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What's in a name? Serious or fun? | arvernus: I'd recommend to register both domains for a few bucks and ask again with naming the actual working titles.I think I personally would prefer the serious name.For your logo: we got ours from http://www.designcontest.net/ - you pay $150 (or as much more as you like to) plus I think about $20 fee and describe what you want. You get several logo concepts from several artists and can comment on them. When you finally really like one of the logos, you close the contest and the logo is yours. Have a look at the forums (http://www.designcontest.net/forum/). |
What's wrong with all those dating sites? | neilk: There's nothing wrong with the dating services. The people are broken.People lie. Solve that one and you may have something. (True.com tried to do this.)Also, most dating sites act as a sort of amplification for the user's dating filters and skill at attracting interest. However, I believe that most people are lonely because their dating filters are broken, and because they have trouble attracting interest. Dating sites only help these people
fail faster and at greater scale.(Exception: tall women. They are not necessarily damaged, they really do have a sort of search problem that is more solveable at scale.)I have started to think that a really successful dating site would start from the premise that the user is broken and cannot be relied on to find or choose a partner. Maybe use social networks so that their friends help them find someone? Or even anonymous strangers, for karma points? Straight women do this sort of thing anyway (straight guys tend to use these sites alone) and if a woman gets all her female friends to come on board, that helps solve the female-male ratio. |
What's wrong with all those dating sites? | jamongkad: Hmmm to be honest nothing screams "Plan B" more than a dating site. Honestly I have never used the service because most of the women I date are from referrals from friends and family. So there's that element of trust right there. Made me feel safer! Maybe if you could build dating site that applies that element of trust. Maybe you could have the said "dater" try to earn some sort of "trust" points. Make it so that the more trust points they have. The better partner they are. This is just off the top of my head though and it worth experimenting. |
What's wrong with all those dating sites? | Anon84: As my data structures professor would say: "Bipartite matching is a hard problem, specially when it involves women!"Seriously, though...IMHO the most successful dating site would probably start off as a Linked In like social network, where you could have matches based on the people you know. Matching algorithms of any sort (like Match.com Chemistry.com eHarmony.com, etc use) could be used to improve the matches, but I think that having a "recommendation" from people you already trust would be a very big plus. This is probably why pre-existing social newtworks like Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, et al usually end up being used for such purposes. |
What's wrong with all those dating sites? | dusklight: The biggest problem is that the incentive of the dating site is to make money, not to help people get together. If your service is really good at getting people together, boom! There goes your userbase as they all hook up and log off.Financially speaking it is better to give users the ILLUSION of someone out there being for you, while stringing them along and milking them for as much cash as possible. |
What's wrong with all those dating sites? | aston: I used to work at OkCupid. I could talk to you at length about the ups and downs and ins and outs of online dating, but the moral of the story I gleaned from my time there can be summed up pretty easily:People just want a ton of attractive/dateable people within a keyboard's reach, and if your site does any filtering on their behalf, people need to trust that it actually works.Most of the variations in online dating sites focus on optimizing pieces of that. The big guys (Match.com, eHarmony) make sure they get huge user numbers by campaigning on national TV, and they apply some simple internal filters that are 'approved by a doctor.' Smaller sites can't compete with that, so concentrate more on making sure you only run into people you'd actually be attracted to (see JDate). OkCupid's on the smaller side, and focuses on community building (for numbers) and uses mathematically semi-sound calculation coupled with quiz questions to create a user-driven but rigorous-feeling people filter. Basically everyone that's successful fits somewhere in that model.If I were you, I would focus less on specific features or trying to build a better datetrap. Instead, figure out what it'll take for you to get fifty thousand people signed up, approximately all at the same time, and then how you'll keep the site growing over time. If you get big numbers, the dating stuff will follow (MySpace...). |
What's wrong with all those dating sites? | vaksel: how about the simple fact that it doesn't work?1) In the real world, you compete for the woman's attention only with people she sees throughout her day. Out of which maybe 5 will initiate a conversation.On the net, same woman, you are competing with every single guy within 50 miles. Out of which almost every single one will initiate a conversation.2) In the real world, you see the woman as she is.On the web, you see myspace angles, copy pastes of likes/dislikes. And lets not forget all those bots and guys pretending to be a girl .3) You gotta remember that if a woman is good looking, there is ABSOLUTELY no reason for her to go on a crappy dating site. Its not like she doesn't get offered dates everywhere she goes.Same goes for the guys really, you'll have much higher chances if you start asking women in the real world. |
What's wrong with all those dating sites? | notdarkyet: I think the key to a successful dating site is both privacy and safety. Women want to know that they are not going to get raped or be caught off guard with someone who has obviously lied about themselves. If you could establish a method that would allow people to feel secure with the site, it could go miles.The other issue is privacy. By joining these sites, you are opening yourself up to not only your personality and private information but revealing your real identity online. If people could trust that the information about themselves or the interactions they have with other members would never be made public, I think you would see a surge in rates. |
What's wrong with all those dating sites? | nycfam: dating sites are too complicating. Most of the dating sites which I have seen lately make me sick to be honest. How can I find a match in the middle of a smog? I want less complex and more fun. Illuminate the complexity and you'll reach your goal. |
