skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've been a big fan of Danah's work for the past 3 years. This is an interesting analysis she published a while back (though it's ever evolving), especially since most people are quick to generalize Friendster's demise as a product of internal politics and featuritis.
Greenspun's First Guide to Web Publishing (Online book link)
Greenspun's Second Book on Internet Applications (Online book link)
I don't understand his logic. It's catchy, but it means nothing. The only time that would make sense if there is a very small finite market for your product- for example- if there are only 50 people on the planet who will pay for your product and there's a reasonable chance they'll know where to find it, then yah, don't give it away. When is that ever true, though? When you sell nuclear submarine technology to 1st world governments? It sounds like you've put a lot of sweat and guts into this. I would suggest you read http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php (it applies even if yours isn't a web app) and Crossing the Chasm http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060517123 which goes into the mechanics of your market. If you took down the demo because it made your product look bad because it was incomplete, complete a smaller subset. If you took it down because someone said someone would steal your idea, welcome to startups- know that they'll steal it and move on and do it better.
Releasing new software products to a market and being successful may seem to be timing, luck or good marketing? But the pro's know better and know there is more to it than that. The answer to your question is not as cut and dry as you think.

ASSUMPTION?: I'm assuming your product is a shrink wrapped binary to be released to one operating system for single users (from what I've read on your product).

COMMUNICATION: I cannot really view your software, but it looks like its a binary application. Unlike its web counterparts, your audience cannot simply use your software. This is by far the biggest hurdle. If your audience cannot use or see your software they will judge (rightly or wrongly) by what information you offer. Do you show on your website, blog or other forms of communication the following?

* product summary?: simple sentence explaining problem solved

* why better/product comparison: how is your product than competitor(s)?

* features: list of things the software does

* scenario: small stories of how certain problems are solved

* images: screenshots of major forms

* blog: meta behind the scene view of product (my favourite as you can really
guage the product process) & how real users solve their problems (hopefully with your software)?

* forums: what problems people are having

* price: what is the price of your software? No price, even if its alpha still give a hint

DELIVERY: Are you going to have your software on your website? Or are you going to look for the best couple of sites that offer downloads for new & categorised binary software like Tucows or Cnet.com? The ranking and categorising of products make it easier for users to find new & interesting software and also makes it easier for developers to find their markets. From here you can work out important things like pricing, feature matching etc.

'... Your first set of problems revolve more around business & distribution than software and engineering. ...'

CONCLUSION: Notice I've not added any development problems here (release planning, defect processes, etc ...) Your first set of problems revolve more around business & distribution than software and engineering. Since you have invested time & money and you want to protect your investment consider the following. Go back to marketing 101.

Invest the time (not money) to see how you can improve the communication of your product on your site. Then concentrate on placing your product with Cnet. At the same time maintain your job (and income) & improve the existing code but not new features.

There are other alternatives, explore those. I do not suggest you open source the product. If you have created a site that communicates the benefits of the product. Found a way to deliver the product to consumers. Then you can work on selling. This is going to take longer than you probably think.
Alternative to the mouse -- User interface that tracks eye movement
Sure seemed like 1999 faux-authoritative BS.

On the other hand, I'm pretty busy so I just skimmed it.
Business Models for the Web
Should VCs buy out angels?
3 Qualities Of A Good Social Network
YouTube, Google vs Old Media: Who Wins?
Bebo IPO - Possible?
Zooppa, YouTube, Reddit and social networks in general are a testament to the wonders that collaborative intelligence makes possible. As John Nash put it, "Best results come when everyone in the group does what's best for themselves, and the group." More to the point: Web 2.0 demands that the currency of social networks be user generated content, rather than money.

I am a developer of a social network myself, and I can vouch for the wisdom of crowds. In our case, the users are actually coding large parts of the network themselves (i.e, http://shuzak.com/Replies.php?ID=6344&Topic_ID=1).
Awesome! I believe Nike paid a sum of just $35 for their priceless logo! My cash strapped startup, btw, paid only $4 for the logo; so maybe I can boast about it too when we hit 6+ figure revenues :p http://shuzak.com/img/ShuzakLogo.jpg
I actually suggested this to YouTube when they were young. Basically, instead of displaying "director videos" on the right hand corner, they could show video ads similar to Google video ads. Now that YouTube is owned by Google, such a system is even more plausible. An advertising system on YouTube based on Google's adwords architecture would work to the benefit of both, advertisers and the content hungry users.
Buxfer on Techcrunch
Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites
WTF is Cisco Doing?
California, the Wi-Fi state
Social Networking's Next Phase
Business 2.0: 50 People who matter
Blogging for Dollars
Facebook Extends Lead As Fave Young Adult Site
Scaling HotOrNot.com
Eric Sink (SourceGear) on magazine advertising
Thanks for the link. I loved his first book, and I hadn't seen this.
Release it. I once worked at one startup that decided that their product sucked too much to even put into the hands of beta customers and went about rewriting it. The VCs canceled the rewrite 2 months later and shut the company down 6 months later.

