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I like the simplicity, but not sure how will monetize it? Maybe offer it as widget for other sites? Or perhaps create a FB app? Certainly lots of potential. And people really like clicking buttons.
"Go ahead, click the button... That'll be ten million dollars."
Unless I'm missing something, that's not a "startup" it's a webpage with a clickable button.

What's the point? What's the business model? (seriously).

Well, I've always been a fan of the 37signals school of thought around bringing simplicity to web applications. You know - the whole "Getting Real" thing.

The way I see it, this has a better business model than a lot of web startups nowadays. At the very least, we've got a slow "burn rate" seeing as how we've spent about 5 hours on the project. As for generating revenue? I think we've got a while before we have to worry about that. We're more focused on scaling the systems than anything right now.

Over 100k clicks on day one? Here's to a successful launch!

This took you five hours? Seriously?
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Photoshopping a nice button takes longer than you think...
At least your main competitor gets ad revenue:

http://www.instantrimshot.com/

Shit. I'll have to talk to the CEO about this. We should have done more market research.
I wouldn't worry, your button is much nicer looking than theirs (it's inverted, wtf?)
37 signals provides products that people pay for and get value from.

Your button adds no value, has no stickyness, and is not something people will pay for.

I think your "product" here is just creative trolling.

Maybe it would help if you thought of it as an art project instead. In any case - and I hope this doesn't come off as trolling - isn't creativity exactly the sort of thing us hackers should be striving for? If you measure success in terms of "mak[ing] something people want" then I'd call this a success, if only a small one. For whatever reason, people sure do seem to enjoy clicking that button!
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I didn't click the button.

I didn't want to. Too many people had done it already

I clicked it and when I found out others have already clicked it I felt cheap and used.
I clicked it several times. The fact that other people had clicked it too made me feel like I belong to a community, like there are people out there who care about me and my button-clicking.
I clicked it, and then I wanted to know how my clicking compared to other people. Unfortunately, there are no stats.
Well, your 15 minutes should be up any time now...
i admit it, i'm a clicker...

it was just too much for me. i'm suing you for rehab therapy now to cure my aclicktion.

they say you haven't succeeded as a business until you're sued. congratulations, give me your money now

i clicke 250 without stopping... whats wrong! and checkout the speed at which counter is running... while biggies like facebook and orkut try so hard to engage users into social networking etc... this simple clickthatbutton has done it with amazing simplicity! wow!
There's a fine line between irony/parody and wasting everyone's time...
Somewhere there's a real startup who posted here and nobody upvoted or commented about their work.

I'm sure this is pressing their buttons about now.

<grunt> bigthboy not amused... buttons make bigthboy angry! <roar>...

but in all honesty, what is the true point behind this? I am aware of people's addiction to press buttons, but if you can convince someone to pay you in order to press a button then you've got something. Without that, I really just don't think this is anything more than a time-sink for those who are procrastinating, and most certainly not a start-up. =P

why would anyone come back to this..what the hell..i dont get it
"10087 clicks from you... Thank You"
Sweet, all you need is some venture capital and you're on your way to the big time!
I realise it's a gag. But...

Have the site sponsored by different people each day, and record the number of clicks on that day. Keep an archive, make it competitive.

e.g. 30th October is Obama day (just an example - not partisan), click to show your support! Sponsor pays some rate per click (or just to hire the site for the day).

As others have mentioned, your button would appear in many places (facebook widget, etc), so that would add some value to the potential sponsors.

Of course, they could put up their own button, but that wouldn't get them into your archives or the kudos of having the one and only 'clickthatbutton.com' buzz.

I don't think I'm being serious. But then, it's not that much crazier than the million-dollar homepage.

Our logo is a button. I'd sponsor you for a day.
All good ideas of directions to take this, imo. Now that's insight. The have a different sponsor every day is something I thought of while I was making my pointless post (see bottom of this page) but neglected to mention.
Hmmm... I think you should definitely go after the enterprise market.
I don't get it.
So, why are you sending the coordinates of each click back to the server?

I'm sure it would make a nice looking heat map, but is there some other reason?

Sending the coordinates is the standard http behavior in the case of image submit buttons.
I cheated:

    while true; do curl -d submit.x=1 -d submit.y=1 -b clickthatbutton=10521 http://clickthatbutton.com/; echo; done
edit: and apparently you (or my ISP) throttle ;)
We need to get this code threaded...

    #!/bin/sh

    n=10
    while [ $n -ge 0 ]; do
    	sh -c "while true; do curl -d submit.x=1 -d submit.y=1 -b clickthatbutton=10521 http://clickthatbutton.com/; echo; done" &
    	n=`expr $n - 1`
    done
Change "n=10" to change the number of concurrent requests. Anyone have a better method?
Thank you for finally emphasizing the fact that not every website is a startup.
Not sure about the colors, maybe invest in a designer and a copywriter, and did you know the button was SQL Injectable? You're off to a great start, but I worry about Facebook and Google turning this into a feature instead of a product. Consider the enterprise.
Make an API or an app for Facebook/Myspace or a widget for Wordpress and watch it spread. ;)
I like it. I gave it around 180 clicks before I left the page. It was a good experience.
shoulda entered this into railsrumble!
Rails!? That doesn't scale. This is all Erlang.