wolfrom

I think it comes down to rationalizations: I know that I can rationalize doing something new and different. I can convince myself that a failed venture taught me something, whereas I have no way of telling myself that I shouldn't regret a missed opportunity.

It's much more common to be stuck wondering "what if" as opposed to "what if I hadn't".

Follow-up on the children: http://wgordon.web.wesleyan.edu/kamikaze/writings/kuno/index...

His wife was pregnant with a second daughter. All three went on to raise their own families in a now prosperous nation that no longer believes in war. I would think that their father would be happy with that outcome.

I'm wondering if Facebook will allow for an Instant Personalization partner to ask the user to opt-in before accessing the data. I love the idea of making things more fluid for those who want it, but I worry that this is the type of service that will alienate as many as it will endear.

Apple has trademarked FaceTime: http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2010/06/apple-wa...

IANAL, but Apple's trademark seems to cover software as well as mobile devices.

Meanwhile, Facebook is trying to trademark "face": http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/26/trademark-face/

So I think the answer is: "pick another name". The question I'd ask, is if you have no relation to Facebook or FaceTime in the application and have no expectation to receive goodwill based on those apps, why would you want to have a similar name?

I really hope their API will come soon; I think the best chance they have of user adoption will be based on the creativity of API developers bridging the gaps between Diaspora and other services. If users can communicate between Diaspora nodes and other social networks, at least on a basic level, they could see enough migration to make their efforts worthwhile.

We'll be applying with a project that uses Google App Engine, built with Java. We had originally started with PHP, and had considered Rails, but we found that we were much more comfortable using Java for our product, which retrieves and works with very large sets of data.

I'm not sure about the marketing here; I felt the same way as the author of the post with the anti-social aspect, but yet I now want to try it out for myself and I don't think it's a startup I'll forget.

If it had shown something more conventional, like a man and woman meeting in person on the bus because of their chat, I'm not sure it would have stuck in my head long enough to check it out.

This may be a debate for another day, but I haven't noticed a big difference in involvement/investment from employees over contractors.

I had a former life as a web contractor, and almost half of the projects I did were from individual or small groups of founders. They were usually non-technical or had no knowledge of the web technologies they required. Even though we were able to create some really strong initial products, the businesses themselves never took off.

I think this was often because as a contractor, I finished version 1.0, and then I went off on the next project. I was available for small fixes and enhancements, but I didn't feel it was my job or my specialty to help them iterate or pivot. Without a technical person fully invested in their work, there was no real evolution to their products or their business.

Eventually I came to the point where I no longer took those kinds of contracts, because I either didn't believe in the model, or else I felt that it would only be worthwhile to contribute as a partner as opposed to a worker for hire.

So I think that technical founders are necessary, whether that involves bringing on someone with the knowledge, or having one or more non-technical founders learn enough to become a technical founder.

We're writing our startup using Java and Google App Engine, so we're obviously stuck in the middle of something. But in the end, we're confident that Java is giving us the best performance for what we're doing (big data), and no matter what happens between Oracle and Google, there's still an Open Source programming language that can't be taken back.

I ran a modestly successful affiliate site from 2002-2006. I did very little work, and could have done much more to succeed (in retrospect), but it did provide 20% of my income during that time. I recently attempted to relaunch the site after a few years away, but found that the market is much tighter than before (I made only a handful of sales during a two month test run; I also believe that consumers are now more skeptical of affiliate marketing sites.

I think that given the right market and some hard work, it's possible to make enough to live from affiliate marketing, but I've found that I prefer to work with friends on more ambitious projects.

I noticed during a quick browse of several regions that there are far too many women on the site who are nowhere near ugly (I can't speak for the men, I'm afraid). This seems to indicate that there are many people in Britain (and probably elsewhere) who have a vastly inaccurate image of themselves.

While I don't have the knowledge to dismiss Kurzweil's theories outright (I only have a gut feeling), I must say that this response did not achieve a refutation of the statement that "Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain".

I did not see anything in that response that indicated that Kurzweil is basing his beliefs on anything more than his 2001 adaptation of Moore's law to all things technological; to me, the brain's biology and particularly its physiology fall outside our current notions of technology.

It sounds from the explanation that was provided that the free users for your product contribute not only to customer acquisition but also create value through their contributions to the site. In this case, free may make sense for your software, as only you can weigh your infrastructure and support costs vs. the gain in marketing and usefulness of the product.