A little later, I was at another startup whose product IMHO sucks *more*. They, however, are profitable. They manage to get customers to fork over several hundred thousands dollars to use the product.

There's almost *always* a buyer if you look hard enough. Entrepreneurs are usually the most critical of their own product; they ought to be, that's what makes them improve. But chances are, somebody somewhere really wants what you're making, and your job is to find them.
A sociohistorical look at the evolution of Japanese mobile wireless
This book definitely isn't beach reading, but if you've already read Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs then this is really good for understanding mobile wireless.

Specifically, just because an idea was successful in Japan doesn't mean it will be successful in the US, because the niche it was created in was different and the people had different problems that needed solving. This book goes through each phase in the evolution of mobile wireless, from before pagers all the way through ketai. It explains exactly what problems these technologies were solving for each segment of society and details how each demographic was using them.

There is a pretty good section on dating too. :-)
The Art of Complex Problem Solving
A good summary of possible problems with fixed exchange rates (in China).
Not so startup or entreprenerial, but everyone should understand the implications of interest/exchange rates especially if you want to do anything globally.
34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog
Looks like it would've been an ideal situation for using the filesystem rather than an RDBMS at all, or at most berkeleyDB. Certain programming habits die hard.
Marketing TV shows using social media
Applies to anything really, I should make a myspace profile for my startup. Anyone know startups who did that successfully? Maybe its in contravention of myspaces TOC.
Google's Gadget Numbers Revealed - Exposure that a good widgets can get.
Peer to Peer Information During Disasters
There is a startup idea here somewhere :-)
It is interesting to point out that Reddit already tried this platform for comments on scientific papers. arxiv.org has long been acknowledged as a forerunner to scientific e-publishing and is in fact a one-stop-shop for many subfields of physics, computer science, and almost all of mathematics. We thought it would be the perfect place to try to do something like what you suggested: to use a Reddit-like interface to collect comments and discussions on scientific literature. So Reddit set it up at arxiv.reddit.org.

As you can see, there is not much happening. In fact, the main lesson learned here was not that a reddit-like platform is not ideal to this type of knowledge pooling, but that the scientific community is in general skeptical about this type of information sharing. We did not require email address validation for logins (hence the spam you can see up there), but we did talk about it with a lot of people and there were good arguments on both sides. I talked with physicists, biologists and mathematicians about using this type of site, and the replies were mostly those of insecurity about sharing incomplete ideas: both because they might be wrong (and not many scientists like that), and because if they were right, they would rather keep it to themselves and publish it.

Actually Paul Ginsparg, the creator of arxiv.org, kind of warned us before we launched that it would take mostly a huge grass-roots effort to get scientists going on something like this. He was right, and from listening to some of his stories about how he started arxiv.org, it apparently took him over 5 years of grass-roots convincing before it took off, despite being clearly a very good idea.

If you are interested in scientific knowledge sharing, with an eye towards collaboration, check out openwetware.org, which uses the mediawiki wiki platform. Note that they actually do require account authentication, so have a lot less spam issues at this point. It seems like a wiki platform is more easily adopted for scientists (although still hesitantly), as the subreddit oww.reddit.com, which we tried to push to the openwetware community, has not taken off (this time because of concerns that Reddit is a company.)
Making a Wiki with TurboGears (Python)
The reason why I posted this link is to promote a discussion of python-based web application stacks. We have been using Rails for about a year now, and really enjoyed it from the very start because it did so much for us. Well we have prototyped the idea and would like to start building it for real, and we kept getting caught by Rails when we tried to go against the grain.

So we started to look into other web application frameworks, and turned up a lot of comparison between two python-based frameworks, Django and Turbogears, with Rails. Although they were all very outdated, they all boiled down to using a python-based framework if you want more of the internals exposed (because you have include a lot more code to explicitly specify what you want to do), and use Rails if you don't want these details exposed. To be fair, you can always dive into the rails code itself to look at the internals, so it is more of a question of how you want your application code to look.

As I don't have too much Turbogears experience at this point, I would gladly welcome a re-analysis of the comparison from someone who does. And I hope that just by posting the link to the Turbogears tutorial video that someone realizes there are more webb application frameworks out there besides Rails.
news.ycombinator.com Feature Requests
I have a couple of feature requests:

1.) I just posted a comment with a typo, but I could not correct it, so an edit feature, or at least a preview feature before you submit the comment would be helpful.

