DISQUS

Good luck to Sherri and kudos to Candes - great design!

I wonder if there's a way to market the service to people whose native language isn't English - I just went to a demo day of student projects at the interactive program of a local college - lots of foreign students with resumes that could use a little work. I imagine there's a similar need among professionals whose native language is other than English, as well.

Anyway - what a great countercyclical business - when times are bad - more people out of work and writing resumes!

just came across this today, from the wilson quarterly
granted, not strictly about the Internet - but IT in general

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseactio...

"Pouring more concrete will not by itself answer our infrastructure prayers. Look instead to the transformative power of information technology."

New York Times: "Internet Money in Fiscal Plan: Wise or Waste?"
http://is.gd/icZY

"At first glance, perhaps no line item in the nearly $900 billion stimulus program under consideration on Capitol Hill would seem to offer a more perfect way to jump-start the economy than the billions pegged to expand broadband Internet service to rural and underserved areas."

Also:
New York Times: Technology Gets a Piece of Stimulus
http://is.gd/id0k

Also:
Philadelphia Inquirer: "Stimulus Boosts Electronic Health Records"
http://snurl.com/b7tpe

Also:
Roll Call: "Health Care IT a Major Step Toward Reform, Smarter Ecosystem"
http://www.rollcall.com/news/31878-1.html

"By investing in health care IT, we will also create new jobs at a time when our economy needs them. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation estimates that a one-year investment of $10 billion in health care IT would create as many as 212,000 new jobs in the U.S."

this advances the discussion a bit further still (found via techmeme):
http://www.drama20show.com/2009/01/09/web-20-re...

Yeah - the problem with the Crunchies is that the very definition for most of the award categories is vacuous.

What exactly does "best start-up" mean? All start-ups are businesses and the primary function of a business is to generate profits. By that handy measure, you can judge all companies regardless of sector or country by objective criteria. The Wall Street Journal and other media publish quarterly rankings of investment banks for various categories (M&A; IPO's) - there's no awards show - it's simply a list in descending order of which banks have had the biggest deal flow. [ex.http://www.thedeal.com/dealscape/2008/04/ma_quarterly_report_investment.php]

Admittedly, this is not practical in the world of private start-ups, which do not generally disclose financial information.

Still, in what business-minded universe does Mark Zuckerberg, of money-losing Facebook, come out ahead of Tony Hsieh, of profit-generating Zappos, as best CEO?

I could go through the list and attack the void of meaning within most of the award categories. Only a few of the awards make any obvious sense to me (e.g., best design).

There are other criteria besides profits by which to judge a company (e.g., design) but if that's the case - you need to state the criteria. To define the category in general terms, e.g., "Best Mobile Start-Up", and not have the criterion be profits either a) misconstrues the business of business or b) allows the judges to frame their own definitions and criteria, thereby rendering the results meaningless.

---

Also, agreed - the hermetic geographic scope is almost comical. Looks like a Bay area circle jerk.

mets will overwhelm yankees in inter-league play!
put that in your pipe and smoke it, dh

.. to build on that chris, google insights (which allows you to break down the regional popularity of search terms) shows that plentyoffish is most popular in the midwest and the south (oklahoma, arkansas, ohio) while match, which seems more evenly popular overall, is biggest in the northeast

i suspect POF's audience is lower income than Match's as well... just a hunch, but i bet twitter users skew upwards in income

curious to see how yammer works out given that twittering (generically speaking) is not yet a mainstream activity... when IM was being pushed/pulled into the enterprise, it was already mainstream... since twittering is not, perhaps it will make it easier for yammer to gain adoption... i.e., people won't get annoyed "gee, i'm already lifestreaming on twitter, now i have to use a different client at work"

also, if we use email, and not im, as an analogy - i like having a differentiation between my work and personal emails...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6urw_PWHYk

not that i'm a big fan of celebrity takes on politics, but matt damon says it quite well here

Sid,

How many meals do you get a week for the $60 of effort?

Gabe

i visit about twice a month through typing in and read the posts over the past ~2 weeks since last visit

Nicole,
Thorough review...

I think it would be nice if you added some commentary on the business models of start-ups included in the start-up review series... these are businesses after all.

Interesting how nobody (rightly, i believe) mentioned any of the open-source programs (e.g., Drupal, Joomla, DotNetNuke) that have community features. While they may be useful for pushing out content from a publisher (brochureware), they generally do a horrid job of fomenting active communities.

It will be very interesting to see how grou.ps develops - whether all the variations built upon the base will be modular, mutually elegant, and stable - or ugly, incompatible, and unstable when someone tries to graft elements from different iterations into a new group.

I'm agnostic on this particular instance of borrowing... I guess it would only be a real issue if it caused people to confuse your program with theirs. It does raise an issue on the overall issue of borrowing website elements - including both design and language. What's fair game and what's not?

TOS?
Pagination style?
Navigation menu?

Clearly, these aren't legal issues - given the number of Digg and other clones but more a matter of good web citizenship. Would be helpful to have a code of ethics/etiquette like this since there are so many grey areas.

