skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Do all startups do SEO?
I've read a couple posts here where they are pretty much against SEO or see SEO as a "bad" or cheating thing.

Do you in your startup/website/company do SEO?

Maybe I am just too much of a SEO fanboy (?) but I 'm not sure if startups focus on organic search.

If so, what are your strategies? Like link building, articles, directories (no need to share your top secrets unless you want to :) )
I think you skipped the most important statement in the article:

"Check the value of Bebo, Myspace, Friendster, etc. and you'll see the future of Facebook."

What makes Facebook any less fragile? Perhaps social networking sites are intrinsically subject to the whims of fashion.
The post makes a bold assertion about monetary worth of Facebook with absolutely zero data to back it up. This is not only stupid, but dangerous.
Arrington seems to be suggesting that FB is telling recruits "that there’s no reason their stock won’t hit $100 billion in total valuation".

If that is the case, and that's coming from any sort of person in a leadership or HR position, isn't that seriously afoul of SEC rules?
Woops, I missed this reply. I'm a front end developer working on intranet software - we all run server 2008 or win7 so we can build/install/test.

Try getting the Adobe Creative Suite to run on any version of Server. That's a bit of fun ;)
Plus, http, which this is based on, is an open and wide standard.

Apple is pointing out that the alternative - flash - is not as open, even if it's proprietary player is on more platforms.

I do find the reality distortion field that has people claiming adobe is more open than apple to be pretty powerful. Apples core technologies are generally open sourced, while I can't think of any open sourced adobe software.
I thought business schools teach people to write essays with strong arguments.

I've said it numerous times, but let me say it again. MBA schools do NOT teach people to write. Most MBAs write like shit.

Source: Me. I'm in an MBA program.
Http://www.hotgaylist.com/gay-porn-movies-8
hfjjnb
Seat down; no splashing problems really, you are only 2 or 3 inches higher; only at home.
If there weren't so many "ZOMG NOSQL SUCKS" articles recently, I might agree with you, but "The poorly kept secret is that it's all about scale, if RDBMS-s would scale, nobody would NoSQL, and by the way, it's a lazy solution anyway!" in the first few paragraphs triggered my "I'm really getting sick of this" reaction.
Facebook Plots Trade-Marking Prefix "Face" and Suffix "Book"
There is almost nothing there, in an industry absolutely saturated with loads of people with a lot of something. The business plan right now appears to be "a simple Google Spreadsheet with a lot of annoying maintenance and superficial value-add surrounding it".

The pie-in-the-sky fantasy land of future low interest credit card leads [which is the exact opposite of the sort of offers such a site would get. The best would be predatory, secured credit-card type offers] and automatic...something...it just has the aroma of failure. It could as easily be a "lose weight today" website where you enter your desired weight and it tells you to eat less daily. Which...if such a site existed...I think we would all laugh at.
I was talking about New York specifically.
How about labels inside the fields (as placeholder texts)? I'd think that'd be the quickest and most accurate attachment of text to an input (even though my aesthetic sensibility balks.)
I'm really glad to see this. I'd say it could count as a public service as well. What I hope the site will also offer is counseling on developing better spending habits in addition to the tracking/organizing of repayments. The crowd that visits HN is probably already pretty wary of the credit card game/trap, but too many Americans get pulled underneath unmanageable debt burdens before they really know what's happening.

I had a neighbor who had simple, yet fantastic advice: if you can't afford to pay for it cash, don't buy it. This guy was your average American, with a middle class job, but during his retirement years I noticed he bought a new porsche and humongous RV. I have to wonder if he bought those cash too, but I wouldn't be surprised. He had rental property, all his debts paid off I'm pretty sure, and all because of simple yet powerful financial common sense.

