

Building a Web App in 1 Hour For Promotional Purposes (IsHilarySwankHot.com) - markbao
http://blog.ramamia.com/2009/01/building-web-app-1-hour-promotional-purposes-ishilaryswankhotcom/

======
jwesley
I think calling this a Web App is a bit generous. It's a poll with 2 options.
Have you gotten even a single sign up for the service you are trying to
promote? Getting a few thousand people to visit a web page and click a button
does not equal business value.

This is a good example of creative thinking, but you should have waited until
the experiment ran its course and reported on the results. I'm guessing that
the number of sign ups won't be worth the 1 hour spent coding the app. You'd
be better off working on something worthwhile and buying some traffic through
Adwords.

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
You're arguing semantics. Call it a novelty, a web app, website, or just a
promotional tool. Even in the post, I say that it's a stupid, silly, and
catchy pop culture thing. We're not trying to take on the world with
ishilaryswankhot.com. Just creating a little bit of buzz, and most importantly
_enjoying ourselves_. Mark enjoyed coding the app. I'm enjoying doing some of
the promoting (we just had film.com write it up). You can't put a "per hour"
price on that enjoyment. For the love of the game fellas, never forget that.

~~~
jamesbritt
"You're arguing semantics."

Not really. It helps a discussion of people have a common understanding of
terms.

~~~
kragen
What do you think "semantics" means?

~~~
derefr
If the grandparent post is an adequate definition of "semantics," then I,
personally, see no reason _not_ to make an argument based upon it. What's
wrong with "arguing semantics" such that it's become a derogatory phrase? I
mean, it's nothing to base a logical or moral or legal argument upon, but it's
interesting in its own right on an philosophical level (similar to how
"grammar nazi-ism" is interesting to linguists.)

Taking it a bit further, this phrase, and many others like it, belie the
difference between a traditional chronological conversation, and the
multithreaded conversation possible on the web. When you can branch off in
different directions _at the same time_ , without losing focus on any
individual branch, there's no longer a reason to keep "on message" or "to the
argument at hand"--both statements on- and off-topic can be expressed with
equal exposure, and without anyone being distracted from one by the other.

------
sam_in_nyc
It's great that you got it up and running so fast, and it's noteworthy the way
your marketing it. I like the concept of a "microwebsite" ... they've been
popping up all over the place recently ... but I don't like how they are
inextricably linked to a blog post about how "this is the way to do it" and
"simplicity is key" and all of this other stuff, as if the OP believes he is
God's gift to the internet.

"Stop bloating your shit, and you'll be able to do shit fast" -- I'll keep
that in mind next time I have an idea that requires two buttons on a webpage.
Hopefully I'll manage.

Finally, there is really nothing new about this, other than how timely it was
put out. Other than that, it's clearly a gimmick that I wouldn't be too proud
of. Imagine if I created a site that said "click here to win a free 6-pack of
beer" and then went on in a blog post about how "people like the idea of
getting free stuff" and "what people like better, though, is getting free
stuff _with minimal effort_." And then going on and on about it, as if I'm the
expert.

I don't know why I'm being so harsh.. this is just what's coming to mind. It's
nothing personal, I just don't like this gimmicky stuff, I guess :)

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
Ha, many thanks for the praises in the beginning. Yeah, ive probably read a
bit too much hn + SvN lately. I've got a ton to learn. That's why I come here.

Yeah, it's hard to bloat a 2 button web app up. When I talk about not bloating
shit, I mean your overall frame of mind. If youre all about making things
complicated, too many features, and a bureaucracy, I doubt you'd be in the
mindset to make a simple web app. It's not about capability, it's about
clarity.

It's gimmicky, it's fun, and people enjoy it. We've already reaped some pretty
damn cool benefits from it (users to ramamia, coverage on the site, and
contacts). Like i said in a comment earlier, it's okay to make something out
of enjoyment. I think that's my favorite part about the web, you can put
something together in an hour for shits and giggles just because you want to.

------
fuzzmeister
I had a similar experience building songerize.com (since sold/redesigned). I
had built some MP3-finding code off of the SeeqPod API for another site, and
on a whim decided to make a UI for it. A few weeks later, it spontaneously got
covered on Lifehacker, Mashable, CNet, etc, all in one day, with essentially
no promotion on my part. Strange how the things that take the least work can
get the best results.

------
ieatpaste
Promotion needs to be supportive of the product or at least related - a hot-
or-not site isn't appropriate for a site who's target market is family.

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
I think that's the one negative thing we found. We found it better to take the
shot, than not take it though. It's also a pretty fun exercise in app building
+ PR / buzz.

------
Mystalic
My friend built postcard.fm in a day, and got on lifehacker. It helped promote
the real business, www.thenextbigsound.com

It works.

~~~
Shamiq
I know those guys. Northwestern University, go!

------
t0pj
Cool.