What's wrong with all those dating sites? | kingkongrevenge: Dating sites are a stupid idea in the first place. Your system or algorithm cannot ever hope to compete with 30 seconds of face to face interaction, ideally with that first meeting occurring by way of mutual friends.Sorry, but building a better dating web site is trying to drive a nail with a screw driver. People who need help dating need a larger and more active social circle. They don't need a dating website. Anyone trying to sell a dating site will inevitably discover they're hawking snake oil and surrender to that reality. |
API Design? | cmer: Here's the podcast of a talk I (and many others) gave on APIs at South by Southwest. I think it provides some great guidelines.http://blog.carlmercier.com/2008/06/17/podcast-building-deve... |
What's wrong with all those dating sites? | froo: Channeling PG for a moment: Make something people want.I think that on the whole, most dating sites are more concerned with figuring out how to make a buck off someone than what their users want.If you use Wordtrackers keyword tool which people normally use for SEO purposes and type in "dating"... 4 out of the top 10 keyword are related to free dating sites, but how many dating sites can you name that are free?I can only think of one off the top of my head (penty of fish) - and Markus is making a killing with his site. [edit: if you take the social networks like facebook and myspace into account, you have a couple more - but the traffic to those sites is less qualified, IE not people specifically looking for dates]I think that if you can build a decent site (it really doesn't have to be that fancy) that you can run free - I think you would have a better chance at success than simply trying to build more complex functionality and charge people for it.Make the site simple, make it user friendly. |
How do you know if you're any good? | jacobbijani: Whenever I find an open source project thats written in a language I understand, I usually take awhile to explore the web code repository and see what kind of structure they have setup and how their code is interacting.I don't know of any qualifiers that separate good from bad, but if you follow basic coding conventions and the thing works (and is secure) you are probably good enough. Either way, its a good way to learn. |
What's in a name? Serious or fun? | alex_c: For logos, you can try running a contest on a site like worth1000.com (there are other similar sites, but that's the one we used). You get a lot of choices for only a couple hundred bucks, and you can always work with the artist to refine your top choice.edit: didn't see the comment above before I posted. |
What's wrong with all those dating sites? | time_management: These websites exist to solve people's problems in dating, and dating problems are like depression in that there are so many causes that it's impossible to find a single cure.The bureaucratic categories that people have to box themselves into for many of these websites are not very useful. For example, "Christian/Protestant" and "Atheist/Agnostic/Other" are enormous categories. Instead of equality-matching over these bureaucratic buckets, a better matching question might be something like "Do you meditate?".Dating ultimately comes down to interpersonal chemistry, which is very subjective. By contrast, online dating often comes down to objective criteria like race, age, and religious affiliation, which simply aren't usually relevant in predicting whether a match is possible.If I were to build a dating site, I would:1. Unapologetically make it a niche site for intellectuals, targeting people from solid schools and graduate programs. This is a group of people who (1) tend to prefer each other, and would pay a premium for an elite dating site, and (2) tend to have difficulty in dating that is not due to personality problems.2. Use Amazon book-recommendations style comparisons to define a metric for "similar tastes" in books, movies, and hobbies, then match people based on that. My site would be AI-driven, because while interpersonal chemistry is really difficult to nail down, one can probably get closer by using similar artistic inclinations than by assessing people according to bureaucratic categories.3. Concentrate on building a real off-line community, with meetups and speed-date events, which the dating site would supplement. This would implicitly imply that the site would be focused on a few major cities, at least when it started. |
How do you know if you're any good? | amarcus: Does the code do what it's suppose to?
Is it maintainable?
Is it scalable?If you answered Yes to all the above...then you are doing fine. |
What's wrong with all those dating sites? | mdakin: Semirecently got out of a long relationship. So long that I was basically a kid when it started and if there was such a thing as a dating site on the Internet at the time I knew nothing about it.I've not tried any dating sites. Why?1. The factors that attract me to a girl are difficult to quantify and encode digitally. But relatively easy to sense in a face-to-face interaction.2. I trust my own senses and instincts more than second or third parties when it comes to gleaning truthful information about someone. I am confident in my ability to read people in face-to-face situations. Why put a computer in the middle given that it essentially hobbles that critical ability?3. I believe seconds/minutes/hours spent messing around with dating websites would be better spent out in the wild meeting, hanging out with and getting to know girls in person.4. I suspect "permanently single" people are disproportionately attracted to these various tools and I'm better off fishing from a random sample to find who I'm looking for rather than a negatively biased sample. Or, ideally, I'm better fishing from a better-than-random sample biased, for example, by people I know and trust in the real world and THEIR extended circles of friends.5. I strongly suspect that the hypothetical girl I like is basically feeling the same way and taking the same approach that I am.Perhaps I'm off-base. And perhaps I will modify my views with time but this is what keeps me away from such sites currently. |
What's wrong with all those dating sites? | MaysonL: Here's an interesting idea for a (niche) dating site:One for people who spend more time reading books than watching tv or movies. |
How do you know if you're any good? | antiform: You know you're good when somebody who actually uses what you wrote tells you that they love what you've done. It could be somebody in your target audience, the person who takes over your project, or even yourself for a personal project, but for me, that's the moment when you've arrived.You can obsess about development process all you want, have fun trying to push bits until they sweat, and create code that is like executable art, but I still believe that even computer programming is ultimately centered around people. |
Avg studio apartment rental in the bay area | evgen: You might want to specify approximately where you will be working. There are directional traffic flows that make some areas easier options if you happen to be doing the reverse of the standard commute, and some places that become cheaper options if you are working on the penninsula or in the south bay vs. working in SF. |