It actually angers me to see some of the interest rate schemes and fees banks deliberately put in place to take advantage of unsuspecting debtors. A site like ReadyForZero is timely in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. If 70% of our economy is based on consumer spending, it make sense to strive to keep Americans in a position to spend comfortably.
This article has absolutely zero business value. The author doesn't even understand that Facebook has absolutely no intention of ever charging for it's service. Sure, it's possible it will be replaced by a new technology - but that's a whole article in itself which can also be argued at length.
I think I would start a cultural movement to allow polyandry before resorting to a digital relationship. I know I've heard of fraternal polyandry. Any reason such relationships would be taboo in eastern cultures? Seems like it would be advantageous and automatically beneficial to all parties involved. Particularly in Japan where I understand the marital restrictions are more relaxed.
The article is good stuff. There are some obvious things that I hadn't thought of previously for effectively marketing all sorts of stuff.
If you encrypt the zip, it works fine. Took me ages to discover that :)
It's flying in a replacement for one that caught fire yesterday.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/qantas-drama-flames-like-a-gi...
As soon as bandwidth costs come down enough I have a great startup idea: backup copies stored on a different planet/planetoid. Mars. The Moon. Either one. Half-kidding!
I'm in Columbus as well, working remotely for an interactive firm in NY (http://f-i.com). Not in the startup scene per se, I'm in the same realm.

I can't recommend any people in specific (my personal network is not local), but here are some links to get you started:
http://www.techcolumbus.org
http://www.columbusunderground.com
http://www.meetup.com/techlifecolumbus/
http://www.techlifeohio.com/

Feel free to email me, the address is in my profile.
The site is still invitation only.

Here's a little plan I came up with for someone, not quite 100% applicable but it worked pretty good:

(1) cut up your cards

Tough ? Yes, absolutely, very tough. But step one of getting out of a hole is to stop digging, so stop spending money that you don't have.

(2) cancel: cable, newspapers, any and all subscriptions, internet and cell phone included if you don't need them for your job. If you do need internet see if you can make a deal with a neighbour, especially easy if you have a laptop with wifi.

These are not essentials in your life, you can do without them until you can afford them.

(3) stop smoking, stop drinking

Besides making you unhealthy this stuff is habit forming and costs you a bundle, even if you don't really notice because it's only a few bucks at the time.

(4) if you've bought stuff that you don't actually need, sell it. Liquidate it, set a price on what you realistically think it is worth and try to raise that money by selling it for cash.

(5) stop eating and drinking outdoors. Restaurants and coffee shops make a profit, that means that you can cook for yourself and make your own beverages cheaper. Sure, it may not be that luxury latte that you've come to depend on but it adds up.

(6) pursue ways in which you can earn more than you do today (this can be hard, it did not work out for my friend, maybe you have more luck)

(7) list each and every expense you make, look at the list at the end of the week and be critical, could you have saved on any of them? If you could do not repeat that spending in the next week!

All these steps together should give you a bit of money on a repetitive basis that should go towards paying off your debt.

That's cumulative, any money that you spend over and beyond the required interest payments will come back the next month as a further reduction in interest to be paid. So next month you can pay back more on the principal and so on.

Do not fall back in to old habits, be strong and look at your debt decreasing as a motivator.

--

I'm really happy that the 'readyforzero' people built this. That's one of the nicest start-ups ever to come out of YC, in terms of the 'change the world' attitude.
> When we "chill out" with our friends, what do we talk about other than "man, my work sucks" or "omg, my son Jonny is learning to walk!"?

If all I ever had to talk about was work sucking and kids learning to walk, I would not consider life a fun adventure and would probably not ever speak. That's what philosophy, art, literature and technology are for: intriguing, awe-inspiring, non-mind-numbing conversation. The kind Facebook is not too good at promoting.
It depends what kind of business it is to be honest. Most start ups focus on their product and worry about marketing and SEO later on.

SEO is just a single internet marketing tactic and in all honesty until you have something worth marketing beyond friends and family, I wouldn't worry about it or any of the other internet marketing tactics you might consider until the appropriate time.

With that said there is nothing wrong with creating an SEO frinedly site and blog early on. However I wouldn't get overly concerned about them until you really have something worth marketing. At that point you need to look at the marketing plan and I would be sure to include SEO as part of it.