2.) A bigger box to write these comments! I find these one line comment discussions very confusing, and I wonder if they would be limited if there was a bigger comment box (I am already getting a scrollbar with a comment this long).

3.) Some way to see posts that have drifted off the top and new pages. Someone told me about a post that apparently just got knocked off one of these pages and I can't get it. This is a complicated feature request because I really do like only having to look through a couple of pages to see what is new (a real plus on the simplicity side). But not being able to find a good post that someone sent you is not good.

4.) A 'track-this-discussion' feature. I am sure you have something like this in the admin console for the site. If there is a really long discussion that is a few days old, and someone posts a reply to my comment, odds are I am not going to see this reply unless I am very vigilant on that page. I think some sort of tracking or alert system (of course optional) would be nice so that you will be alerted (emailed or possibly some sort of user message in the top right corner when you log in). Se mediawiki's 'Watch This Page' feature.
At the bottom of the main page is a link where you can add feature requests. Also you should be able to edit your posts- look carefully for the edit link for your post. And welcome to the site :)
Well here is another feature request then - make the Feature Request, and edit links more noticeable. But thanks for the tip.
"...software allowing instantaneous creation of a self-forming, self-healing community wireless network. That "community" could even be a 50-mile long, four-lane wide one formed involuntarily by thousands of people..."

Sounds like a kind of virus to me :)

Anyway, it's very, very difficult to start a startup where the government (any part of it) is your main customer. It takes established business or political connections to pull it off, and even if you have that you have at best a market of a few hundred or thousand entities (if you're talking local gov'ts) with all their own unique red-tape.
The European startup scene
Collaborative filtering resources
Mind Petals archives: hundreds of good startup articles
"Mind Petals is more than the Young Entrepreneur's Network; it's a community that produces informative, inspiring, and motivating content to spark the minds of all entrepreneurs - especially the ones really making things happen, not just talking."

== Lots of exclamation points on article titles.
How to Start & Run a Successful Web Development Business
We Don't Dream Big Enough
The Geek. Figures.
most startups are single programmer. this article is for *read it*
Microsoft type orgs.
I really appreciate the advice from you all. To those who posted on this page, I can send you the demos, an executive summary and competitive matrix - if you are interested. IMHO juwo is a useful everyday tool.
However, you would have to give me your word that (sorry, I dont know how to put it diplomatically) you will not rip off any new ideas.
In return, perhaps, I can share a percentage of any profit from juwo - for a certain time eg. 1 year with those who will help out with concrete help.
There is a lot of money in it if it catches on. Think of youtube using it for their audio/video.
Feel free to email me anil AT juwo DOT com.
thanks,
Anil Philip
http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=1997
It is not shrink wrapped, it is via viral distribution via web.
if you would like to run a demo, please read my reply to jwecker an do contact me. (sorry for the repeat posts, but there doesnt seem to be email notifications or even highlighting of new posts).
if you would like to run a demo, please read my reply to jwecker an do contact me. (sorry for the repeat posts, but there doesnt seem to be email notifications or even highlighting of new posts).
A peek inside Google's war chest
Top 5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs make
1. Automatically convert http:// text into links.
2. Use Ajax to 1up points.
3. I have 29 points on my account but I don't know where I got them from. A tracking algo would be appreciated.
4. atm, topics are promoted to front page with just 2 points. Increase this limit in order to attract more worthy content to the "top" category.

Let me know if you need help with any of these. They probably require less than 20 minutes to implement.
Crowdvine: make your own social network
Perhaps some of the 12 tests/tips are. But I think there is some good stuff in there for solo or small-team projects. I myself have never used a bug tracker, but I sure have spent a lot of time coming up with some sort of solution for that problem. These solutions get pretty hodge-podge after a while (wiki's, email, white boards, notes, etc.), and I am never satisfied. His argument for a good bug-tracker is compelling and it seems like it would benefit any project.
Great link! Google has some great research publications as well that I recommened everyone checkout: http://labs.google.com/papers.html

They have an amazing collection of research papers based on their products. Personally, I recommend "Evaluating similarity measures: a large-scale study in the Orkut social network" as a preliminary mathematical introduction to user interfaces.
Lots of startups may be a single programmer, but my understanding is that the most successful ones have 2 to 4 (http://paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html). I posted it because I found it useful for my own software project (involving 4 people) and believe me, we're far from a Microsoft type org. Anyway, maybe the bugtracking discussion will be informative for all, no matter how big their posse is. Sera
I am guessing Ning already has the upper hand in this niche. Perhaps if this application had launched a few months ago, it would have made similar waves as Ning.
Here is my comment on Mashable: None of these social networks present a viable business model to be attractive from a shareholders point of view.