But your experience may not be common to many other businesses. If free users aren't contributing to the product other than marketing, it would come down to a decision of whether or not that goodwill was worth the added cost. It can be hard to measure that cost, but perhaps Twitter Analytics and web referrers can provide an idea.

It's an excellent point, but I don't think Facebook's current lack of friend categorization will stay forever. I think it's only a matter of time before Facebook brings better organization to the friends list. Foursquare's best bet is likely the game mechanics themselves, if they can make them appeal long-term.

It will be interesting to see if game mechanics have staying power; as someone who does not fully understand the appeal of badges and mayorships, I tend to believe that these features have a limited shelf life. Of course, they could be replaced with new game features. Perhaps whichever location-based service can expand its game mechanics to more resemble World of Warcraft will be the longest-lived?

First of all, I recommend reading Don't Just Roll the Dice if you haven't already: http://www.scribd.com/doc/25050778/Dont-Just-Roll-the-Dice-P...

This was talked about earlier today (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1613852). Unless your app requires a whole pile of non-paying users for network effects, free accounts don't seem to bring in much value. If you want customers who are going to pay at some point in the future, trials seem to make more sense than perpetually free versions.

You could of course try running without a free plan to start, and add one if no one's taking you up on the free trials. But for those people who use the free trial but walk away without signing up, I doubt a free version would have resulted in a future conversion from them. More users equals more support; free accounts could destroy your business.

What I take from the article and from your comments is that Freemium is a great idea for any product that relies on network effects, either to create a more useful product or to provide a strong exit. But with any other type of product, it would make sense to put the Freemium aside. It's probably easier to try paid only (with or without trials) first, rather than starting with Freemium and dealing with the fallout of cutting off free users later on.

I think it's true that privacy issues don't have the power in themselves to drive a Facebook exodus, but I believe that a strong competitor will be given an unexpected boost by this controversy. I think this report seems to indicate that possibility.

At this point, the service would connect the photo sharing of different services to the user based on their choice (I use Flickr, so I share Flickr, or I use Facebook so I'll share that with everyone). There is more functionality than in a standard Facebook App, but Facebook apps (and open social apps, and iPhone apps, etc) would be part of the solution. The service is based on sharing from the services a user already uses, but there's nothing stopping the service from helping users discover new services that are perfect for what they want to do.

From Canada and for a B2, it's more of a wait until you've bought your tickets. Even with a TN (which I don't believe you can get with YC Funding), you just show up and hope for the best.

Of course, your mileage may vary, but this is what I've read from other people.

With OAuth and login cookies, it's even easier now than it was when FriendFeed began, but still requires one click to add a service, and a clicking on "Allow" at the end site. Once that's done, a good product should be able to centralize the contacts and social data/activities.

Although I should add that plane crossings with a return ticket seem to be much more effective at B2s than land crossings, in my experience. (B2 land crossings for me tend to include hour-long interviews in small rooms in the customs garage.)

I wouldn't worry too much about Visas for Canadians, especially if you have a Bachelor's or higher in tech. I think there are several different strategies that can work to get a Visa. (This is coming from someone who was once denied a TN Visa at the US border.)

I think a B2 is good for six months; that's what I was planning to seek if our team was ever accepted, and I haven't had a problem getting them in the past whenever I traveled south on business. Of course, I would still be very interested to hear from any successful YC teams from Canada.

It does, depending on your definition. Aggregation of activity streams is a part of it.

I think of that component as a very good area for a startup, which is why I'm part of such a team. I don't think it's unrealistic for one person to use Twitter, Flickr and YouTube for their social networking, while another person uses Facebook and LinkedIn; both should eventually be able to share with each other through a service that specializes in bringing everyone together.

There are a few different standards, but I don't think it's achieved the level of a W3C style consortium. Google's been working on initiatives, and even Facebook is involved. Appleseed and Cliqset are two products which I believe already implement several protocols, while Diaspora is meant to do the same from what I've read.

I think it's been mentioned before that standardization of social networking protocols might work, to the point that they become part of the Internet itself, like e-mail. I think it is only a matter of time (2-3 years) before the majority of Internet users will simply use distributed systems where their social data will be spread over several services (proprietary or open source), and the sharing of that data will follow a standard protocol (maybe a future blend of ActivityStea.ms, Salmon, and others).

Facebook will survive, most likely, but I think its influence will slowly wane to the point where they will be just another "media company" like AOL and Yahoo.

Facebook mentions 3000 comments, but the ones I saw had a good portion simply asking "why?"

Isn't comparing Oracle to SCO coming close to showing that Java will die just as quickly as Linux?