SEO really has three key parts. Good on page optimization, quality content creation, and high quality link building with solid anchor text. Do those three things well and you will succeed.

I hope that helps.
I do wonder if this site can really reach the market it's after.

I think this is the big question. I really love this idea, because too many people are struggling unnecessarily because they don't realise the true impact of credit card debt. Having something that clearly shows them this impact is a great idea. But I find it hard to believe they will seek something like this out, so it's going to be tricky to reach them.

I was thinking about the very problem yesterday, and wondered if it would be worthwhile requiring information like this to appear on all credit card statements. Instead of just highlighting a minimum payment, what if the statements also had to outline the impact of higher payments somehow? It could be the only reliable way to get the information to the people that could benefit most.
Ask HN: How do I teach myself better writing skills?
I am a decent enough writer, but considering how important writing is in almost all online work, I'm highly interested in improving further. I'm currently in college but I don't feel my English classes give me an significant improvements. What websites or programs do you recommend to learn how to craft really engaging stuff?
It's been a while since I worked on this, but if I recall correctly...here's an example: Some Windows apps save by (1) writing a new file, (2) deleting the old file, (3) renaming new to old. The idea is that if it dies in the middle, you don't end up with no complete files. This sequence of events is actually recognized in the Windows filesystem code (if it happens quickly enough) and turned into a file-replace operation, which has very different semantics, particularly the effect of copying the metadata (think extended attributes) from old to new.

Actually the whole question of what to do with "advanced" filesystem semantics (like extended attributes) is pretty hard, especially if you're trying to sync across platforms where those semantics differ. You could just ignore them, but then if an app actually uses them (and why else would they exist?) then the file won't round-trip through the sync platform.
Debt is a huge trap. And consumer debt is being rammed down peoples throat in a way that should be illegal.
Cloud Dreams become Security Nightmares, governments getting involved. [gigaom]
For someone with a hole in their hand getting a handle on their expenses can be a first step towards actually doing something about it. I would not rule this out as a failure quite so easily.

They'll have to make it super easy to use though.
That was good - I bookmarked it to run through again. I really like the part of this not being a recession, but the end of an old economy and the transition to something new where 1/4 of what runs the economy (information) can actually become more valuable as it is shared - not necessarily a scarce resource.
I'm pretty sure it's limited to H.264 and MP4, at least that's what Apple is saying on the tech specs page under "video formats."

http://www.apple.com/appletv/specs.html

I still don't like the idea of having iTunes on a PC be necessary for me to play my video files. What if iTunes doesn't recognize certain file formats that I want to play? I'm SOL.

I really like the AppleTV and will buy one, but it's not a media player in the same sense that XBMC or any of its decedents are. It's a player for the userbase who doesn't want to deal with storage, file formats or torrents. That's not me, but it is certainly a large # of people.
Article is in error to say you can lower costs by working aboard.

Generally, the per-day cost of travelling this way is the same or higher than a cruise ship, at list prices.

However, cargo ships tend to cross oceans and take routes that cruise ships don't. That's their advantage

The disadvantage is that the per-day cost is double the discount price you can get on a cruise ship.

With a bit of planning, cruise ships cost about half as much per day.
Every company that makes a well functioning websites "does SEO". The easier white-hat practices of the past have come into common practice as part of what is considered good web development. Things like making sure all you navigational links are text, using consistent linking, and assigning correct alt tags to images go along these lines.

The the question that I think you might be trying to ask is "whether all startups go into the grey and black-hat areas of SEO". The obvious answer to this is no. Lots do though.
Congratulations Jessica and team!
It's not necessary to go over the top with cleaning carrots. Just run them under some water and wipe off any excess dirt with some paper towel (or, as I've been guilty of doing, a t-shirt). Definitely don't peel them, plenty of nutrition there.
Apple's Pricing Decoys
I totally agree with the vertical alignment of labels, as it does actually make user input faster. The problem (mentioned in the article) is when the page becomes too long. Clients don't tend to like this.

