

PG: Quite possibly the worst idea ever - eventhough
http://blog.fuzzyshot.com/2008/08/pg-quite-possibly-worst-idea-ever.html

======
maxklein
Ah you guys. FuzzyShot is not solving a problem, it's creating a problem. I
never take photos with my mobile phone because I have to blog about it.

Your technology is good, your idea is good, but you _positioning_ is bad. You
see, you think people want to blog, but you are forgetting the motivation.
People don't want to blog, people want to be heard or want to be seen.

Now, let me give you an idea that is almost like yours, but with the correct
positioning:

Imagine there is a big-ass concert happening in town. Now, this is where
everyone has their camera with them, and they are taking photos with their
cameras. Now, THAT is a position for your application. When I take my photos
of Kenny Rogers or whoever, then I want everyone to know that I got a photo
with Kenny. So NOW I want to share.

So you see, in your case I have never wanted to blog about stuff I see on the
street. But in the second case, I actually want to post photos of the concert,
but it's not just easy to do it.

If I were your marketing guy, I'd rebrand as this:

Where were you? Send your photos in!

People take photos of their concerts or whereever they were, and it all gets
dumped into a visually very attractive group collage of that concert.
Something that looks like a poster, but with everyones photos just mashed
together.

And there is your first monetization idea right there - sell posters of people
in their own concerts, but with themselves inside.

And it's easy to make money, because you focus on people going to concerts and
events, so you can make money by affiliating with a ticket seller.

The problem you have is that you make a proposition to me that sounds like
pain. You write on your site: Blog with mobile phone, and I'm thinking:

1\. I have to sign up 2\. I have to download and install their app 3\. I have
to figure out how to send photos 4\. I have to frickin blog 5\. I have to
invite everyone to join this damn blog I have which will be filled with a
bunch of boring photos

It's pain. If I were already a photo blogger, maybe your tool would make
sense, but for me, it has zero compel.

Position correct, and position in a simpler manner. Think of the twitter
slogan.

~~~
eventhough
Hey Max,

Great suggestion. We have some ideas for how we can aggregate photos based on
location and category. For example, if a bunch of photos from San Diego Comic-
con came in we could somehow group those together into a public event. The
iPhone camera quality is not super great so I'm not sure how many people would
be interested in paying for a collage of photos with strangers in it. Maybe we
can create personal prints of people's photos with the location of each photo
on some sort of map...

~~~
maxklein
Well, my point is that your entire positioning is wrong. Not that you lack
certain features. The whole "blog" with X thing is tired and old news.
Position in a fresh manner.

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mattmaroon
Trust me, the worst idea ever, by a factor of ten, is sleep.fm. Compared to
them you don't even rate.

~~~
davidw
The Kramer test for 'bad ideas': imagine Kramer explaining to Jerry why he
just invested a bunch of money in the company ("but Jerry - it's an alarm
clock... AND it's SOCIAL!"). If it sounds like something he might say, then
it's probably a bad idea.

To sleep.fm guys: not trying to offend, I genuinely think it's a bad idea.

To those who were in elementary school when Seinfeld was on: damn kids:-)

~~~
izaidi
Somewhere, someone is dreaming up a social coffee table book about coffee
tables.

~~~
jonknee
Will the site double as a coffee table in case you don't have a coffee table?

~~~
jgamman
there's an optional accessory that bolts onto your laptop. i hear its
waterproof too.

------
pg
I remember this one. The problem was that it depended on all your friends also
having Android phones. I don't think the quote is accurate though. I wouldn't
say either "quite possibly" or "worst x ever."

~~~
eventhough
PG, sorry if we misquoted you. Your advice was invaluable to us because it
helped us understand why QuickMeet would not be something worth pursuing at
the time.

------
Tichy
Could you explain somewhere (possibly on the front page of fuzzyshot) what is
special about fuzzyshot? It seems to me being able to post pictures from a
phone to a blog has been possible for a while, or am I mistaken? I know I can
post photos to flickr from my phone.

As for the meet thing: what do you do if you know your friends are 30 minutes
late. Start another round of Sudoku on your phone?