API Design? | rsa: Here's a video from Joshua Bloch
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/effective-api-design |
How do you know if you're any good? | saurabh: You know you're good when you realize what you have built is crap and start improving it. |
What's in a name? Serious or fun? | ScottWhigham: Why not run Google ads for both for 48 hours and then compare the click throughs? Let the market suggest to you which they prefer.==============================Ad 1:MacHeist Can HelpSave time, money, frustrationOnline help - Just $39.95------------Ad 2:
SunshinePuppy Can HelpSave time, money, frustrationOnline help - Just $39.95==============================All in all you'll likely spend $50 or less. One suggestion: have an email/beta signup form on the landing page to capture folks who are interested.As for good (cheap) logo designs, there are lots of places to find good logo designers and lots of places to find cheap logo designers. Why cheapen a good product/domain name with a cheap logo? IMO logo design is a major part of branding - you shouldn't cheap out here. |
iPhone alternatives? | TomW: The E61i replacement the Nokia E71 sounds like it matches your needs (mostly) I think it's not quite out yet but very soon. |
iPhone alternatives? | ScottWhigham: I like my Blackberry 8830 |
What's wrong with all those dating sites? | pavelludiq: Here are my thoughts on the topic.First in the real world people don't go around with profile info printed on their shirts, and mathematically filtering people based on that information. People in the real world interact and exchange information differently from what most dating sites do. I have a few online female friends(no girlfriends yet though) and I've met6 them all in different online communities. Mostly music sites like last.fm or different internet forums specialized in my favorite music genres. Basically if you want to make a dating site, don't, instead make an online community where people can interact and communicate about a specific topic of interest. Sites that just offer communication(myspace) might have a lot of users, but the users have to search for people with the same interests and stuff. In a specialized community, that problem is solved, and people can just discus stuff they like. In Bulgaria most dating sites are filled with 14-15 year whores who just want some attention, i wouldn't date girls like that, even if they were my age, they are just to boring(boring girl:I like music, and parties, and chatting with friends; interesting girl:dating sites are boring.) |
API Design? | sh1mmer: Read the O'Reilly RESTful Web Services book. It's a great explanation of why REST is good, and has a bunch of design patterns for the major pit falls.You could also look at some of the tricks we use at Yahoo. One thing I think is important is the way we handle JSON (http://developer.yahoo.com/common/json.html). |
iPhone alternatives? | icey: I've heard decent things about the Nokia N95, but I'm not sure how it is with regards to battery life. |
Any HN meetups in Greater Boston Area? WebInno anyone? | JayNeely: There's nothing HN specific, but there's an OpenCoffee group for startup-types that meets Wednesday mornings, 9:00 AM, at Andala Coffeehouse in Central Square (Cambridge). Good crowd and good discussion there.Lots of good stuff on Meetup.com, and you can find a ton of tech-related networking events on: http://MarksGuide.comSee you at WebInno. |
Any HN meetups in Greater Boston Area? WebInno anyone? | dangrover: One time I was coding at the 1369 Coffeehouse in Central Square, and some guy came by and asked if I was there for the Hacker News meetup. I said I wasn't, but that I'd be quite interested. I'm not sure who organized that or if they have plans on organizing more. Any clues? |
Any HN meetups in Greater Boston Area? WebInno anyone? | chip: See previous discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=217274Hope to meet everyone at WebInno. |
Any HN meetups in Greater Boston Area? WebInno anyone? | sanj: I'll be presenting at Webinno! |
What's Your Favorite iPhone App (new or JB)? | babul: Liking http://www.tapulous.com, and their business model too. |
Which social network to develop apps for ? | j2d2: any of them. Just get started. |
Thoughts on grad school? (CS PhD) | lbrandy: Just FYI, I have an MS in EE and I work at a pattern-rec startup. So, no PhD not really required to get a job in that field. That being said, having a PhD helps alot if you want to take on the 'scientist' role right off the bat (for example, my job duties have included things like optimizing the algorithm both computationally and algorithmically).Your stats look fine for applying to CS PhD. Top 5 is probably a long shot (but it always is). But, they love math backgrounds. The only problem is no publications. Top tier CS schools virtually require a strong research background.1. It's probably going to hurt more than help, to be honest. Even though EE and CS and the like -do- have industrial applications, the people who are reading your application chose to stay in academia. That means they don't necessarily look kindly on people diminishing that. My suggestion say "financial obligations" and leave it at that. The key is to seem really really really really excited about CS and that's why you are applying.2. This is a serious longshot.3. AI research groups will care alot more about your research than the school. And yes, top tier schools will tend to have smarter people and therefore better co-founders. Any "decent" school though will have plenty of smart people.4. The money is there at any CS school so you'll more then likely go to school for free and work on funded research projects. The career possibilities are as good as they get with any PhD. |
Thoughts on grad school? (CS PhD) | Rod: Have you read this?"Applying to Ph.D. Programs in Computer Science", by Mor Harchol-Balter ( http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf )It's quite good. Since you have been in grad school already, many of the things won't be news to you.I would say that the fact that you left grad school for a Wall Street job will hurt your application. The admissions committee might think that you're not determined and self-motivated enough for grad school. They might think "If this dude likes CS so much, why didn't he jump to the CS department back then?". Might be a good idea to explain in your statement of purpose that you discovered your passion for CS while in Wall Street. |
Thoughts on grad school? (CS PhD) | jmount: Given my experience (CS PhD. CMU) I would say that you are likely a very good candidate. The PhD you left was pure-math (not CS) so I don't think it counts much against you. You have lots of plusses (analytic and work experience) and the best thing would be to be very articulate about what you want to do (at this point they will be expecting you have some goals). The CS GRE really can not be taken without some studying (it had some obscure stuff on it when I took it).Now for picking a grad school a lot of things are really important.
