

Why is Photo Start-up DailyBooth (YC S09) So Hot? - echair
http://gigaom.com/2009/09/18/dailybooth-grabs-vc-attention/

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pg
I think the reason investors are so excited is that the users are. Experienced
investors have seen this pattern before. Occasionally a startup will hit a
previously undiscovered spot in the periodic table and just take off. The end
result is almost always good, unless the startup commits suicide like
Friendster or gets offed like Napster.

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stse
This page gives me good feelings about the future of the company,
<http://dailybooth.com/ijustine/969074> (see the comments)

~~~
brandnewlow
My fave: "Pedobear!"

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pclark
Good luck with the monetization.

It's probably just me - but there is no way I'd want me face on every tweet as
I wrote it. Must be a generational thing.

~~~
windsurfer
...Yeah it is. The generation using twitter is not the same generation using
daily booth.

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wallflower
12 points by staunch 218 days ago | link

Where's the business model? \-----

12 points by j0ncc 218 days ago | link

Good question. I have a few ideas that I'm going to be pursuing...

Continuation:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=479352>

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ashishk
Questions for PG/ Jon: How many active users, and founders did DailyBooth have
when it applied to YC?

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pg
They had (and still have) two founders. According to Compete, they had on the
order of 40-50k uniques a month, but that may be US only.

<http://siteanalytics.compete.com/dailybooth.com/>

I just went back and looked at their application to figure out how we realized
they were good. Their answers were very clear and concise; they obviously
understood their users well. Plus they had both done interesting stuff before.

~~~
Caligula
The article said 6.5 million uniques. The URL you gave claims 150k. I have
always been confused by the various rankings but that seems a big difference.

~~~
pg
And Quantcast says they only have 9.2k US uniques!

<http://www.quantcast.com/dailybooth.com>

Obviously the data on these sites is crap. Whatever number Jon is quoting is
presumably the most accurate, since he has the actual logs.

~~~
jacquesm
I figure between 150K and 200K uniques (daily) based on Alexa and 5 sites that
I have access to log files of.

Alexa is pretty lousy in an absolute sense but if you can compare with known
numbers it gets a lot more useable.

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fallentimes
Because they get tons of traffic.

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ashishk
I saw somewhere that adult content drives a ton of traffic to tumblr. I know
ning had some issues with this.

I'd be curious to see if this happens to dailybooth.

(I'm not completely crazy: <http://dailybooth.com/ashh>)

~~~
timdorr
Do a search for naked Friday. It's already happening on the site now. But the
big problem is it's pedobear central. Most of these kids are too young. Sounds
like a _big_ problem they better nip in the bud now.

~~~
brandnewlow
<http://dailybooth.com/search/nakedfriday>

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Raphael
Hot? Or not? They do not seem to understand RSS feeds. Feeds are not linked to
in meta tags nor anywhere on the page. When I inquired by email, the guy
responded with a bunch of false URLs. I managed to fix the typos and find the
true feeds, but it didn't even use media RSS, so the feeds were useless
anyway.

~~~
kobs
_"They do not seem to understand RSS feeds."_

I'd wager that the majority of the users on their site don't care about or
know what RSS is, like most people.

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Tichy
If they become or are very successful, at least I don't have to tell myself
"damn, why did I not act on that idea". Definitely a market I don't understand
and to be honest, don't really care for. However, if they can make it big,
more power to them!

~~~
catch23
Don't feel bad. Even super angel Ron Conway didn't "get" or invest in Facebook
early on. It took Facebook a long time to reach profitability, but they still
made it!

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jmtame
Faster growth than Twitter, and hiring php hacker. I would be knocking these
guys' doors down.

~~~
jacquesm
> Faster growth than Twitter

Sorry ?

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fizx
Percentage, not absolute, I'd guess.

~~~
jacquesm
Percentage growth comparisons between companies of different sizes are
meaningless. When you're small you can 'outgrow' anything substantially larger
than you with ease. It only starts to count when you're of equal size,
reasonably big and outgrowing your competitors by a significant margin.

Any startup will grow 1000's of % in the first couple of years, that's the
easy part, you get that growth for free. After all 10 * 500 users is 5000
users, 1000% growth. But it doesn't mean much.

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timcederman
I suppose this means Daily Booth isn't looking for any more angel investment
at this stage?

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amichail
Lifecasting in pictures... what's next lifecasting in audio?

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easp
Sounds a bit like Odeo, which is what the Twitter guys were sick of doing when
they started doing Twitter.

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suhail
good luck guys, you'll kill it =)

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dgc223
I think this represents a wave shift in the social identity landscape -
certain types of users want to share everything, and make that public. Sites
like Facebook with their 'walled garden' photos are missing out on a great
opportunity. I'm glad to hear about DailyBooth as it's a YCombinator
participant. We're applying to participate in their next session. One way they
can start monetizing now is by partnering with our company, PicWash.com. They
can add a link on their toolbar for users to get their photo retouched by our
professional graphic designers. It's a revenue share model that can help get a
new stream of revenue on their books. There are lots of other more traditional
revenue models that can be done as well (advertising, freemium, etc).

~~~
dgc223
Hi guys, I'm trying to understand the ratings system. I've got -4 points. Any
feedback? Thanks!

~~~
KevinMS
I upvoted you. Although it was self promoting are we not seeing the forest for
the trees? HN is run by a startup promoter and it all about startups and
promoting startups and monitizing startups.

To me your idea is perfectly legit. Although I see dailybooth as another site
that pollutes the internet with more "pay attention to me" content, I think a
partnership with a site like your might be the only way to make money off this
rubbish.

~~~
dgc223
thanks Kevin. I was specifically answering the question about monetization...
The ratings system on here is tough but I must say it's fun reading the
stories and comments. You guys have a lot of interesting things to say.

