end. The post is at: http://www.ideatagging.com/good-entrepreneurs-always-accept-no-for-an-answer/