~~~
aasarava
Take some photos and update your blog. ;)

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jonknee
What's wrong with a text message saying, "running late". That's usually even
one of the templates included with cheap phones. No app necessary and it will
almost surely be faster.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Except with the rate of text messages (20c to send, 20c to receive a reply
saying "ok"), it's even better/cheaper to just _call_ the person to tell them
you'll be late. I've never understood why texting is so popular when it's so
expensive, slow, and inconvenient. Why not just dial the number and talk?

~~~
brk
20c texts are generally only for people who have NO text messaging plan. I
have a BB (vzw) and iPhone (att obviously). Both have text messaging plans
that for some trivial amount per month (like $5 or $10) I get more text
message allotments than what I would ever reasonably use (a few hundred at
least).

99% of the time, SMS messages arrive within 30 seconds of the sender hitting
"Send". When you are going to be delayed by 5+ minutes, 30 seconds rounds down
to "instant".

As for the inconvenient, I personally HATE getting a call when I am either in
a very quiet business lobby, or very loud social event for someone to deliver
an essentially 1-sided trivial message ("I am running 15 minutes late"). SMS's
are PERFECT for this. They are, IMO, cheap quick and convenient.

Perhaps it is all in the eye of the beholder.

The "killer app" for this situation would be (IMO) to use a GPS-enabled phone
with some rudimentary mapping capabilities that would auto-text SMS ETA
messages once you are >5 minutes away from the meeting start time and your
travel time is also >7 minutes (ie: when it predicts that you're going to be
late by more than a couple of minutes). You would have an "app" on your phone
that sent SMS messages to your co-attendees (they would NOT have to install,
download or use any sort of application just to get this trivial text info).
This would increase the viability and adoption rate, as suddenly your friends
do not all need smartphones to get some benefit from the app.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Firstly, not everyone has smartphones, and not everyone text messages people
enough to justify even $5/mo. Secondly, I said "slow" not because transmission
is slow, but the typing of the message (or finding and selecting templates) is
a rather slow process, _especially_ for those of us who don't use smartphones.
Thirdly, you can always set your phone to vibrate and/or let the voicemail
take the message if you're in either situation...

~~~
brk
I'm not sure from your posts, but it seems that you're implying only smart
phones have texting capabilities? If this is true, your definition of
smartphone is very different than mine. If I'm wrong, I apologize for
misinterpreting your statements.

In every group there are always outliers, and I see this in some cases with
techies who for some reason or another simply REFUSE to acknowledge that their
cellphone is anything more than a $20/mo voice communicator. You can't really
solve for those situations.

Amongst all the people I've known/worked with, SMS-enabled cell phones and
monthly service packages are the norm. Building an app or service on top of
the premise that people can easily and cheaply send and receive SMS messages
is not, to me, all that grand of an assumption.

My solution above also somewhat applies to your situation, as you would be the
potential SMS recipient from someone with an app-enabled phone. Also assuming
that the SMS messages is of the "I'm running late" variety, which would be
most common for business meetings and social gatherings, the 20c surcharge
would not seem to be something that adds up to a ridiculous monthly accrual.
As a proportion of the cost (as in cost of a normal social gathering where
timeliness is of some value), or value (as in the potential value of a
business meeting), I think 20c is less than a rounding error.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
I used smartphones as a point because most smartphone users have a data plan
with unlimited text/instant messages, and because smartphones generally have
full keyboards, or at least better data-input mechanisms. I have a Razr that I
use for everyday communication, and the process of sending/receiving a text
message is a royal pain in the ass. Sending a message is slow and laborious,
because a number pad wasn't designed to send fulltext messages, and predictive
typing still requires lots of manual corrections for common words (good vs
home, in vs go, etc).

As for business meetings, SMS messages almost seem incredibly informal and
curt, especially when money is on the line ("We're settling a business deal
and you don't even have the courtesy to actually _talk_ to me?").

I'm most certainly not saying that no one should be texting, just that to some
people, a phone is a phone, and would prefer to hear someone and chat with
them, rather than having short, expensive, impersonal messages flying about.
Granted, 20c by itself isn't that much, but when us poor Americans get slapped
with charges on both outgoung _and incoming_ messages, it can add up pretty
quickly.

