Spring Cleaning: I just deleted 29 domains.
October 18, 2007 | 4 Comments
OK, so it’s not spring time, but man does it feel great to delete 29 domains from my account. I’m now down to only 45 crazy idea domains.
My buddies and I use to use the term “spring cleaning” when we’d go through our cell and delete the phone numbers of girls we met at bars, etc. Always felt empowering to just hit ‘delete’ — even if we’d never be using the phone number anyhow (and even if they wouldn’t know who we were if we were to ever call).
If you’re looking for a burst of “self”, go delete those domains you’ll never be using anyway.
First-User Experience: Don’t Forget It, Entrepreneurs
October 12, 2007 | 7 Comments
(Note: Scott’s quotes aren’t accurate below, but you get the drift)
I’ve had the pleasure to chat with Scott Rafer (Lookery, Mashery, and formerly MyBlogLog, Feedster) on a few occasions. Quite frankly, the man is brilliant — but not just because of the lesson in this post that he pointed out to me.
I was recently telling him about an idea that I had detailed and conceptualized out quite well — or so I had thought. Just simply speaking about the concepts (and not the monetization which he disagreed on) — “Steve, looks great. As user #1, tell me about the user experience.”
On my side of the phone call was dead silence.
“Steve, looks great — if you had a million users to start with.”
There has to be value to User #1 and then you’ll see User #2 come on board, and so forth. He brought up examples of MyBlogLog and del.icio.us. MyBlogLog gave bloggers stats at first — that was of personal value/utility to them; they used it. Later on, MyBlogLog applied all the social networking features that we’ve come to know/love about MyBlogLog — but that was after they had a bunch of users in their system. Ditto on del.icio.us — online bookmarking was of personal value/utility to users individually. Then once it caught on, the collective keywords/bookmarks across the entire network (with minimal social networking aspects) was of great value to everyone using it.
I’ve tried to tell myself, “Well, OK, I simply require 100 users at least — I’ll get a bunch of friends to sign-up initially to create that necessary pool.” But I don’t think that approach works for this still, because it’s social-oriented and if the users go through the 100 and more users aren’t added fast enough, it’ll be a dead horse that those users won’t ever come back to.
So when you’re mapping out your big startup idea — be sure to think of how User #1 will use it. Then you just might get User #2 and so forth.
MySpace vs Facebook - The “Duh” Difference
October 1, 2007 | 8 Comments
I just realized — I mean, I knew this — but I just realized, MySpace is super-open. You can surf most anyone’s profile and view it — I bet only 1 in 500 profiles are actually set to private [”only allow my friends to view my profile”]. Whereas in Facebook, I bet it’s more like 1 in 500 profiles are actually set to public [”allow anyone to view my profile”].
That creates a whole different dynamic of the sites — MySpace is a lot of “people watching” — viewing people’s profiles that you don’t know. Whereas Facebook is more focused on your network of friends (close and non-close ones that you added — like business contacts; one-offs that you met a conference or at a friend’s party).
It’s an interesting thing to think about when developing apps for the Facebook Platform — seems you should be more focused on apps that allow users to (learn) interact with their own friend network, as opposed to meeting new people.
Agree or disagree?
