100+ Web Start-up Business Ideas

April 29, 2009 | 12 Comments

With this recession and unemployment so high, there’s likely a lot of people looking to start their own business. Hopefully one of these ideas of mine can provide some inspiration to just one of those people.

I’m formerly a TechCrunch writer, a serial web entrepreneur, and an idea guy. I can’t believe I’ve posted 100+ web start-up business ideas in the past couple years. Below is a compilation of them. They are all for the taking and if they aren’t perfect, hopefully they give you some ideas of your own. If you’ve seen any of these implemented, please post in the comments as I’d love to check them out. And if you know other ‘idea’ websites, please post in the comments for others to visit.

I’m currently working on my own start-up, InSeconds, which is launching a beta in early June 2009. If you have a website, you’re going to want InSeconds (I hope!). Be sure to sign-up your email address to be apart of the beta.

My other posts about start-ups, inspiration, etc, can be found here.

Posted by Steve Poland | Filed Under Ideas 

IDEA #100 – Twitter License Plate social network

April 29, 2009 | 7 Comments

Can’t believe I have posted 100 ideas on this website now. As with any of them, they are all for the taking — I hope they bring you inspiration, or I hope it’s an idea that you’ll want to build! Let me know if you build any of them, I’d be excited to hear it! :)

It’s 8:45am and I was just leaving my friend’s house when I saw the parking sign that said “No Parking 9am-4pm on Mon, Tues, Wed”. It’s Wednesday. His car was parked on the wrong side. I shot him a text message and he switched to the other side of the street.

I’ve been in my car and seen tail-lights out while driving, or tires that are really low, or mufflers practically dragging, or wanting to offer sympathy to someone who’s car was obviously broken into, or someone that left their lights on in the parking lot, or a cop going down a line of cars that are parked illegally giving tickets (I wish I could warn those people!). I often try to get the attention of the people in the car, but typically it’s an utter FAIL. Sometimes I’ve seen single hotties in a car, wanting to know if they truly are single. Or I’ve seen people rocking out to a song and wanting to know what it is. Or I’ve seen a classic Mustang that I wanted to give props to.

There’s a solution that could happen to all these pains, if it were to be created and get visibility in the mainstream. There could be a Twitter service that someone builds, maybe with the ‘auto‘ twitter username (which Jason Calacanis happens to have reserved; I have ‘autos’).

I’d imagine that I could tweet “@auto NY:ABC-123 you need to move your car! you’re parked illegal, it’s Monday”. Anyone could follow ‘auto’ and they could specify which license plate numbers they want to be alerted of via direct message, with whatever was said. Each state, country, would need a proper syntax, but someone could figure that out. Here’s a list of ones in the USA.

This can then be extended to its own website domain — imagine Dogster, but for Autos. Each license plate will have its own webpage, people could send in photos as well (via twipic w/ “@auto NY:ABC-123″ in the subject, which will then get pulled into this webpage). People can post make, model, color — and even link actual people to the vehicle. [Monetize the site via some Google AdSense, or displaying similar cars that are for sale on eBay. Lots of money in auto advertising vertical.]

Obviously this could have a brutal side as well, of people bitching to each other about their driving skills. 

Anyhow, even if some of my friends aren’t on Twitter or whatever, I could follow their license plates and be alerted via direct message if someone says something about them [and if it's important, I could forward to my friend].

Any other thoughts on this idea? Put them in the comments. Otherwise, who’s building this out? Go for it, I’ll be you first beta tester.

Posted by Steve Poland | Filed Under Ideas 

RE: The First Ten Things the New CEO of MySpace Should Do

April 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Response to Jason’s MySpace To-Do list:

I think #2 and #3 that I list below are most important. [I aligned them with your #'s].
#3 has the most upside [global to 1billion users].
#11 is an idea missing [they are slowly losing bands, and thus band followers, over to twitter].
1. Buying a search engine is overkill. You don’t care about the search engine, you care about the advertisers — Google has landed them (and due to the mass competition can get nearly 3x revenue what their next closest competitor gets Yahoo …. unless that number has changed) — so have a big emphasis on search, but use Google and take your 80% rev-share that you can negotiate [because Google doesn't want to give up those searches and put a competitor 'on the map']. A search engine isn’t their core competency.