1) Will they fund you?
2) Are they teaching what you want to learn?
3) Is it a happy place?Don't want to start a fight here- but schools vary by A LOT on these criteria. |
Thoughts on grad school? (CS PhD) | bentoner: 2. Especially since you have a pure math background, you could work on SAGE (http://sagemath.org). The people there (mostly academics) are very friendly and open, and you should be able to find something with an AI flavour (e.g., automated empirical optimization of software, as is done in ATLAS http://math-atlas.sourceforge.net/) that has a fair chance of generating a publication, or at least generating an outcome you can point to. |
Any HN meetups in Greater Boston Area? WebInno anyone? | wbond: While not HN specific, there are a few regular web meetups north of Boston. North Shore Web Geeks (http://northshorewebgeeks.com/) in Newburyport happens the third Thursday of every month. Build Guild (http://www.buildguild.org/) in Salem happens the second Tuesday of every month. |
Which social network to develop apps for ? | SingAlong: Get started with OpenSocial. Orkut, Hi5 and MySpace support it. Its just plain javascript and easy. So start here. Ofcourse, you will need small tweaks when running your app on different containers. Containers in simpler words mean sites.Then do it for Facebook. Then your app will also run on Bebo with very little tweaks. |
Thoughts on grad school? (CS PhD) | DaniFong: I can show that you don't need to finish a PhD in AI to do research and create AI to solve problems people have never before successfully approached. I've done it myself (though unfortunately most of it is locked behind a walled garden of IP).If this is a course you're interested in, here's what I suggest.1) Read up on AI breadth first and shallowly. Focus more on machine learning, search, filtering, and so forth, than heavier (and less successful) topics such as knowledge systems and computer vision.2) Go through a list of startups that you like, use, or admire. Imagine the simplest cool/good/useful thing the startup could do with a cute little algorithm.3) Develop the basic idea for it, contact the company, say you'd like to hack on it for cheap.4) Kill the problem.5) Use that startup as a reference. Find another one, but this time, ask that you can publish the method.6) Repeat. Blog about your conquests. Explain how to replicate and extend your results. Eventually, focus on a bigger project to tackle. If your interests align with a research program at a university, consider entering the PhD program then. With this behind you, you'll probably get in anywhere.If you're interested, I can give you some pointers on the development of quick and useful recommendation engines, which practically every startup can use. If you'd like, send me an email at daniellefong@daniellefong.com |
Thoughts on grad school? (CS PhD) | Hoff: Or find an AI problem that interests you and that can interest a customer base, solve it, and bootstrap a business.Make your own path. |
Which social network to develop apps for ? | phil_KartMe: What is your business goal for the app? If its customer adoption, what customers do you want to start with and which do you want to attract? I'll probably start on Facebook as it is most used by my existing and target users |
Thoughts on grad school? (CS PhD) | ahsonwardak: My friend, I think you're more than set to get into CS grad school. Though please understand, the PhD enterpreneurs are few and far between. Most PhD students in CS and engineering don't understand how to develop their own great ideas, and they don't want to. PhD's are mostly for academics. Exceptions include places, like Harvard, MIT, and Stanford.The upside is that you'll have lots of free time during a PhD curriculum to chase down your own ideas, and find the handful of like-minded people around campus. A PhD is a free time to pursue your own intellectual pursuit, and if you're already so energized, you'll do well. |
What is the best online marketing strategy you found? | brm: Build something exceptional and be authentic while telling everyone you can find about it. |
ASK HN: What do you do to make your users feel safe on your site? | xlnt: Don't try to. Users shouldn't give out passwords like that to anyone. |
ASK HN: What do you do to make your users feel safe on your site? | benjamincanfly: I rarely give my password out in that way, and only ever if it's a well-known service. It's foolish to do; that implies that it's foolish to require. |
Thoughts on grad school? (CS PhD) | hsu: I can help answer #2 and #3.#2. I received an NSF fellowship in grad school with 6 months of research experience. The experience probably helped, but getting an NSF is a long shot no matter what. I know of other students with similar qualifications who didn't get it.#3. The prestige of your grad school matters in some circles but not in others. If there are particular companies that you want to work for, try to find out what their hiring practice is. Some companies place a high value on the school you graduated from, and some don't care at all. |
ASK HN: What do you do to make your users feel safe on your site? | bjclark: Why not allow them to create an account without giving you that information? Then they can get into the app and see that it's legit.Also, user testimonials might go a long way towards building some trust. |
ASK HN: What do you do to make your users feel safe on your site? | bigbang: Use OAuth. Redirect user's to google or yahoo's site. |
