Posts filed under 'Startups'
A site that I find myself spending more time on for news these days is reddit.com. It’s a social news site that lives in the same world as del.iciol.us/popular, Digg, and Slashdot. It’s a bit different in a few unique ways, and I had the opportunity to ask some questions with reddit.com co-founder Alexis Ohanian. It’s a great story of a site on the rise currently run by two young guys in an apartment.
Where did the idea for reddit come from? What’s the background of how it started?
AO: We were actually inspired by del.icio.us/popular, it’s a great
indicator of what people are busy bookmarking, but we were interested
in the more ephemeral links that are popular because they are
interesting and new—not just good reference material.
What types of features are you planning on adding to the site?
AO: We’re busy improving the collaborative filtering that currently
recommends users links based on their past votes. Our current
development is focused on giving our current users personally relevant
links while also improving the accessibility of the site to new users.
What’s your personal favorite feature of reddit?
AO: Even though it’s not really a main feature of the site, I’ve recently
spent way too much time on our reddit.com/comments page, which tracks all the chatter going on around the site. I’d also have to give the reddit.com/recommended page a nod, since it’s got me figured out pretty well (which may just be an indicator of how predictable I am).
How do you feel reddit compares to other notable social news sites likeslashdot, digg, and delicious popular?
AO: delicious/popular was our inspiration, as I said earlier, and Joshua
should be able to add lots of value to Yahoo’s MyWeb 2.0.
Steve and I grew up with Slashdot—it’s an institution. Digg has a
great following, and it’s a shame to see it so adamant about “burying
Slashdot.” The comparison to reddit, especially since they announced
an expansion into non-tech categories, certainly comes up. We both
share the belief in social news, but our guess is that training a
filter will ultimately yield the best quality front page, something
that we think sites like Digg will eventually realize and copy.
Are you using web analytics for reddit? Which package and why?
AO: We wrote our own, nothing else had just what we were looking for.
Can you give us any indication of numbers or growth statistics?
AO: We get around 13,000 unique hits a day now, a number which has been growing pretty rapidly in the last weeks. We’ve been quite pleased,
especially since we’ve only been doing this since mid-July and haven’t
spent a penny on advertising. We’ve just been trying to build the
best site that we can.
What’s the long term plan for reddit? Any plan to add any revenue streams?
AO: We’ve got ideas, but we’re going to hold off for as long as we can.
Despite not having accepted VC investment, we can keep up our spartan
lifestyle until summer with the angel funding we received.
What are your thoughts on the new types of apps being built for the social web/web2.0?
AO: There are lots of great apps being built for the social web, which
isn’t surprising given what a great time it is to be a developer.
Hopefully, this will mean some great innovations for users—we’re
just trying to do our part as best as we can.
Thanks to Alexis for the interview, and good luck to reddit.com.
December 22nd, 2005
I’m getting tired of using multiple music applications. Here’s my current situation:
Rhapsody – I pay for the $9.95 monthly subscription at Rhapsody in order to be able to stream any song/album to my computer. This is my primary listening method at work while I’m working, and at home since I have my computer hooked in to my house audio system. The advantage is that I have access to music I wouldn’t normally buy, or music that I want to test to see if I’d like to buy it.
iTunes – I have an iPod, so when I want to add music to it I buy it from iTunes. I also use iTunes to get podcasts to listen to. I don’t browse for new music here though, because the 30-second sound bite is highly annoying. Why can’t I pay a $9.95 monthly fee to iTunes to stream anything like I can with Rhapsody?
Last.fm – When I’m curious as to what others are listening to or want to get some recommendations based on what I’m listening to, I use Last.fm. I wish it tracked my Rhapsody listening behavior though, as I rarely listen to songs on iTunes, just on my iPod.
Pandora – This is my other outlet for discovering new music based on songs or artists I like.
So, what I’m looking for is a service that combines all of it. I want to be able to pay a monthly fee to stream anything, I want to be able to buy songs for my iPod, I want to be able to have a social aspect where I can see what others are listening to and see my history, and I want to get recommendations based on it. Is that too much to ask?
Who will be the first to do it? iTunes or Rhapsody seem like the ones with the ability to do it, but sometimes the biggest companies move slowly. Can someone sneak up and grab the music space?
December 22nd, 2005
My guesses at what some of the top web stories will be in 2006. Naturally, the real top 10 stories of 2006 will probably be ones that are impossible to predict, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to try. These predictions are in no particular order:
1. RSS will become two-way with the help of 175.entry”>Simple Sharing Extensions from Microsoft. This will open up a whole new set of features in our favorite web applications, as well as pave the ground for a plethora of new applications. A related and equally large story is Microsoft becoming a big player in the newer web technologies with their Live platform.
2. Social news site Digg will expand into other content areas and media types and then will be acquired. Digg is a useful site that is already profitable just from ads, and they’re not taking full advantage of what their system and community can do. Expanding into other content areas will grow their userbase and revenues, and they’ll be acquired by a major news player or portal.
3. Web 2.0 will be looked down upon as a buzzword, and it’s usage will drop off dramatically. It’s already happening, but people will grow tired of the term Web 2.0 and the hype surrounding it.
4. Face-recognition photo application Riya will be acquired by a major player. Even though the early rumors didn’t turn out to be true, Riya will execute well enough on their plan that they will be very compelling for one of the top web companies to pass up. Another possible acquisition target would be the Robot Co-Op and their fun sites 43things.com, 43places.com, 43people.com, and AllConsuming.net.
5. Some ecommerce shopping applications using the more recent advancements in social web technologies will be developed and will succeed. There hasn’t been a ton of traction in the ecommerce world for tagging, blogging, social networking, ajax, and other newer technologies. These tools are going to break out of the “geek” world and start to hit other industries, and shopping is naturally one where there is money involved, so it will be attractive.