2. There’s a reason MySpace is dead [or dying] — people are sick of the mess! It’s a clusterfuck of clutter! Geocities was the same way. Yahoo — same way [which is part of why Google took over Search]. I’d maybe think of introducing a “flip-side” of MySpace — a sexy, clean, cohesive version — and then the version where users can go buckwild-style on their pages [hell, bring back the 'blink' tag and let them go at it]. I think in order to take-over mobile, you need to clean up the mess first on the website.
3. Global efforts and race to 1billion users: Partner/buy global social networks that don’t overlap too much with your existing userbase. Also, need to internationalize the site [if it hasn't been already; FB has users doing this for them].
4. You’re talking a massive overall here (no more coldfusion? ahh!). But maybe it could be outsourced to the gods… http://www.pivotallabs.com/
5. Games: Fuckin’ bingo. No brainer; can’t believe this hasn’t been done yet. Oberon Media, they should go buy ‘em.
6. Love the virtual currency. This is still up for grabs; they could potentially shift into OWNING this space — and hell, MySpace Coins might make their way into Facebook App games if they were the most dominant virtual currency. [And that is, if the USA could grasp this concept]
10. Content sites: Agreed, but this is insignificant in the big pie they are tackling.
11. They use to OWN the bands, they still kind of do, but Twitter is hopping in there and grabbing a piece. Twitter owns the communication; MySpace owns their space. I’ve been watching ‘30 Seconds to Mars‘ and ‘Imogen Heap‘ on Twitter — both are in the studio working on new albums; it’s been exciting to watch their progress (and I’m in great anticipation for releases!). Anyhow, they need a “status update” service.
/end

Posted by Steve Poland | Filed Under Uncategorized 

Staffing Plan for a Widget Startup Company

April 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment

I’m interested in what a staffing plan typically looks like for a widget startup company, like: MyBlogLog, Lijit, IntenseDebate, Disqus, etc.

What’s needed initially til launch? After launch, at what # of installs do you need: community manager; relationship manager (someone proactively engaging Publishers to install the widget), etc?

Anyone have any info on this? Any links to some public staffing plans? [I'd love to see what MyBlogLog had planned for, then what it really looked like]

Posted by Steve Poland | Filed Under Uncategorized 

BarCamp Buffalo #3 (May 4, 2009 @ 6:30PM)

April 7, 2009 | 1 Comment

We’re trying something a little different this time — we’re going to have a theme at this BarCamp, which this time around will be Social Media (anything related to blogging, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc). You can still present on anything, but hopefully it’ll be related in some respect to the theme.

We’re starting a little earlier, 6:30pm — with plans to begin presentations at 7pm. We’re going to do 10-minute presentations. We’ll do 6-8 presentations, then take a 30-minute networking break (where you can speak with those who just presented).

Then we’ll do another 6-8 presentations, then allow people to dive into further conversation with the speakers on their topics, as well as other networking.

Here are some ideas of what you might present on (or others will present on):

• Building a Twitter app
• Software/tools to help you blog, tweet, build FB/Twitter apps, etc
• How LinkedIn can help you find a job
• Everything you do on the web is there forever, don’t screw up you reputation
• How to make money from a Facebook or Twitter app
• Building a Facebook app
• Ideas for making your app viral
• Getting attention

Wish to present? Sign-up here: http://barcamp.org/BarCampBuffalo

Follow what others are saying about the event on Twitter (@BarCampBuffalo):
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=barcampbuffalo

Suggestions? Comments? Do share, we want to hear them. Just tweet a message with ‘@barcampbuffalo’ in it, and everyone will see it.

Please RSVP to event here:
http://digg.com/u1Qtn

Posted by Steve Poland | Filed Under Uncategorized 

If You Suck, You’re Dead

April 4, 2009 | 3 Comments

I recently had an awful experience with United Airlines and feel 100% unsatisfied by how they handled the situation. I made a commitment to them in January, when I paid them money for airfare from BUF->AUS roundtrip (for my annual trek to SXSW). My flight was for Thursday morning, the day before SXSW started (which cost me $400 for admission). I watched as delays due to ‘mechanical failure’ kept delaying my flight, it reached about 2.5 hours (I didn’t wait that long, they were pushing it out that long), that I knew I’d miss my connecting flight to AUS (from IAD) — so I knew that’d be a mess if I actually got to Dulles and then was stuck there.