Great post. Extremely helpful. Since this goes straight to the heart of many websites' plans, it's baffling that more people don't discuss these issues forthrightly and factually.

aloha, you're around the corner from my apt....

some local tips-
-there's good pick-up volleyball games on saturday on the beach next to the hale koa hotel (2 minute walk from tekaippin). you can also rent kayaks and other ocean equipment there.

-unless you've already done diamond head, ten minute drive from waikiki is nice little hike at manoa falls- http://www.hawaiiweb.com/html/hiking/manoa_fall...

-on the way to the airport, if you're pressed for time for dinner, you can stop and get some interesting hot dogs at http://www.hankshautedogs.com

About music, but not related to your post, thought you might find this article that appeared in the Guardian interesting:

Schooled in Cool: A new class of smart, literate British bands is challenging the lumbering louts of indie rock.
http://music.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,224168...

or to sum up-
"Working for someone else: Days are way too long.
Working for myself: Days are way too short."

spotted on Chris Yeh's blog: http://urltea.com/2j92
who found it on the Coyote Blog (Warren Meyer): http://urltea.com/2j94

Like the current president, Hillary Clinton wouldn't be where she is today - a senator and viable contender for the presidency - if it wasn't for her status as a close relative of a former president.

Scar tissue?
Perhaps.
But the prime thing that jumps out of her resume is her connections and not her achievements, which however noteworthy, are not what brought her to the seat she currently occupies or to the brink of the one she aspires to.

Similarly, the scar tissue she has accumulated is largely a by-product of her connections and not because of the struggle that was a concomitant of any noble cause she has championed or goal she has pursued over the years.

And not that I support either, but it's a bit strange to be talking up the virtue of scar tissue when a current (McCain) and recent (Dole) presidential candidate have non-metaphorical injuries that befell them while serving goals that our nation deemed critical to the national interest.

It's important to distinguish between the scar tissue of let's say, an MLK - acquired in the pursuit of noble goals - and the scar tissue of Senator Clinton - acquired during the course of Beltway infighting and as a result of petty infidelities, which only occurred and only mattered because of her marriage to someone else.

And in the opposing corner: http://tinyurl.com/2nenzl

snore... I think picli.com has already done this

"Pretty amazing that while everyone and their mother goes to an free with advertising model to gain big traffic numbers and big valuations, TextAmerica goes the other way."

<p>Zoto.com is another example of a web service that has recently moved from freemium to paid only. I'm curious if there are other services that have also made the switch lately. Some interesting posts from the Zoto blog regarding the swtich:

http://tinyurl.com/yqufwk


http://tinyurl.com/25muan

"Ultimately, the auction becomes a systematic way to transfer profit margin from advertiser to Google."

Yikes!

Perhaps the one solace for small business owners is that the opportunity is always there to move your rankings up in the natural search results - so Google's lock on distribution, while firm in advertising, does not extend to the entire range of outlets available to make the public aware of your product or service.

According to the Forbes article, "A full third of respondents said they spent a whopping 21 hours per week managing their PPC campaigns." That's even scarier than the excerpt from your post I quoted at the beginning! If that time were instead invested in building more compelling products and inspiring word of mouth mentions that drive forward placement in natural search results, those survey respondents could perhaps escape from the adword auction hammerlock.

>The interesting point of being able to make your website bond to the core emotions of >the audience is that you then start to compete on a different plane.

I agree with you regarding the importance of emotional attachment to a service in general.

However, you've suggested in earlier posts that sites should - through their design and branding - try to evoke the specific emotions associated with a site’s product/service category. Therefore, travel sites should evoke the mystery of travel and dating sites should evoke the seductive intrigue of courtship.

Perhaps. But, from a branding perspective, there’s nothing on the Flickr website that would really tell you it’s a service related to photographs.

I think the most important element of branding – especially in the early stages – is for the people behind the service to be passionate about the product category. I love Pandora and Lala, but there’s nothing especially music-y about the brands and site design. However, if their branding fails to make me feel like I just scored front-row seats for my favorite band, that’s OK. After seeing that a service works, I like to get a sense for who the people running the show are and whether they care about the community. And I get the sense that the people behind Pandora and Lala really like music and musicians.

eHarmony contravenes your advice and completely divests the dating experience of any intrigue. Some doddering psychologist created a test and a computer has matched you, now go and meet your potential love for eternity. Yikes. Nothing too flirty there. Yet the company invests all of its branding into trying to convince you that a) the service works, and b) the people behind the service really care about helping people find love. And that’s what seems to matter the most.

I suppose I don’t disagree with you as a matter of fact – sure it’s great to be able to connect with relevant core emotions in your audience. I just don’t agree with you as a matter of priority. Besides, historically, trying too hard to brand websites resulted in websites drenched in annoying Flash. In its place has come a welcome emphasis on speed, trust, discovery, authenticity, and community.

In short, if I’m understanding your thinking correctly after subscribing to your blog for a month or two (perhaps I’m oversimplifying or missing some key gloss), I agree with you on the importance of emotions, but disagree with you on how to provoke them. In other words, I agree that emotion as you define it in the general sense in this post is important. I just don't think the emotions have to be directly related to the vertical in question.

ooops, erase the period at the end of the tinyurl link