
Secrets of BackType's (YC S08) Data Engineers - omakase
http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/01/secrets-of-backtypes-data-engineers.php
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blantonl
This illustrates that a staff of _three_ highly skilled innovative engineers
can bring to market an innovative solution.

Jeeze, these guys developed their own _database_ and _language_ to accomplish
their objectives. Others might take 10 million in funding, already be focused
on the 2nd round, all the while not focused on delivering first.

You have to get there, before you can get there.

Congrats to the BackType team.

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fookyong
I would be more interested in hearing the results/reasoning of their recent
introduction of a paywall.

Seems the business model pivoted slightly.

e.g. [http://backtweets.com/search?q=yongfook.com%2Fall-about-
litt...](http://backtweets.com/search?q=yongfook.com%2Fall-about-
littlecosm&ref=p1)

anything beyond the last few weeks, you need to pay $100/month.

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konsl
The results in BackTweets haven't actually changed, we're just showing an
upgrade button above them. What was free continues to be free.

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mrchess
I'm surprised they are still 3 engineers. They have been posting jobs for
almost a year now and still haven't hired anyone, yet they keep saying in
blogs and the job section they want to hire. I understanding waiting for the
"best" yet at the same time you're growing a custom stack that requires
specific skill sets and I imagine as time goes on it only gets harder. I mean,
slow hiring is good too but at some point you need to give in and grow so that
your employees can join in on your projects and grow with the company!

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nathanmarz
We've recently added two very talented interns to our team:

<http://tech.backtype.com/welcome-jason-christopher>

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chanri
Are you looking for full-time engineers?

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nathanmarz
Yes, we are.

<http://www.backtype.com/jobs>

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ehsanul
This reminds me of that post by the ex-Facebook manager, who said that tools
are top priority. This article really brings it home for me.

However, despite their purported effectiveness as engineers, I'm not sure what
Backtype is really doing. I generally see them just below an article, in place
of comments, with a long list of useless tweets referring to the article
(usually of the form "article title - bit.ly/shortened". That's probably not
doing them too much good for marketing, unless you think any publicity is good
publicity.

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konsl
What you're seeing is Disqus' Reactions feature, which we help power. Part of
our business is data services, which companies like Disqus, Bitly, The New
York Times, SlideShare, etc use.

Our own product is a marketing intelligence platform; essentially, it provides
analytics for social media marketing programs so brands understand what's
working, what isn't and how to improve.

