orangethirty

I stumbled into some weird data as to how startups may be able to use this kind of technique without exploiting people. Yeah, it sounds hard to believe. But you have to understand that every technique out there can be used for good. Anyhow, turns out that there are some tricks that these type of advertisers use to increase their response. One just needs to carefully read the source of their pages (specially the Javascript), and you will find lots of interesting stuff in it. Just beware. Once you dig into this type of advertising your view on the subject might change dramatically. You can learn more about it here: http://bit.ly/13wOrj2

Edit:

16 clicks on 2 minutes. This sort of technique works on everybody, including smart hackers. Its mostly about talking about what you want. Some people want to lose weight, others control their diabetes. Apparently, lots of people want to learn of a little known advertising secrets for startups. I should make a Copy as a Service startup. (:

See how many are suckered into clicking: http://bit.ly/13wOrj2+

I think there is a group composed of Hispanic Pyladies. Not sure if its active. Go to their site (pyladies site) and check.

Put a price on their advice and connections. Don't hand out 5% just because. They could end up owning your company over the long term. Don't be so quick to hand out equity. Ever.

There is one point to understand. This greatly benefits Google as it allows to reduce the response rate of competing marketing products, and increase the response of their own. Not that they should care about being fair. Gmail is theirs. They can do as they please. People should understand that they will simply optimize for their benefit, not for the benefit of some other platform (in this case Mailchimp.

Want to increase your rates? Send your email to the user's facebook account. Those get read almost instantly.

As someone who mostly works with user facing web applications:

1. You will always be playing catch up if your growth takes off. Not an excuse to write your system in BASIC, but enough of a reason to forgo efficiency a little bit. Shipping something that is 90% efficient is better than not shipping something that is 100% efficient. I have lost almost one year on the latter.

2. The importance in a web application project (if you are aiming to use it as a business) is your ability to adapt to what the market wants. If you cannot push out features (inefficient ones), then somebody else who can will swoop in.

3. In terms of numbers: I have built systems that handle 10K/requests per second without a sweat. Using standard boxes and Go. Note that as nice a Go is, its still a young language. A typical python/ruby/php system can be made to handle that, but requires a bit more work. Now, what I tell people is build something safe (as in no SQL injections, XSS, etc) first, then focus on growing it. Picking a good stack early on helps, but don't pick a stack you don't know. Someone who is proficient in PHP should not use Rails (example).

4. The key to web services is to find and build things that people want. How do you that? Pay attention to people on social networks.

If you have a background in C, Go and Python feel the most familiar. Some prefer Ruby, which is another fine language. Be aware of the current trend of everything being written in Javascript. Learn to use the language as you move along. You will need it.

tl;dr

Don't think about business-oriented web apps in terms of efficiency from the start. Use what you know to build something secure and stable, and then if it catches on, scale it.

Like PG said, do things that don't scale.

I do think it is much more readable. I bookmarked it, and showed it to the SO. She liked the site, too (which tells me it is good).

We all have to answer to somebody. The lucky ones, answer to other men. The unlucky ones, answer to their conscience.

It just looks like a bunch of stuff cobbled up together. Reminds me of my socks drawer. Its interesting the fact that you are focusing on future products. Will people be able to pre-order them right there?

Do you think there might be a way to receive data? Maybe measure the voltage drop from a normally high circuit?

Edit: Awesome project. (:

Is this something like Pinterest but for men? It looks cool, but its a bit confusing to navigate (for me).

Love this. Its geocities 2.0. Now, where do I find old gifs?

Edit

Found them. Check out mah page.

http://notme.neocities.org

I really do hope that you package this as a video series. Then sell it to people/teams who are not able to attend a live class. I'd gladly pay the price of the live class for the video series.

Realize that your first presentations will be shit. You will probably not close a sale. Dont get discouraged. Its part of the process. Do develop your pitch in a structured manner so you can later on a/b test it. Think as the pitch as a script to a short movie.

Do you put this issue in the same level as the ones github has had?

I had my first business at 14. Now 34 (20 (?!) years later. gosh...). Have never knocked one out of the park, but have have some good base hits, and a few doubles. Its all about the game, and how you play it.

Has bitbucket had any security issues like github has had in the past?

- Yes, the whole affiliate thing is iffy to start with. Do agree it is something shaky to base your business on.

- Sometimes is very hard to measure how far off you are. Being in the game skews your whole perspective. Experienced or not (sadly).

- The could is what my argument is against. Everyone has opportunities. Measuring them by what could happen is a bit naive. You analyze the situation and chose that which conforms to your current needs. There might be other opportunities, but they were not as reasonable for those who had to make them option. It is rather simple for an outsider to argue the point. It is the team member the one who has to live with the decision. I don't think they lost at all. They were part of a YC startup, made connections, and ultimately can profit from the whole experience.

I've never understood this reasoning. It requires that the grass is always greener somewhere. Its as if people have endless opportunities. They certainly do not. Plus, they took a gamble. Did they lose? I can't say they did. Unless they are owed money. If someone on the team took a job over a better one, then they, and only they, carry the cost of doing so.

They pivoted because their business model did not make the money they wanted to make. No one could have predicted it. They took the dive, and saw what there really was. Nothing wrong with that.

I disagree. Brilliant would have been renting one for the day, or borrowing it from a friend.

"Press" coverage does not a success make. It does, however, buy a lot of cheap VC money for later investments. One thing to learn from this is that media coverage won't do much for you if the business model is skewed. Still, there is always Cherry.

Think Hedge-funds.

Why is it terrible? Sure, money was lost. But terrible it is not.

The bet was:

Mine - refer.ly would die and a new company would arise. The new company would be about business meta data. Then as she published the blog articles, I modified to state they would be selling data to VCs. I knew the so called pivot to compete with medium was a bluff, because there was no financial incentive to do so. Plus this team had always been very data driven.

The other bet - They would pivot into a medium with social features (AKA a social blogging platform(whatever that means)).

dmor,

I just won a $100 bet by calling this. Thank you.

Anyhow, their marketing strategy has been very fun to watch and unfold. It has literally been done live on this site and most people did not get up in arms offended. Which is the smart way to do content marketing. They have also launched a business with what is simple an excel spreadsheet of data. I know they have code for it, but they could have launched with off-the-shelf software. Imagine that!

You have to learn to let go. People will do what they will do with or without your consent. Do your cofounder a favor and fire him/her.

I worked on a project (probably one of your competitors) that was an ad network. It also used Python as the language of choice (with gevent to handle all of the requests). It's an interesting choice for such system. Do you have a blog with info on your stack? It'd be fun to read about how you handle such traffic. Also, if you want to talk shoot me an email (on profile).

Realize that the move to contractor will depend on your ability to sell your services. Before anything, I would start marketing and then focus on making the jump. Don't quit without doing so, because your marketing could take months to start working (relative to your skills at doing so). If anything, read my profile.

Tell me about your marketing.

I'm writing a pretty big system in Go, and had not seen this as much of an issue. Could you provide more insight into your point? I'd like to see some code to compare, if its not to much to ask.

I love webfaction and recommended it to everyone. Most of my businesses rely on them.