ASK HN: What do you do to make your users feel safe on your site? | kilowatt: We put a detailed explanation on our wiki in layman's terms about how we only store hashed versions of your passwords--so that even if our systems were compromised, your data would stay safe. If you stress transparency, then the users who care enough to go looking will find that reassurance. |
ASK HN: What do you do to make your users feel safe on your site? | Kilimanjaro: Only a fool would give away personal info like that.Most social sites trick you into giving away that info when you sign up in order to spam everybody in your contact list.I really don't know how Mint (financial) can get away with such sensitive banking information. Beats me. |
What is the best online marketing strategy you found? | zacharye: That question is way too broad. What are you selling and to whom? What are your goals - brand awareness, memebership boost, etc?There is no one solution for every company and every product; web-based or otherwise. [oversimplified:] I wouldn't recommend a racy viral YouTube campaign to a company selling a revolutionary denture adhesive but it may work wonders for a dating site... |
What is the best online marketing strategy you found? | vaksel: build something that your users will tell all their friends about |
ASK HN: What do you do to make your users feel safe on your site? | rw: Use SSL for every page. |
ASK HN: What do you do to make your users feel safe on your site? | jrockway: Google lets users log into other sites with their Google Account, there's an API for that. So just use the service that's already available; then the users don't have to trust you.ClickPass bottles this all up into one convenient service, so why not use that? |
What is the best online marketing strategy you found? | pierrefar: The one routed in perseverance to serve your users the best. Serve them, and they'll tell everyone else and do the marketing for you.If you think about it, it's actually easier to reach and convince your users than to get new users... |
ASK HN: What do you do to make your users feel safe on your site? | Prrometheus: Put a little yellow lock icon somewhere on the screen. I used to know a sleezy internet marketer who swore that it makes people trust you. |
ASK HN: What do you do to make your users feel safe on your site? | wallflower: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/the-psychology-of-cupholder... |
ASK HN: What do you do to make your users feel safe on your site? | ajkirwin: You can't. And don't use market penetration of OpenID or ClickPass as an excuse. It's the old chicken and egg problem."People don't use it yet, so I won't implement it!"
"People aren't using it because no-one is implementing it!"And like hell I am giving the passwords to any of my mail accounts or anything, TO ANYONE.Just implement OpenID and ClickPass and use APIs and such. |
What is the best online marketing strategy you found? | fallentimes: I know everyone is going to describe building something people want or building something that is easy to use or excellent. And this, of course, is the best strategy as it encourages word of mouth marketing (free and effective) and has a wonderful product to fall back on (i.e. it isn't vaporware).However, something else you should really focus on is bloggers. I don't me spamming them or anything like that. I mean determining exactly what benefits your product offers and who would care about it. Chances are there's a lot of good blogs and bloggers out there that will. Way before launching you should contact them. If they are writing about something that interests you or you think you have something to offer email them or comment. Build a relationship, just make sure it's not forced - anyone can tell if you're being fake. Make sure you're providing value of some sort to them. Then when you have your product or site or whatever run it by them. Even if they don't end up writing about it the fact that they have a decent blog is indicative of their willingness to express their opinion and offer articulate feedback. |
ASK HN: What do you do to make your users feel safe on your site? | tptacek: There's nothing you could do that would make me give you my Google password. |
ASK HN: What do you do to make your users feel safe on your site? | paulirish: As for contacts and the address book:
+ http://code.google.com/apis/contacts/+ http://developer.yahoo.com/addressbook/+ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb463989.aspxStop using the password anti-pattern (http://adactio.com/journal/1357)Facebook has a nice auth flow that http://www.billmonk.com uses. I'd suggest that.Oh, and hire a visual designer. A strong visual design goes a lot farther than any copy or lock icons ever will. |
What is the best online marketing strategy you found? | breck: In my experience, from best to ok:1. AdWords. AdWords is a no brainer. Find out the average revenue per visitor from AdWords and set your CPC below this. Instant profits(after some trial and error). The great thing about AdWords is you can get visitors and feedback within hours. You can launch a site in a day and get a sample of how well it will work.2. Organic Link Building. This is the creme de le creme.
2a. Getting a blogger to write about you. New blog posts get picked up in search engines pretty quick, which will improve your SER. Also initial visits from a well read blog can be substantial.
2b. Social news sites(Digg, Reddit, Twitter, etc.). I haven't mastered these yet, but are pretty effective even when you're just starting out. Not only do they drive some traffic, some of them help with SER.