------
russ
PG said the same thing when I demoed my Jump to Conclusions Mat. =(

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axod
Surely it's not a million miles away from loopt? I don't see why loopt would
be a good idea and this a bad one...

------
halo
Actually, I think the idea isn't terrible.

However, the problem is that the implementation was flawed. Relying on people
having solely the Android platform is a mistake. Basing it on the web as well
as having a simple implementation over many platforms and having some sort of
SMS or MMS integration for non-smart phone users might have got you somewhere.
How to make money from it is a different question entirely though.

------
menloparkbum
Maybe the idea was just ahead of its time. I remember Philip Greenspun
publicly humiliating a guy who invented "tagging" back in 1998. "Nobody will
ever voluntarily submit metadata! This is the stupidest idea I have ever
seen!" 18 months later he sued his own company for the remainder of their cash
reserves. Be cautious around old lisp programmers.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_18 months later he sued his own company for the remainder of their cash
reserves._

Philip Greenspun, _Founders at Work_ , pg. 343:

 _People focus a lot on the bust-up phase. It upsets me that they remember the
wrong things like, "This Greenspun guy sued the venture capitalists." This is
not true, first of all, since I was a defendant, not a plaintiff._

So, do you have evidence that Greenspun is lying or confused, which I'd be
very curious to see? Or are you just spreading malicious rumors with no basis
in fact?

~~~
menloparkbum
No, you're right. He deserves most of the criticism aimed his way and he knows
it. However, factual inaccuracy crosses a line and I apologize. There's more
to the story than what Greenspun claims but I don't want to make any more
public comments about it. I really just wanted to get the "be cautious of old
lisp programmers" meme out there.

~~~
bayareaguy
Your comments seem to indicate you have an axe to grind about lisp, but there
is not much evidence that lisp programmers (or old programmers) are any better
or worse than other kinds of programmers in building products people want or
starting companies that survive.

Perhaps you should shorten your meme to "be cautious of programmers" or just
"be cautious".

------
raganwald
Quite possibly the best idea ever: If someone tells you you have the worst
idea ever, _don't give up_.

You may need to stubbornly prove them wrong, or you may need to listen to them
and make some changes. But don't pack it all in and get a job working for the
man.

------
froo
There is probably a good thought in there somewhere. Get a thread up and
running where people can post some of the worst ideas they can think of for
the people applying for this (and later) rounds of funding.

Sort of like a process of elimination; people can cross-check their ideas
against a list of pre-determined list of bad ones for similarities. Might help
with an early filtering process or even good for a laugh.

For example:

It's like a toilet, but only more social! This is not only a bad idea, but I
think George Michael has already done this.

------
dustineichler
Maybe he's inadvertently trying to motivate you... personally, the more i hear
the word "no", the more I'm inclined to go after something. Use it as
motivation.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard this too. Just realize it only
takes one "yes"... or whatever you're looking for to make it happen.

------
13ren
You can be "problem seeks solution" or "solution seeks problem". Both work,
but the former is easier.

 _Are we solving a customer pain with Fuzzyshot?_

But what customer pain are you solving? You describe your solution but not the
problem...

------
aaroneous
After spending 5 mins with the site: Fuzzyshot doesn't do anything that Flickr
doesn't already do better.

Not to say it can't, but as-is it doesn't.

------
pkaler
How is that the worst idea ever?

I use Buddy Beacon with Where.app all the time on my iPhone. Probably one of
the most useful apps I've used.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Read the proposal and critique carefully. Note the part about how the app is
useless if you're the only person you know who owns a copy. Then note the part
about _the Android platform_ , the one platform on Earth that (for the moment)
is guaranteed _not_ to be owned by a single one of your friends. Finally, note
that PG's critique is quite carefully phrased.

It's frustrating enough to develop an app that depends on the adoption rate of
a vaporware platform, but it really is kind of crazy to develop an app that
depends on the _square_ of the adoption rate of a vaporware platform.

~~~
hugh
Still doesn't make it the worst idea ever. Hell, you could have an app which
depends on the cube of the adoption rate of a vaporware platform.

------
arthurk
I remember Paul saying something like "rather build something inappropriate
now" on some Rails Conference Talk video.