6. Google Analytics will again drop the hammer on the web analytics industry. After quietly humming along for half of 2006, Google will release new features that will put them on par with all the top web applications, and provide integration with other Google applications that make it an even more compelling offering.
7. A forward thinking company will build technology to support transparency, efficiency, and relationships in the online advertising business. The online advertising industry needs to break out of exclusive relationships, deceptive practices, and closed-walled worlds to provide a true advertising marketplace that uses technology to improve efficiency and confidence from all parties.
8. Microsoft will launch a contextual advertising network that will either be huge, or fail miserably. Microsoft will use it’s Adcenter advertisers to power a contextual competitor to Adsense and YPN. It will either be a big success from capitalizing on what Adsense and YPN are doing wrong, or it will lack advertisers and publishers will not want to support Microsoft causing it to fail.
9. Two to three new startups will be so cool and successful they will make the heroes of 2005 like Flickr and del.icio.us seem small and insignificant. Flickr and del.icio.us had the buzz, but in monetary terms they were pretty small acquisitions by Yahoo, and neither is really a game-changing application. 2006 will have some game-changers.
10. The venture capital investments and acquisition bubble will heat up even more, then deflate in the 2nd half of 2006 after a number of companies fail.. There has been a lot of venture capital activity in 2005, and not all of these companies will succeed in their goals to make viable business models from their cool applications or get acquired. There’s only so much acquisition the big players can do, and so many of the applications don’t look too close to a viable business model. After a few of them go down in flames, the investments will cool off and things will be a bit more sane.
Happy 2006!
December 19th, 2005
The news has hit that photo technology Riya is not being purchased by Google before they even publicly launch as was earlier rumored. Apparently Microsoft was also in talks with Riya at some point according to Scoble.
I don’t know whether or not Riya was a company built to flip or not, nor do I know what they have planned for revenue. My guess is that they could build a good revenue model if their technology really works as advertised. Either way, Paul Kedrosky adds to my thoughts that you must build a business for the long haul with real revenue for a chance at success.
December 19th, 2005
There is an ever-increasing buzz and feel that a lot of the startups out there are being built solely for the intention of flipping it to a larger company for a big payday. What’s also shocking about it is that many of these new services are being launched with no revenue model in site.
Don’t get me wrong, if some guy in his bedroom programs up a cool application that is useful and the only revenue stream is Adsense, then that’s just fine. But if a team is being built around it, and people are working full time, Adsense alone just isn’t going to cut it.
Greg Yardley points out the right way to do it. And that is planning your startup to make serious money. I repeat, serious money. Not only does that mean your business can stay alive and work well if you’re never acquired, but it actually makes it much more likely that you’ll get acquired if you have an exciting business with good revenue.
December 19th, 2005
Wow. John Battelle breaks a story about Alexa (owned by Amazon) opening up their index of 5 billion pages to developers to create whatever they want through the use of web services.
Not only can you use all that data, you can use their storage and server processing power to run your applications. Of course there is a cost, along the lines of $1 for every CPU hour you use, $1 per GB of user storage, $1 per GB downloaded, and $1 for every 4,000 web requests.
What does this mean? It means a lot. Creative people are going to be able to create some amazing things very quickly with this. Take a look at the digital camera photos search they Alexa has up as an example application.
Vertical search plays such as their photos search are the first things that come to mind, but all that data and processor power are going to open up some things.
To quote their user guide:
By making use of these utilities, a user might introduce a great new search service to the world with nothing more than a home computer. The data processing and service publication can all be done on the Platform.
It has major SEO implications since you can use it to analyze linking structure between top sites.
Also, as John points out, this could raise Amazon’s search profile, and cause Google or Yahoo to start thinking about what they allow with their indexes and processing power. Very, very interesting.
December 13th, 2005
I always give a lot of respect to people and companies who don’t make excuses and just admit their mistakes.
Squidoo needs to treat their content creators well, and I’m sure Seth knows that. I’m guessing the email in question was not thoroughly checked with everyone in the organization. People make mistakes though!
I was personally a bit shocked with the tone of the email when I received it, but I can imagine the Squidoo staff is really fighting against people trying to hoard lenses in a new form of domain squatting.
December 12th, 2005
Techcrunch gives a nice update on web word processor Writely. It sounds like it could be on it’s way to becoming a replacement to Word for simple document creation and sharing.
I know that in my daily routine of work there is far too much emailing of Word documents and confusion over which one is the latest version. I’m going to give Writely a run-through and see what I think.
December 11th, 2005
Whoa Nelly, popular Web 2.0 web service del.icio.us has been acquired by Yahoo!.
Congratulations to another one of my favorite tools getting some support from a big dog like Yahoo!.
It’s interesting to note that they’re going to be working closely with Flickr, another Yahoo company. Also interesting to see that Yahoo already has a competing service with MyWeb 2.0, but Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo says that they’ll probably end up borrowing ideas from each other.
What sort of integration will take place? I’ve been impressed so far with how little Flickr has changed after being acquired by Yahoo, so hopefully delicious has a similar experience. What’s clear is Yahoo! is making a serious Web 2.o play, and is choosing to buy rather than build a lot of these technologies. While Google has also been acquiring startups, they usually don’t acquire companies as high profile as Flickr and delicious. I think a results of this is that a lot of the hip techie crowd is going to start speaking more favorably towards Yahoo. We’ll see.
del.icio.us investor Fred Wilson also comments on the acquisition. Techcrunch was IMing with del.icio.us founder Joshua Schrachter.
December 9th, 2005
Jeff Molander asks for it on Revenews.
We will deliver it soon.
December 3rd, 2005
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