2c. Commenting on blogs. This seems to also drive some initial traffic and improve SER.3. Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter. Same as AdWords except less traffic. However, often the visitors from these sites will earn you more/sign up more often.4. Viral strategies. Email campaigns, referrals, making silly YouTube clips.5. Main stream media. Gives you a short burst and then improved SER. |
What is the best online marketing strategy you found? | prateekdayal: I have found for my kind of business (www.Muziboo.com in music space) that widgets that users put on their blogs drives good traffic back to the website. In some ways widgets is like WOM .. if your friend puts one, you get a feeling that he/she would have done some research abt the site |
How to monetize an algorithm? | rw: Google built an application out of theirs, and monetized it. Their search engine could also just have been a proof-of-concept, used as a demo in selling PageRank to another firm.You should investigate patents (preferably with a patent attorney), and figure out just how easy it would be to reverse-engineer your algorithm.Keep in mind that many programmers find the idea of secret algorithms distasteful. Hiding these processes is often a necessary evil in order to make profit, but do not do it if you don't have to (recent example: reddit). |
How to monetize an algorithm? | mlinsey: Not sure where to begin here without knowing anything about what you're "algorithm" is about, what it would be used for, etc.If you've created something useful, why not build a business on top of it yourself?If you don't want to do that, I suppose you could patent your algorithm and then grant licenses to use it. If what you're licensing is literally just "the algorithm" as opposed to an implementation of the algorithm that you write, than I don't see how you can get around telling them "the math behind the algo". |
How to monetize an algorithm? | jerry5: SingAlong, I think both commenters are right. To put it in more explicit terms: You can't sell the algorithm, you can only sell its output. I.e. Google has an algorithm to determine the relevance of a web page to a search result, but what they are selling you is the output, i.e. the relevance for a given combination of search term and page.
In order to do that, you will have to host the software that implements the algorithm on a server yourself and your customers will have to feed the input to it and pay for the output in a subscription-like model or similar. Email me at jerry5@p2pbroking.net if you are interested in an exchange of ideas. |
How to monetize an algorithm? | marcus: Of course you can monetize it without revealing the algorithm, just expose an API.The questions you need to ask yourself is what are the advantages of your algorithm in comparison to known algorithms for tackling the same type of tasks, which companies use algorithms to accomplish these tasks and what is the monetary worth of the improvement in their results your algorithm generates. |
How to monetize an algorithm? | gaius: If you really can do natural language parsing that well, the most upside is in starting your own search engine. |
How to monetize an algorithm? | bprater: Create a proof of concept and make it publicly available. |
How to monetize an algorithm? | snowbird122: If you REALLY believe in the value of this algorithm, I would think the best way to monetize it would be to put it to commercial use. The usual reason to license is because implementation requires too much capital. Algorithm commercialization is cheap. |
How to monetize an algorithm? | gtani: Do a literature search (I'll try to find mine), whether you have a effective /original named entity recognition algo, how scalable and domain-specific it is. This is also referred to, or covered in related research, as anaphora or antecedent resolution and co-reference / record linkage / deduplication. sounds kinda like a gazzetteer (sp?)To quote one paper (ginormous project, 4 PI's at UIUC):http://serrano.ai.uiuc.edu/doi/==============research on methods for Named Entity Recognition (NER) is voluminous but has tended to focus on the problem in widely used languages such as English, otherWestern European languages, Arabic, and Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean. |
How to monetize an algorithm? | Neoryder: Question is what do you really want out of life.Is it good enough to be the basis of a company?
Are you daring enough to start a company?
These are some questions you have to answer.I think the best way is to demo this by starting a free service. If its good enough and meets people's needs you people will go to you with offers. |
Ask HN:Do you believe Natural Language Search will become bigger than Keyword Search? | breck: No. The way search works nowadays is basically natural language search. You just leave out the articles and keep things concise.Why would I want to type "What is the temperature in Boston?" when I can just type "boston temperature"? |
Ask HN:Do you believe Natural Language Search will become bigger than Keyword Search? | SingAlong: Do you mean a search engine that does natural language parsing in its backend?If yes, then problem currently exists, i.e: when i search for python, i get the results relating to computer language than snakes. So a search engine that does natural language parsing can solve this. But its tough to beat big brands(people may type "python snake" and that solves the problem). But still the company can do business with the tech. So there's market for sure. |
Ask HN:Do you believe Natural Language Search will become bigger than Keyword Search? | lacker: I hope natural language interfaces eventually work. Not just for web search as we use it today, for all sorts of things. Think how great Hacker News would be if you could search for[well written articles about concurrent programming, written by people who actually know what they're talking about]Just try to get that with a keyword search ;-) |
What features for an EC2 iPhone app? | yourabi: I don't think managing EC2 in isolation I think at a minimum you would need a basic S3 browser as well (for browsing/selecting custom AMIs)) SSH Client
) Public AMI browser
*) (Obviously) Ability to launch / shutdown instancesI'm sure there is a lot of stuff I'm not thinking about... |
How many Tabs/Windows open on average? | pjackson: When I'm in the zone, I have two browser tabs and dozens of editor tabs.When I'm shaving yaks, I have one editor tab and 10 browser tabs. |
What are some important "failure" lessons learned while doing your startup? | coglethorpe: It turns out that my problems with the startup had nothing to do with the technology and quite a bit to do with human and business factors.What I learned:1. Get a partner you can count on.2. Don't take side jobs while doing a startup. Eliminate any distractions you can. If you can afford to ditch your day job, all the better.3. Research and choose your niche carefully.Looking back on my (first) startup attempt, I'm amazed at how much I got done on so little time and sleep. For "extra cash" I took a side project that ended up being a huge drain of my time and energy. The money is nice, but the development on the startup slowed to a crawl. I don't think there's a startup that can handle that kind of neglect.To make matters worse, I ended up having to handle a lot of work because my partner, while showing enthusiasm early on, produced little after we began. I'm not complaining, he and I remain best friends, but I just don't think he knew what he was getting into. :-) If you get a partner, make sure they are as committed as you are. I've heard vesting gives people motivation, or at least a way to drop partners who aren't earning their shares.We chose a niche that had low barriers to entry. The down side of that is there were hundreds of players in the market we were after. If we had more time and resources, we could have given it a better shot, as we did have some success in spite of the competition, but it would have been a hard climb.We had a second phase to grow from our entry, but it turns out that would have been heavily time and money intensive, far too much so for our market. Knowing that up front might have steered our plan to another area.So the startup ended. I'm fine with it, actually, and I'm so glad I gave it a shot. I've learned so much in such a short time and it's helped me on my day job. It will also help me with my next startup. :-) |
What are some important "failure" lessons learned while doing your startup? | azharcs: One of the biggest lessons i have learned is you need a very good and dedicated partners. You will find lot of people who want to be partners who will stay with you during good times but go away when times get tougher. Find people who believe in Not giving up and who can work hard.