One approach I normally use is to have the labels horizontally placed, but right aligned so that they "stick" to the input field:

[-----myLabelA][textboxA----]
[---myLabelABC][textboxABC--]

as opposed to:

[myLabelA-----][textboxA----]
[myLabelABC---][textboxABC--]
I know I read in several places that multiple page forms increase the abandonment rate and I think that is the number one reason for the one-click technology that Amazon uses.
British tabloid hacks into mobile phones of dozens of British citizens
Rumor has it that several extremely early and important Googlers are billionaires, including Marissa Mayer and Jeff Dean. Same for Facebook.
Is Japan a good example? If any country is second to the USA in packaging products to appeal to kids (or, as you put it, "BSing them"), it's Japan:

http://japanfix.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/DSC_0019.jpg
http://s7.thisnext.com/media/largest_dimension/23448865.jpg

(I think this is a good thing if, and only if, the food is healthy and worthwhile to eat - as here. It's easy to rail against branding and advertising - it's harder to prove it doesn't work.)
Now there's a number.

TechCrunch: "I’ve confirmed that the round was $2.9 million, with an additional $190,000 raised last year in convertible debt (which converted to shares with this round), for a total of $3.1 million raised."

link: http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/01/banksimple-3-1-million/
Honestly, blog, blog and blog. After leaving school my writing went to crap. When I started blogging I was shocked at how bad my published materials sounded. Now that I'm blogging 2-3 times per week it has in all honesty refined me a tonne.

Practice makes perfect.
Apple Blinks in the Living Room
"... Successful entrepreneurs are more likely to be smarter than less successful entrepreneurs, but the most successful people in any field are more likely to belong to the set of "super smart." ..."

If you replaced "determined" for "smart" I'd probably agree ~ http://paulgraham.com/determination.html
That's a niche site, how could you broaden it out, though?

Another interesting idea, would be for submitters to authenticate with such a site, and have it check their "retweets_of_me" "retweeted_by_me" and "retweeted_to_me" aiming to surface what's important.

Tweetmeme has a comedy channel, I wonder how they get their tweets. http://tweetmeme.com/category/comedy - but the tweet is not initially shown, only the link and its extracted content.

Is there a twitter site aimed at crafting the best possible lists in certain categories?
I believe this has been law here in the UK for some years but the childhood obesity rates are still high. The problem is that the most convenient food in terms of both price and preparation time is the least healthy.
I totally agree. I live in Australia, and I didn't realise this until I went to India a little while ago.

The fruit there seemed smaller, but far, FAR more tastier.

So it's not just the looks, but also the size that seems to matter in Australian supermarkets.
Ask HN: your feedback applied to blurrypeople.com. Is it better?
A week ago I asked the HN-community for feedback on our website (BlurryPeople: a site that lets you meet strangers via your webcam, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1626783). And feedback I got! Thoughtful, honest and just very useful feedback. I was really, really, impressed: HN truly is a unique community.

Of course, we acted on just about all of the feedback:

- You said the dark color scheme wouldn't appeal to women. So we changed the colors.

- You said the tagline didn't try enough to explain the purpose. We changed it to: "meet awesome strangers".

- Many of you were lost on first visit - "what are we supposed to do here?". So we introduced an introduction.

- And most importantly: nobody seemed to understand the feedback system. Neither did we, actually. We replaced it with something that is -or so we hope- both more intuitive and more powerfull. It's based on users collecting 'awesomeness'. You get it when people rate you as 1) friendly, 2) interesting, or 3) good looking. The more awesome you are, the more the system allows you to apply filtering when searching for (awesome!) strangers. More control.

So, what do you think? Is it better this way, or did we mess it up even worse? ;)

Again, thanks a lot for all of your feedback! It is much appreciated.

http://www.blurrypeople.com
Does "everyone" really need "help" from the medical profession? The dental profession? I think you may be showing signs of stigmatizing mental illness yourself a bit, there.
You don't need to peel carrots, really. They are nice to eat just like they are!
I think that it's foolish for any startup to avoid or refuse to do SEO. SEO is scalable, repeatable marketing. One of the things that I hear over and over again is to constantly create relevant content that relates to the keywords for which you are optimizing. SEOMoz and HubSpot have some pretty good resources on how to get started with SEO.
Is anyone getting a gobsmack of irony from this post?

