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I coded a blog and a digg / reddit style application

1 points by 7media ↗ HN
I coded a digg and reddit style application and also my blog (www.irintech.com/x1/) . this is not exactly my question, I did quite a bit of this with zero VC money, and it was not popular, well my blog is getting hits.

I would like to know what application be in a look a like or something out of the blue, will kick in users and not specific about vc funding, but yes will help with a point.

Thanks Jean

3 comments

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willarson
Jean, your site is pleasant, but it doesn't have anything to distinguish itself from established entities in the same field (Digg and Reddit among others). Your application needs to have something distinct and interesting about it. At this point is essentially a Digg clone down to even the small details like "bury it" and the box that shows the number of Diggs... eh... votes.

Chalk this up as a loss. You probably learned a lot doing it, and thats what you should take away from it. Without a sizable user base you won't get funding for this website. You need to satisfy a need that isn't being satisfied, or satisfy an existing need better than it is currently being satisfied.

If you blog is doing well by all means move your focus to that while you look for a more original idea to implement. I hope things go well for you, I can sympathize with your situation, as I too have learned that "If you build it they will come" isn't always quite true.

7media
you are right willarson. if you build they will come isnt always true. What do you think would be the tech to lookout for in the coming 5 years.

by the way your blog is offline?

willarson
As for the blog it was having a brief issue with psycopg2, apache, and python eggs... mutter. I'm still learning the sys admin side of things (but it is fixed now). In general it has been stable... (Apache2, Lighttpd for serving media, memcached for caching...).

I think the way to look for the future is like this: find something that everyone uses, and think of what unexamined assumptions we are making about it.

For an example, look at how comments work in blogs, maybe we could make a more localized comment system (you can make your comment close to the context you want to commenta bout), or at least inserting comment footnotes.

Essentially, look for places where the "proper" shape and form for an idea have crystalized, and then find a way to do it differently. At this point I don't think that web innovation is bounded by technology (horizontal scaling to build massive and efficient systems is a reality, albeit a n occasionally unpleasant reality for the implementors), but more by ideas.

Development frameworks (Rails, Django, TurboGears, CakePHP, et al) continue to trivialize internet development, so I think we'll continue moving towards an era where (for internet applications) ideas and design are the limiting factors rather than technology.