I spoke with someone via their 800 number, who told me to call a different 800 number, who then said to speak with someone at the actual ticket counter. (What!?) So after those many minutes of my life were destroyed, they told me they “were sorry” and that they could get me out on a flight Saturday morning. “SATURDAY MORNING?! WTF!” I mean, wtf. I NEED to be in Austin. This isn’t the first time they’ve had problems with an airplane — have planes in reserve, even if only at your main hub (IAD) and fly them over. “But sir, we can give you your money back.”

Give me my money back? Are you f’ing kidding me right now? I don’t want my money back, I want to arrive in Austin Texas. Today. “Sorry sir.”

I’m sorry, but that’s not acceptable to me. My forced option was having to go on Southwest.com and drop another $384 on a one-way flight from BUF->AUS, so I could get out of Buffalo that day. Had I known I was going to drop this much additional, I wouldn’t have been such a cheapskate in the first place when I “saved” $250 by booking via United, rather than Southwest.

I let it go and decided I’d deal with it once I got back from the trip — and thus, I wanted United to reimburse me for $384. Through many emails and calls with Indians (no offense, but I want to speak to an American that I can understand), they offered me a $25 gift certificate on future United travel. “WTF?!” Then they eventually boosted it to $35 after more angry emails to them.

Wow, Thanks United. I’m done with you. I will never fly United Airlines again in my life. I have felt shafted and never want to be shafted by them again if this incident were to arise again. I purchased airfare to Belgium a couple days ago — and I paid a little extra as to not fly United Airlines.

The Internet has become a beautiful, beautiful thing. In the past year, Twitter and Facebook Status updates (aka “micro-blogging”) have really come to fruition — and in years to come, there’s only going to be more of it. It’s the new “word of mouth” marketing — only now, when I bitch about a brand, it doesn’t go out to the 1 or 2 people that I’m telling next to me — it goes out to the world; specifically though, it goes out to all of my friends/contacts, whom I have some influence with. In Twitter I have 816 followers, this blog has 1,219 readers, and in Facebook I have 334 friends. Granted, there’s overlap. But if even only 100 people see my message — heck, they may tell their friends about how Steve Poland got the shaft from United Airlines, and they might join my boycott, because they are sick of airlines treating consumers with zero respect. (Heck, I might get this post digg’d the the homepage of digg and have a legion of United Airlines Boycotters).

United Airlines — You Suck, and I hope you are one of the companies that will go belly-up BANKRUPT in the next 5 years, as word-of-mouth on the web starts to hold all companies accountable for their actions and customer service. When I look at your logo, I visualize a middle finger in it and you’re telling me to go screw myself. Well, this writing is my middle finger back to you.

The age of (near) full transparency is here. I say “near”, because we can’t see the shady stuff going on inside companies, but maybe anonymous Twitter accounts will start popping up with insider-employees at companies ratting out their own companies on shady activities.

Posted by Steve Poland | Filed Under Uncategorized, apple 

Google’s New Competitor: 1 Geek

April 3, 2009 | 3 Comments

Aside from all the marketing problems of having the next Google and getting people to use it (not to mention the huge pool of advertisers Google has w/AdWords; nor to mention all the filtering of spam webpages that exist out there), in the past couple of days, some really neat services have released that will allow any single programmer to build their own Google at minimal cost. I’m really excited by this.

Hadoop is an open-source program that Yahoo, Wikia Search (R.I.P.), Facebook, Powerset (MSFT acquired for $100mm and likely is relaunching this technology w/$100mm of new branding, code named ‘Kumo‘ at the moment) and others use to process/index tons of webpages on the Internet. Amazon.com just announced Amazon Elastic MapReduce, basically allowing anyone to easily do web-scale data processing (Hadoop was actually inspired/based on Amazon’s MapReduce).

Next, a startup called 80legs got to strut their stuff at the Web 2.0 Expo in SF. 80legs allows anyone to easily crawl the web quickly — up to 2 billion pages a day (there’s over a trillion on the web).

No longer does one need to invest a boatload of money for a 1000 servers to handle Hadoop (only to find-out they can’t pull off the next Google competitor).

Posted by Steve Poland | Filed Under Uncategorized