

Why developers should build single-purpose websites - briancray
http://briancray.com/2009/9-reasons-single-purpose-website-app/

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tdavis
_Think pie. Think pie and space shuttles. Pie = Simple and delicious. Shuttles
= Complex and metallic. Pie = Shuttle Killer. 'Nuff said._

If you're not going to make any sense, you might as well go all the way.

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briancray
LOL. Although your comment provides no insightful value to this discussion, I
will admit you're funny.

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kl4m
Oh but it does

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briancray
His analogy compares two completely unrelated things. Twitter and Facebook are
both social media platforms for connecting, building networks, and sharing
information.

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apotheon
They serve different community niches, though. You seem to think that each
must necessarily overlap the uses of the other so significantly that one of
them has to fail for the other to succeed.

The functionality of each is so distinct from the other, for the most part,
that they're more likely to develop means of benefiting from the existence of
the other than to have any chance of crushing the other. In fact, since
Facebook already has rudimentary Twitter-like capabilities, I'd say Facebook
is more likely to be a Twitter killer than the other way around, because the
main attractions of Facebook are _not_ the Twitter-like capabilities.

. . . not that I'm particularly interested in either. For those who are,
though, I can see how each has its own, separate, not necessarily competitive
attraction.

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patio11
The value of links split over a portfolio of single-purpose websites is
questionable. SEO is a Winner Take Most game, in which having 1% more ranking
ability (in general, links) than the next guy can result in you getting 50%
more traffic, or more, because of how people click the highest positions in
the SERP overwhelmingly more. In other words, there is an increasing marginal
return on links _pointed at the same domain_.

Thus, splitting your links over 5 or 50 or 500 properties tends to mean you
rank for a LOT less than you would have had you "put your eggs in one basket",
even if you get marginally more links in aggregate to the portfolio than you
would have gotten to the single site.

The only exception to this which jumps out at me is exact match domains,
because they can rank with many, many less links than an identical page on
non-exact match domain. (For those who are new to this concept: if your query
is _exactly_ [exact match domain], then exactmatchdomain{.com|.net|.org} and a
few major country TLDs get an automatic and _massive_ bonus in their
rankability _for that query and that query alone_. My main domain has
thousands of links, many from fairly authoritative sources like e.g.
google.com. My mini-sites on exact match domains generally start with one link
from my blog and outrank the main site within a week or two.)

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dasil003
The flaw in your thinking is twofold. First, all searches are not equal.
Second, you do not necessarily need those marginal returns. Inbound links do
not provide some generic amount of Google juice. Relevance is very important.

If you have a focused page, not only will you probably attract more links, but
those links will use more relevant search terms and Google will understand the
page to be more relevant to the terms as well. Other inbound links for some
other service will not have much value at all for the searches in question,
and even when they do, are they the difference that pushes you into the top 5
positions?

Of course, if multiple services make sense under one umbrella than by all
means keep them in one domain or even one page. As usual with SEO, the
foundation is first making sure that what you're doing makes sense from a user
perspective.

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enjo
How is Twitter a Facebook killer?

<http://siteanalytics.compete.com/facebook.com+twitter.com/>

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briancray
Facebook is hitting majority adoption while Twitter is stealing the early
adopters. They are simply in separate places on the adoption curve.

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ryanwaggoner
False. Twitter has nothing on Facebook. Here's why:

1\. Twitter has nothing to do with early adopters anymore...they were on
freaking Oprah.

2\. They've been around for 3.5 years, which is only a couple years less than
Facebook, so it's not like they're this little upstart that's trying to unseat
the ancient Facebook.

3\. Facebook has way more retention and engagement / user.

4\. Facebook does what Twitter does (status updates), and does it better, IMO.

5\. My parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents all use Facebook. They
find value in it, and it enriches their life. Twitter is useless to them.

6\. Twitter now is mostly marketers and spammers, judging from the people
trying to follow me.

7\. Most people seem to talk on Twitter way more than they listen. Over time,
this drives down engagement, which means that people have to talk louder and
more often to get any attention.

8\. Most importantly, Facebook has hundreds of millions in annual revenue, and
is predicting cashflow positive in 2010. Twitter has yet to make a dollar (to
my knowledge).

EDIT: Added a few more points

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briancray
Very good arguments! Twitter certainly has too many mult-level/affiliate
marketers and spammers. I've noticed that on Facebook, too, I'm afraid. But on
Twitter they can simply start following you. That's probably why they're more
noticable. On Facebook connection has to be a two-way agreement.

On the Oprah point: Oprah was a very recent event. Not sure it's had a long
enough time to make an impact. And adoption of Twitter _has_ gone up
significantly since that spot.

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ryanwaggoner
_Not sure it's had a long enough time to make an impact. And adoption of
Twitter has gone up significantly since that spot._

Umm... :)

Regardless, it's been more than four months since that point, which is around
10% of Twitter's total life.

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apotheon
Ahhh, Internet time -- a hoary old tradition, skewing our perceptions of
newness since 1993.

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pkulak
I've never seen a writeup end with a sentence that completely destroys the
entire thesis.

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briancray
Hehe. You aren't alone in your thinking and enough people have shown great
arguments against that statement. I've removed it in hopes that people focus
on the article rather than the final statement =)

Thanks for your feedback

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RyanMcGreal
Suggestion: in the interests of transparency, add a notice specifying the
change you made, and why. Right now there are comments on your article
referencing a statement that no longer exists.

~~~
briancray
Thanks for the suggestion Ryan--you're right. _article updated_

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cstefanovici
I just built a simple, single-purpose one... it's powered by Twitter though
and I hope people will use it. Let me know your thoughts everyone. Check it
out: <http://www.blibu.com>

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noss
Without openid or similar federated login a downside is that people are
reluctant to register.

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briancray
true, although openid can be confusing for non-tech users. Google IDs are more
accepted by the common crowd methinks

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rwolf
The author mentions his project PXtoEM.com a little too often in this post.

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briancray
I'm only trying to draw from experience.