That said, I think all similar startups should hold off until Facebook or LinkedIn go for their IPO. Bebos valuation would sufficiently increase or decrease depending on how other players in this market perform.
The problem with collaborative filtering is that there's a lot of magic going on that the user does not understand. Some users like to have more control over personalized recommendations and social networks can give them that control.
It did in fact launch a while ago (not sure if it was a few months, but it was a while before Ning). But, you're right -- Ning has a lot of publicity momentum now.
That website has some great case studies available on recommender systems available for finding "music", "content", etc. I would much rather prefer that a computer do my work than myself. Web users have a terrible attention span so such a system would work to their benefit by eliminating the need to click-and-find content. For anyone interested, I expressed my ideas on collaborative filtering here: http://www.socialdegree.com/2007/01/15/interview-w-shuzakcom-founder-jawad-shuaib/
Great Research Papers by Google
Wow. That is one of the coolest things I've ever seen on the web.
Does Ning only let you make social networks now? I remember during the beta test they said it was going to let you make any type of web app, from Amazon to Craigslist. I haven't really checked back since then.
There's already an official thread for feature requests: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=363.
Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technology 2006
Both let you create social networks, but they're quite different. Ning seems to be more about hosting social networks that you create with your service -- your social network is standalone and is your own personal niche MySpace.

Crowdvine has a single community feel to it, with users joining multiple groups based on arbitrary titles ('Cool People Who Know Kati' is one example). It's more group-creating than social network-creating, which would be ideal for smaller scope congregation. Further, however, Crowdvine doesn't let you do anything once you're in a group besides read blog entries from other members.
Create a minimal Wiki in Python+Django in 15 minutes (screencast)
Was there anything that steered you from Django?

I just posted this screencast as well: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=1981
This supplements lucks' submission on creating a Wiki with Python+TurboGears (http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=1981)
I have not tried Django, but all of the discussions I have read have hinted that the built-in admin interface to Django is awesome, but it seems it is the only real benefit over Turbogears. The consensus was to actually learn both, and use Django when you needed a great admin interface, and Turbogears otherwise. My specific project is more on the otherwise end of things.

Another common theme is that Django is great for projects that don't have user-created content, but instead release a lot of content (I am guessing along the lines of the original Django newspaper app). If you don't have that type of project, people seem to advise using Turbogears.

But I guess the best way is to try both, so I will certainly look at the screencast you posted. Thanks!
Good article. Here's a related article to that that was linked in that story:

http://gigaom.com/2006/12/20/earthlink-sf-milpitas/

Milpitas is my hometown but since I'm away for school, I haven't gotten much exposure to the city-wide WiFi. I do remember receiving WiFi signal from Earthlink in surprising places the last time I was in Milpitas. They were offering free access for a while but I think the subscription requirement has kicked in by now.

I love and fully support the idea of mass WiFi access. I'm unsure about municipal funding, however. Either way, it's interesting to observe where this might be going.
We are using Django for our project and it does have user-created content.

I can see why Django is great for publishing content (it as a newspaper app, as you mentioned), but I haven't found anything compelling that puts TurboGears over Django for user contributions. Do you have any specific examples?
How will this software get my users laid?
Extending Zawinski's law [1] to the web: Every website expands until it becomes a social network. Websites that cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zawinski's_Law_of_Software_Envelopment
Software and craftsmanship
Multiple founders != multiple programmers.

Many startups with multiple founders have one founder do most or all of the programming work. As I understand it, Reddit is like this: Steve does the coding while Alexis does all the other miscellaneous work. Sun had 4 founders, but Bill Joy did the programming. AFAIK, DHH did most of the initial programming for 37signals, though they obviously have more now. Their advice (in "Getting Real") was to start with one programmer, one designer, and one person who could do swing work - a little server admin here, a little CSS work there. This also squares with Fred Brooks's advice in Mythical Man Month - a programming team should be organized like a surgical team, with one lead programmer and 5-7 people running support so he has no distractions.

There're some big advantages to this structure, mostly involving communications overhead. With one programmer, you don't need to coordinate who does what. You don't need to explain what needs to be done. You don't waste time fixing broken interfaces. You can move quickly and add whatever features the customers want.

I've worked for two startups that have both suffered by starting with a team of 4-5 (1 founder + 3-4 employees) instead of a single founder. It's very hard to get everyone on the same page on the requirements, particularly if the employees don't know the domain well. And when startups change direction frequently, multi-programmers tend to get demoralized (because the switching costs are higher and comparatively more effort went into the previous product), while single tech leads just throw away the old code and write whatever they need.