Also if you look at the rest of the site, as well as mankabros or w/e, it doesn't look uh, legit.

I have a difficult time believing any MBA could call fb 'worthless'. Maybe something like $100 billion is overvaluing it, but worthless? That's some strange mixture of ignorance and...

Anyway, I'm declaring this one a 'fake'. I think she's a comedian, or maybe just a troll.
Excellent idea; thanks!
Maybe someone with great knowledge can chime in, but it seems like this is classic Prisoners' Dilemma. If only some people lock up their content, those who give it away for free will eat their lunch.

I applaud Dave for believing in his position enough to take his writing behind a pay-wall, but I think game theory is going to show this to be a poor solution in the long-term.
Could be. Although I think in this case it came down to calorie quantity and not quality.
Yes, Amazon have been ignoring this problem for a while now. Here's a post I wrote on their forum over a year ago: http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/thread.jspa?t...
This is one of the areas where education in the US is really horrible. This stuff isn't rocket science, but people really have no clue what it means to get a car loan or carry a balance on a credit card, or even understand mortgages. It's depressing.
And remember, the first revision is never the final version.

Refine Refine Refine.
Downhill Mountain Biking
Heli-Skiing
Kayaking

and of course PARTYING!
Interesting. I didn't know that the hop prices fell. The craft beer prices have increased a bit since then. Need to support the local brewers though.
That you spend much time in art and philosophy is great. I also spend lots of time reading books, watching TED videos, and working on side projects.

But not everyone is like that. Many parents care a lot about their children and can indeed talk about them all day. Many people also think work sucks and find it comforting to have friends who agree.

Whether you can have awe-inspiring conversations on Facebook depends on your FB friends. I've friends who frequently post tech news, political news, and other discussion-inspiring things on Facebook. I also have friends who post mind-numbing conversations online. Both are valuable to me.
Flow Control in npm
my .emacs is on bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/zaphar/dotfiles/src/tip/.emacs.d/

Some notable items:

;;; allow seperating out the config stuff to
;;; into different files
(defvar jaw:config-dir (expand-file-name "~/.emacs.d/conf.d")
"My config parts directory location.")

(defun jaw:load-confs ()
"Load Jeremy's config file parts"
(let ((files (sort (directory-files jaw:config-dir) 'string<)))
(while files
(setq file (car files)
files (cdr files))
(cond ((string-match ".*\.#[^/]+\.el$" file)
nil)
((string-match ".*\.elc?$" file)
(load-file (concat jaw:config-dir "/" file)))))))

(jaw:load-confs)

Automatically installing elpa packages to bootstrap a new emacs system: https://bitbucket.org/zaphar/dotfiles/src/tip/.emacs.d/conf....
we're actually letting people through to register as well but have throttled initial registrations so many will get an invite page. thanks for the support and feedback.
That sounds very similar to Mint. :)
The first of your links isn't sushi, by the way. It's a kit for making grape-flavored candy in the shape of sushi.
Loan sharking is illegal, but I sometimes wonder how far banks are from that... States craft laws for maximum interest rates, so the banks relocate to where they can charge the most. The highest allowed currently is 29% I think. Ridiculous. If 100% interest was allowed I don't think a single bank would exercise restraint.
Yes, you can shout and be obnoxious and get what you want. Or you can be nice, polite and full of cash and/or smiles and get what you didn't expect. There are certainly more ways to go about something than just tipping and bribing, but in my experience I can always get the same result as long as I'm nice, polite but persuasive.
Norton & Snoop Dogg fight cybercrime together. Your rapping skills wanted.
Yes. Yes it is. Just because they have lots of fancy candy packaging doesn't mean that Japanese kids eat tons of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_obesity#Japan

Just look at photos of what the Jap kids eat for lunch:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lunchinabox/1378172475/

This is actually what they eat for lunch everyday. It's amazing.