I might be wrong, but I seem to remember seeing this same idea sometime in the web 1.0 bubble. It failed then, and since then, there have been several attempts to revive this very same business, and it fails each time. So why did YC go and fund a business that just does not seem to work?
The environment changes. Online video sharing was tried several times during Web 1.0, but didn't catch on until YouTube in 2005 - because in the meantime, broadband and cell-phone video and social networking had penetrated millions of households. Same with social bookmarking - anyone remember Links?
The fact that others have tried the same idea and failed is probably a bad indication, but it's not a hard rule that this attempt will fail.
Yes, but get this: If someone had told me in 2000 that I could watch streaming video in good quality without any pauses and without needing any special computer or internet, I would have screamed excitedly: HOW? I would have WANTED it, but unfortunately, the reality of online video back then sucked bigtime.
If someone had told me in 2001 there was a way to easily annote webpages and share them with my friends, I'd have yawned. BORING!
Some concepts are just boring, and technology improvement does not change it. Those companies failed because people just don't have a need to mark pages. I can just copy and paste the text into emails.
But say you take Twitter as an example. If someone had told me back in 1995 that I could send 130-character text messages to all my friends over the web, I'd have said "So?". Now I've got a bunch of friends nagging me, "Are you on Twitter yet?" (I'm not, but I do get nagged about it fairly often.)
Technology doesn't just change what's possible, it changes what people want. The reason there's demand for something like Twitter is because now everyone is online, nearly 24/7, and so the value of an online service that tells you what your friends are doing has gone up significantly.
You may be right - actually, from a numbers perspective, you probably are. But if I had a few million to invest and the chance to blow $15K on something like AwesomeHighlighter, I'd think there was enough of a possibility of success to make it worthwhile. People are reading more online, and their reading is much more participatory. That's a different environment than in 99/00.
And on testing it, it does not even work. I tried yahoo.com and it keeps popping up this message box telling me there is a limit of 2000 characters, when I'm selecting small paragraphs. So YC funded a startup with an idea that has been tried many times over and with a product that just does not work? Hmm, somebodies gonna lose $10.000. Not saying who, but somebody....
It seems to work fine on this page. I wonder what's on Yahoo! that's causing that issue. I wouldn't consider a warning about 2000 characters a fail. If it didn't highlight and didn't warn you then I would call that a fail. Right now it's more like a bad user experience.
Anyone know how they are calculating their limit and/or why it's there?
I found it buggy, too. But there's one thing I've learned from the software business: I have no idea what a given thing is worth, and whether it can be sold. I almost fell on the floor when that calendar company sold their (cough, cough) "technology" for some 200K. Xobni's widget got an offer for 20m or something like that. Wtf?
So, yeah. Don't be surprised if a semi-functional, 1000-times-already-done, text highlighter pulls in a couple million. I don't get it either.
Evaluating a first release like this is kinda silly. It's a road, not a destination. For a v1 (or a beta, which is what this really is), you're better off evaluating the road...
Regarding "tried many times over"... You mean like web search was before Google? Or MP3 players before the iPod? Or photosharing before Flickr?
I'm not saying I'm convinced this idea is a winner, but come on... Predicting failure for a startup is so laughably easy that I don't know why you'd bother, unless you just wanted to feel smug.
As I understand from Techcrunch, the revenue stream would come from selling their "awesome highlighter" product to media sites. The incentives for media sites to buy it?
- nice feature for their users to share highlights
- possibility to survey what their users find interesting
I believe there is some revenue potential in this. It just strikes me how simple business ideas can be. Once again, value is the key, not complexity.
User annotations help make the user feel they are part of the community/creative process. Walled gardens like NYTimes might be scared (remember ThirdVoice) to let the public annotate their content - highlighting is a trojan horse to overlaying user annotations and co-opting their precious content. If I were the NYTimes, I'd be scared to sign any revenue-sharing contract unless it specifically prohibited later, more sophisticated annotations.
One of the most-popular sites in Japan is a clever site that lets anyone comment directly on a video, literally.
Awesome Highlighter uses frames to view other websites and some websites prevent their pages to be viewed in someone else's frameset (if (top != self) top.location.href = 'example.com'). There is no way I know of to disable this and need to respect their wish not be viewed in frameset.
There's got to be a greasemonkey script or a Firefox plugin that disables this behavior. Perhaps Awesome Highlighter should link to one of these solutions.
Actually they appear to be caching the pages, which is how they are able to detect what is highlighted (otherwise it would be cross domain scripting). So they could just have their caching script strip out that JS and problem solved.
I image that page caching could lead to problems with some sites though. I wanted to do something similar for a project I was working on but scrapped the idea because I couldn't get around the whole cross domain scripting issue, and caching just introduces a host of other problems.
I love the name. It's simple, memorable, and instantly identifies what the site does. A very refreshing change from the plague of generic Web 2.0-ish non-word names.
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[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 66.9 ms ] threadThe fact that others have tried the same idea and failed is probably a bad indication, but it's not a hard rule that this attempt will fail.
If someone had told me in 2001 there was a way to easily annote webpages and share them with my friends, I'd have yawned. BORING!
Some concepts are just boring, and technology improvement does not change it. Those companies failed because people just don't have a need to mark pages. I can just copy and paste the text into emails.
Technology doesn't just change what's possible, it changes what people want. The reason there's demand for something like Twitter is because now everyone is online, nearly 24/7, and so the value of an online service that tells you what your friends are doing has gone up significantly.
You may be right - actually, from a numbers perspective, you probably are. But if I had a few million to invest and the chance to blow $15K on something like AwesomeHighlighter, I'd think there was enough of a possibility of success to make it worthwhile. People are reading more online, and their reading is much more participatory. That's a different environment than in 99/00.
Create a short url for a page - AND mark the parts you find interesting. Tiny url but with a marker.
Anyone know how they are calculating their limit and/or why it's there?
I found it buggy, too. But there's one thing I've learned from the software business: I have no idea what a given thing is worth, and whether it can be sold. I almost fell on the floor when that calendar company sold their (cough, cough) "technology" for some 200K. Xobni's widget got an offer for 20m or something like that. Wtf?
So, yeah. Don't be surprised if a semi-functional, 1000-times-already-done, text highlighter pulls in a couple million. I don't get it either.
Regarding "tried many times over"... You mean like web search was before Google? Or MP3 players before the iPod? Or photosharing before Flickr?
I'm not saying I'm convinced this idea is a winner, but come on... Predicting failure for a startup is so laughably easy that I don't know why you'd bother, unless you just wanted to feel smug.
http://awurl.com/pspxuq96279
As I understand from Techcrunch, the revenue stream would come from selling their "awesome highlighter" product to media sites. The incentives for media sites to buy it?
- nice feature for their users to share highlights
- possibility to survey what their users find interesting
I believe there is some revenue potential in this. It just strikes me how simple business ideas can be. Once again, value is the key, not complexity.
One of the most-popular sites in Japan is a clever site that lets anyone comment directly on a video, literally.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nico_Nico_Douga
Awesome Highlighter uses frames to view other websites and some websites prevent their pages to be viewed in someone else's frameset (if (top != self) top.location.href = 'example.com'). There is no way I know of to disable this and need to respect their wish not be viewed in frameset.
I image that page caching could lead to problems with some sites though. I wanted to do something similar for a project I was working on but scrapped the idea because I couldn't get around the whole cross domain scripting issue, and caching just introduces a host of other problems.
http://blog.linebuzz.com/
They do the same thing without a plugin/bookmarklet.
I dunno about most folks, but I have to have some pretty serious pain and/or desire to add clutter to my browser.