The other part of Start Up failure is people look down upon you and start giving you advice. In some instances you might be even branded a Loser for failing. You always have to be very sure of what you are doing and be very confident. If you don't believe in yourself, others won't too. |
What are some important "failure" lessons learned while doing your startup? | haasted: I'll add to the "partner warning". It's incredibly important to pick the right people!I worked at a startup where one of the two partners was really good during the "garage phase", i.e. just two guys hacking away on a prototype. When the company grew, and developers were added to help out, it turned out that he was completely unable to grow into the role of development lead. Instead, he just stayed in his corner, grudgingly handing out assignments, never resolving discussions between developers etc. Never having even simple design discussions resolved, can really wear down a team.It's also important to have a great seed engineer, who will be in charge of creating the company's software development culture (Mentioned at http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-things...).In the company mentioned above, the software development culture never got beyond the garage state; There were no design documents or meetings, no continuous integration, no quality assurance, no code reviews.... All things that the partner could / should have introduced into the development culture.The side-effects of this was a scarily buggy product, developers not being on the same page about central concepts of the product, design not being implemented uniformly between developers etc. |
What are some important "failure" lessons learned while doing your startup? | wallflower: I have read thousands of News.YC comments - and your story about failure is one of the best in my opinion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=121413 |
What are some important "failure" lessons learned while doing your startup? | auston: I never had my own "startup" per se, but I did start a web business right out of high school, what I learned from that:1. Don't give up easily. I had like 5k in revenue per month out of the gate and I shut it down... which leads me too...2. Manage your money well. I mostly couldn't manage the business by myself, handling SEO, SEM & Other affiliated tasks, while packing/shipping orders, developing and paying quarterly sales tax, properly writing things off... which leads me too...3. Find a good co-founder, but really truly, no matter what, be able to rely on that person and let them be able to really rely on you. |
What are some important "failure" lessons learned while doing your startup? | tstegart: Know when to quit. Sometimes the business just isn't there, but you're in denial. In the end you just run yourself into the ground and it take a long, long time to recover. |
A stealth project disrupted | icey: There is more than one competitor (scroll down to the bottom of the article you linked and you can see a few more).On one hand, it's validation that it's a good idea. On the other, you have to be convinced that your execution can be better. |
A stealth project disrupted | coglethorpe: "So what should I do now? Keep on pursuing this idea of my knowing that there is another well-funded startup that has a 2 year head start ahead of me? Drop the idea, and think about the second on my list?"That depends. Is it a big market? Every Coke has a Pepsi, you know and every Nike has a Rebock and Adidas, a New Balance, and ... you get the idea.You just have to be sure that you can find a way to get a piece of that pie. Is there a certain niche you can target? Are you really able to do something at least comparable to the others, or even better?You may need a team or to find your own funding to compete.And I wish you the best of luck! |
A stealth project disrupted | mechanical_fish: This is awesome news. Read this:http://www.ericsink.com/Choose_Your_Competition.htmlThe big problem with avoiding competition is that you are also avoiding customers. The existence of a competitor indicates the existence of paying customers. If you can't find anyone who is making money with your idea, you really need to wonder if there is any money to be made there at all.Now you're primed to understand me when I say: Don't give up yet. This startup is doing valuable research for you, and it isn't costing you a dime. See if you can figure out if they're making any money. See if you can find some of their customers and ask them what they think of the product. Try the product. Take their product to one of your potential customers, demo it to them, and see if they like it or not -- think of it as a prototype for your own product, except that all it cost you to develop is the cost of buying a copy from your competitor.If, perchance, the existing startup has uncovered a huge market for this kind of product, chances are they can't capture the whole market. You can grab some of it. If their product rocks and has a plugin architecture, sell a handy plugin and expand from there. If their product sucks for a certain subset of the market, build your own version. If their product just plain sucks, and they have a market anyway, take them on -- there's gold in them thar hills!More likely, there is no market and this startup will obligingly discover this for you by building a decent product and then failing anyway. You will learn from their failure, while spending nothing! And they have a three-year head start on their failure, so you might not have to wait too long!I haven't said anything about the idea, and I don't have time to research it... but based on the one-sentence pitch I urge you to read this and come to terms with it before you proceed:http://neopoleon.com/home/blogs/neo/archive/2003/09/29/5458....It's hard to believe how true that cartoon is until you've lived it. So be careful, or your customer support costs will eat your business alive. |