Looks like the cookie the only thing from keeping people from voting more than
once.

To everyone here:

How else could you keep people from vote bombing low friction (no required
login) sites like this one?

Does it even matter in this case?

Why the hell are people voting NO?

~~~
markbao
We just dealt with one guy that just voted 2800 times from the same IP.
Deleted the rows, and made it one vote per IP.

It works because to see a Yes/No it depends on if you have the cookie set, but
to actually vote it checks the IP.

So if someone legitimately votes from a multi-user IP that already was used to
vote, it'll show a Yes/No, get sent to the vote page, but won't go in–but
it'll seem like it did :)

~~~
callmeed
Seems like that could seriously skew the results ... I'd imagine a lot of
people are _trying_ to vote from behind home/small office routers.

~~~
scott_s
Forest for the trees. This is primarily an advertisement, not an application.
Accuracy doesn't matter.

------
r7000
Throw in a disqus widget so people can state their case à la the show.

------
symptic
I make a pretty penny designing polls and other landing pages for my clients.
Polls are mostly effective on the 'less educated' and 'younger' demographics
because most people worth their weight in anything know that it's just a pre-
sell on someone's service (usually a scamming affiliate deal for ring tones or
acai berry diet pills--which still makes some people millionaires).

Sure, you can create a gimmick similar to this one, but eventually people will
want to see the real meat that tells them you can be trusted. If you want
sign-ups there are _definitely_ better ways on a per-hour or per-dollar
invested basis. But it can be fun every once in a while. Just be careful it
won't cut some of your reputation as a worthwhile company away.

------
dhouston
nice job mark & jason -- clever & well executed.

that said, it's the marketing equivalent of a lottery ticket; stunts can be
huge (for example, our critical mass at dropbox came from one carefully-
crafted digg post) but only if they're aligned with the target audience (which
probably isn't the case with hilary swank & family social networking)

~~~
fallentimes
Hah I remember seeing that and thinking "these guys really know what they're
doing".

 _Dropbox (GDrive Killer) finally launches, plus Linux+iPhone!_

[http://m.digg.com/software/Dropbox_GDrive_Killer_finally_lau...](http://m.digg.com/software/Dropbox_GDrive_Killer_finally_launches_plus_Linux_iPhone)

And yes I dugg it.

------
uniwiz
<http://dnsthru.com> Built in few hours to have quick access to dns lookups.
If anyone has ideas how to improve it, more than welcome to contribute :)

~~~
bigbang
Looks cool.

The links in A,CNAME etc was confusing, I thought it was more like a search
option. i.e to list only CNAME record etc(just like search web,images)

The report bugs/features should ideally be a form. Its very frustrating when
clicking on that starts to open a mail client.

Otherwise looks good, pretty fast.

------
paul7986
You guys should spam a link on Hulu within comments for this Office episode.
Keep the buzz going.

------
twampss
+1 for The Office (and the site is great, too!)

------
pyroman
I like quick projects like that. I put together <http://isthemarketdown.com>
in 3 hours, but I haven't spent much time promoting it.

The twit this button is a good idea.

~~~
run4yourlives
Ok, I'm really curious... how much money do you make on that?

~~~
pyroman
It's only been up for 3 days and it hasn't gotten much traffic. I haven't made
back the cost of the domain yet. Each click on those ads is a good amount
though so I can see breaking even soon.

------
sgibat
I wonder if you could build a business around watching TV for potential fads
and making one off sites like this as quickly as possible with adwords slapped
on. Think it'd be lucrative?

------
speek
What about abstracting out the personal details so you can have something like
"KellyClarkson.hotornot.com"

That way you can use one domain for all your polling.

------
xenophanes
Maybe it needed more unit tests.

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_IF in
/home/1874/domains/ishilaryswankhot.com/html/vote.php on line 11

~~~
markbao
Just fixed it. Problem when pushing a quick fix. I've been programming Rails
for the past few months instead of PHP. Damn semicolons.

------
jgilliam
It seems like the 1 hour to build the web app is sort of irrelevant compared
to the hours and hours of emailing and promotion you have to do.

------
simon_kun
Take the caps out of the URL and look again...

------
iamdave
It's cool, it's gimmicky, I think she's hot but I think that blog post was a
bit over the top.

------
peregrine
Could have sent this to a simple zipcode ad and prolly made some money....

------
eznet
Ladies and gentlemen, even though the penis was fake, I kept expecting a
second plot twist where we found out that Hillary Swank actually was a boy...

------
tlrobinson
How do I see the results? Am I missing something?

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
it should show you after you vote. have you voted already though?

~~~
tlrobinson
It just shows me a blank page.

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
hey, should be fixed. dealt with same ips and cookies,etc.

------
ninguem2
Disabling the back button is not cool.

------
jsmcgd
It needs a forum.

------
keltecp11
This is a great idea. You should do this for more celebrities.

