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Nice point.

It should be the other way around, since users rarely create the content of their submissions.

Um, is there a reason for this?

""" trailing even myYearbook.com"""

To be fair, that site literally bought 90% of its users.

I have never hated any feature so much as tagging...

Alternatives?

Links could be smaller for easier reading.

I'm pretty sure that synchronous XML requests and the certainty that js will be present are exactly what defines web 2.0..

99.9999% of the views of reddit and similar are people wanting to see what the hottest current news is. Are you really going to hide it from them?

If not, then are you going to make some votes not count as much as others? Users will hate this.

Another problem is not counting votes from people who go directly to the page!?! Sorry but that is completely asinine. Those blog "digg it"-like widgets are the best form of marketing that these news sites have. If the votes are worthless then the bloggers will ditch you fast.

"Tell her about how she can now call her cousin for free [..] It fulfills a need that most humans have - the need to interact socially with others."

But the same could be said of gmail - a definite web2.0 app.

This is really great.

And really, it's not the news but the communities that form around it which really drive the traffic.

semantics are obsolete.

Alone in their basements? Seriously.

It is really frustrating how lazy bloggers/investors always are rationalizing why great startups should be doing bad, instead of figuring out what makes these "bad" startups do so great.

Nice example.

"your data fits in RAM"

Not so. It's not too hard to check if you have some data and then retrieve it from the db as necessary.

The users.

I don't like sites that need an explanation of more than a few words at the top.

Now that's what I was trying to say. Those users were about to drive me out of my mind!

I have a separate thread that writes changes back to disk at its leisure. There is also a special shutdown/restart mode that I can trigger which stops accepting input from the user and flushes everything to the db.

This can be implemented very simply and has lots of advantages all around.

That's what she said.

SQL Databases are so astonishingly slow that I just switched my most intensive app to only use the database for backing up the data to disk and reloading from on startup.

This arrangement is so much faster and easy to understand/measure/optimize for me that I can't see myself going back.

Related: What's a provider that can give me lots of CPU time when I can no longer host CPU intensive processes from my home computers? What about for cost less than a dedicated server?

More like StumbleUpon rained on Google's parade by turning down their offer.

don't know about where you are, but the weather is unusually nice outside today.

timg.is.here at gmail

But in your example, the absence of photo albums on myspace is punished quite heavily in practice.

Right up until they were sitting on a billion dollar valuation, you could not even make your photos private to just your friends. Sharing was mandatory.

Note that I am not saying that zero content should be available until the user has made a contribution to the site, just that the site should at least keep something special for people who do. Most importantly, I am not saying that this practice is best for all sites or even the majority.

No kidding. As much as some people around here hate to hear it, sometimes you have to FORCE your users provide content before they can receive their fill of content from your app. What are the benefits/costs of each approach?

Allowing users to receive without giving content:

1. Good: Maximizes the impact of your PR/ Lets you grow really fast over a short period of time.

2. Bad: Easy come, easy go. Since the users have no role as a content creator, they will be out of there the second your competitor has the slightest feature improvements over you.

Requiring every user to be a creator (edit- to receive full benefit from your app):

1. Bad: The start can be rough. Expect to have to really have to use some marketing ingenuity.

2. Good: Users will be locked in.

3. Good: Your site will (should) be far more valuable if more people are contributing. This, along with #1 will lead to exponential growth.

4. Maybe bad: With this abundance of content, it will be mandatory that you find a way to present the user with the content that is most relevant to him.

5. Good: You are monopolizing access to a lot of content. You can probably charge users directly for this access.

Thoughts?

I can't help but to think that the founders can be made to act more like needy girls. Make them want you, make them think that they are about to lose because everyone else recognizes how valuable you are. Make them think that they could not go on without you.

More importantly though, working like a dog for years just to impress your for your employer!?! This is not the startup way.

edit: you are correct.

"engage the user and see if you can get the feature to a common ground"

Yes, this is what I'm asking. In direct marketing for example, there are ways that success can be scientifically measured. I am wondering if any of you have used more methodical approaches to improving applications -- or if it's just guess and find out if it worked 2 months from now.

The reason for this is that I just don't always trust users to think deeply enough of the problem for them to know what they want.