A stealth project disrupted | prakash: All you need is paying customers, don't worry about competition.Also, using your current idea, think about a generalized version of your idea or one that focuses, say only on the financial vertical. |
What are some important "failure" lessons learned while doing your startup? | edw519: Be careful not to each too much of your own dog food.Almost every time I ever built anything, I thought, "I can build a tool to build it next time."Be careful. The next thing you know, you could be spending all your time building tools for yourself and forgetting who the user really is. |
What are some important "failure" lessons learned while doing your startup? | alex_c: Technically not a "failure" lesson, but the most universal thing I've learned so far: there is a LOT of startup advice out there, some of it contradictory, which makes sense when you read it... but you don't TRULY understand until you experience it. Which in some cases might be too late :p |
A stealth project disrupted | brk: My random thoughts:Many people talk about "first mover advantage", although often times large companies like Microsoft, Google, etc., prove that there is a larger argument for second or third (or n) mover advantage.Not to be too harsh, but I doubt many (if any) of us here have ever had a truly unique idea. The fact that somebody else noticed the same hole in the market and attempted to architect a way to fill it is no more noteworthy than the sun rising. My personal opinion is that in most cases this neither validates or nullifies YOUR idea, it is simply one of many variables to take into consideration.It is very important to be aware of and monitor your competitors in any market. However, if you create a better solution, their existence will be less than a footnote to you. Keep an eye on your competitors, but don't obsess over watching them and worrying when they (or you) solve a particular part of the puzzle differently.My advice: go and build your solution IF you think it is whole and complete and solves a compelling and valuable problem.If your entire user market is worth only $5M (and I'm not saying that it is), it doesn't really matter if there are 1 or 100 competitors, NOBODY will make any money anyway :) |
A stealth project disrupted | run4yourlives: Keep going. Competition only proves to validate the worthiness of the idea. Is there only one car manufacturer? Telephone utility? Clothing Store?Of course not. |
Is there a NYC AI startup job list anywhere? | donna: touch base with me.. donna {at} genuus dot com |
What are some important "failure" lessons learned while doing your startup? | cmos: A friend and I were talking about how scotch is made. We know nothing about scotch except that a popular kind is aged for 10 years before being bottled and sold.So, in theory, it would take 10 years before you knew if it was a good batch or not. You might be able to tell sooner, but you'd have to know what it should taste like before it's 'ready'. This can only come from experience.So we deduced that it would be very difficult to start a business of making scotch if it took 10 years to know if we got it right, with no prior experience.Then my friend added "also, how could you run a company that doesn't make money for 10 years?" to which we burst out laughing, as my company hasn't made money in 10 years. We've made money for periods of time, and had our ups and downs, but overall we have lost more than we made.But this year we should make a bunch. We've branched out of our core competency and added products that widen our market that we can sell to our existing customers and leverage off our brand name. We've gotten a lot smarter about how we do business. It just took longer than I thought. At least if I was starting a scotch business I'd have known that it would take 10 years ahead of time.In my business I'm often meeting rather successful, wealthy people as they are our end customer. One of them recently said to me: "It took me 20 years to become an overnight success". |
Is there a NYC AI startup job list anywhere? | mechanical_fish: Boston is a wonderful town. You can bond with all the former New Yorkers -- just talk about how annoying it is that the trains stop running at 1am and the conversation will be off and running. Don't bring up the Yankees. ;)I know that isn't a useful suggestion, but I don't know much about NYC.You know about the upcoming Fog Creek Open House? That might be a great networking tool, one way or another: Either you will get along with the Fog Creek folks, or you can chat with all the people who secretly despise them but have turned up for the free food and the gossip value.Anyway, I wish you good luck! |
Is there a NYC AI startup job list anywhere? | dpapathanasiou: VCs usually list job openings at their portfolio companies, so for NYC, check out the Union Square Ventures jobs page (http://www.unionsquareventures.com/jobboard.html).Silicon Alley Insider also has a jobs page with some startups listed (http://jobs.alleyinsider.com/).And you can use "Reg D" to find out about startups which have just gotten funding that may not be listed anywhere else (http://redeye.firstround.com/2008/06/the-death-of-st.html).The nextNY (http://groups.google.com/group/nextNYdigital) and NYC Tech Boosters (http://groups.google.com/group/nyc-tech-boosters) boards also list jobs from time to time.Also, even though it's not a jobs board, you should subscribe to Jay Sulzberger's mailing list (http://lxny.org/correspondence.html) to find out about tech events in NY. |
Is there a NYC AI startup job list anywhere? | dangoldin: I'm in the same boat so if you want to talk, you can email me at dangoldin at gmail |
Is there a NYC AI startup job list anywhere? | ecommercematt: My contact info is in my profile. Be in touch. |
Is there a NYC AI startup job list anywhere? | kobs: This list may be useful... http://lispjobs.wordpress.com/category/ai/ |
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