
WriteWith : Everybody point and laugh - zinosoufi
http://www.uncov.com/2007/4/12/writewith-everybody-point-and-laugh
======
pg
One of the rules people who understand web startups all agree on is that you
should launch early-- as soon as you have even a minimal core of working
features. As Reid Hoffman said, "if you're not embarrassed by your first
release, you launched too late."

In a domain where the _correct_ thing to do is launch something easy to make
fun of, it's easy to sound clever by making fun of things that have just
launched. I wonder if the anonymous geniuses behind uncov ever consciously
thought about that.

~~~
phil
I think it's actually not a bad review of us if you filter the anger out. The
only part of their post that actually stung was the bit about spellcheck,
because it's not done. I wanted to have it finished for launch, but we felt it
wasn't worth delaying for. But, we've rolled out two new versions so far today
and we're gonna keep iterating fast.

The post also reminds me of this classic Kathy Sierra graphic:
<http://headrush.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/loveandhate_1.jpg> These
guys are talking about how much we suck, and around the world a blogger in
France said "je dois dire que je suis seduis par la legerete du systeme." My
French is poor, but I'm pretty sure that's "I must say I was seduced by the
system's simplicity." This beats a collective shrug any day.

------
Terhorst
It's good to pay attention to your enemies' criticisms, because they'll tell
you things your friends are too kind to say.

If you can manage to satisfy even these guys, you're in good shape.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
_If you can manage to satisfy even these guys, you're in good shape._

That assumes they're being objective; so far, it looks like jealousy or other
frustrations manifesting themselves.

It'll be interesting to see whether or not they _do_ like anything in future.

~~~
Terhorst
Skimming the other posts, I saw one or two positive things dragged out of
them.

"To get a good review from uncov, you really have to earn it."

K said something relevant a while back:
<http://www.roadtoforbes.com/index.php/ksblog/why-the-80-20-rule-doesnt-
always-work/>

Anyway, even if they ARE utterly impossible to please, they're still telling
you outright what you can improve. And an extreme view can sometimes help to
put everything else in perspective.

------
Harj
i think it's quite cute how people who lack the balls to do their own startups
feel so qualified to comment on the people that do.

still criticism is more useful than congratulations and when the writewith
guys make this a massive success, i'm sure they'll buy this guy a drink. or
not.

~~~
jmw
As someone who'd like to think of himself as a decent hacker, I usually think
criticism is a good thing. I don't however, enjoy criticism when it's combined
with insults to attract more attention.

I know and like the WriteWith developers, so I'm not really interested in
spending time defending a team I have confidence in and a product that will
figure itself out with time. I haven't had any long discussions about where
they're aiming - but they're smart guys who work damn hard, so I'm sure we'll
see new things out of them.

I would however, enjoy helping to filter some of the lower quality posts here
on news.ycombinator.com - so let's take a look at the quality of the people
behind uncov.com (based on 5 minutes worth of googling). A couple of their
articles have made it to news.ycombinator.com in the past few days - and I
haven't particularly enjoyed any of them when compared to the rest of the
articles posted.

'whois uncov.com - returns "Kyle Shank" with DNS pointing to
www.shanksoft.com/

shanksoft.com reports a 404

You can do your own googles for "Kyle Shank", but what's more important to me
is the quality of the critic - ie, what software he's written in the past.

A google for "shanksoft.com" returns some old shareware "ASPXEdit" that I
would assume does what it should, and is a basic ASP editor. There wasn't an
updated version on any of the sites I checked, and I'm assuming this was a
failed attempt at "making something people want". It also returned what
appears to have been an attempt my the same "group/person" at Shanksoft to
make an original p2p client, "Shankster". Also couldn't find a version, but it
seemed like yet-another-gnutella client, and never really got much traction.

Point of the story - uncov's team (at least just this one) doesn't seem to be
anything substantial, but more some college aged wannabes (aren't we all?) who
aren't actually out there doing it themselves.

In hindsight - this comment wasn't really worth my time. The research just
proved what I thought before - and Harj's comment.

~~~
hello_moto
Weird, the first 3 Google showed me who Kyle Shank is:

<http://canadaonrails.com/speakers/show/7>

Apparently he's the lead of RadRails and other projects.

------
jamiequint
Kyle Shank is launching a startup called Persai right now, it should be
interesting to see where that goes...

"Persai is a startup that seeks to apply advanced machine learning techniques
to content and advertising. We are using Amazon's web services to build a
scalable architecture that will learn from consumer interests over time and
match them with content crawled from around the web. The idea behind Persai is
that you will have an active agent crawling the web looking for content that
is relevant to you and only you. Every link we recommend will be something you
want to read. We are zigging to social news' zag where popularity trumps
relevance to the individual."

------
dpapathanasiou
I don't understand the point of the uncov blog, except as a place for juvenile
"haters" (is that expression mainstream yet?) to vent their frustrations.

If a web service is ill-conceived, useless, etc. it will die of its own
accord.

I'd be willing to wager, though, that something they lambaste will wind up as
a huge success, and they'll look (even more) ridiculous.

~~~
hello_moto
Well we have Techcrunch and GigaOm already. What wasn't there yet was a blog
like Uncov. I'll give you +1 because I agree with your last statement that one
of these startups will be successful. But out of x YComb startups, there will
be plenty to go down.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
Those sites (TechCrunch and GigaOm) are not cheerleaders, because they do post
negative reviews, albeit not for any YC companies (yet).

The uncov blog, OTOH, seems to be all negative (we'll see if that changes in
the future).

~~~
hello_moto
That maybe because Uncov people (or person?) have technical background. Even
though TC and GO did post negative reviews, usually they're not that striking.
But TC and GO mostly hyped things up with weak reasoning.

I remember back then when I was caught by the hype of web 2.0, I read TC
review about this website called Zooomr. TC said it's like "Flickr on
steroid". What happened to Zooomr now? still in beta and seems inactive. Have
you seen Zooomr UI? not so good.. it's just Flickr with patches here and
there, mashup here and there. I wonder how relevant TC reviews are. Even some
of my friends these days have moved on and tagged TC as irrelevant and biased

------
tocomment
He does have some good points though. I do find myself wondering if all the
good web application ideas have been done? I mean there must be a finite
amount of useful things to put on the internet. I'd like to get everyone's
thoughts on that, it's a worry I have.

~~~
herdrick
Only in the sense of finite like there is a finite amount of computation that
the universe is capable of:
<http://www.americanscientist.org/template/BookReviewTypeDetail/assetid/51924>

And, "things to put on the internet" isn't that right way to think of it.
Think of: "things to do with people and information". It may as well be
infinite.

~~~
tocomment
That's a very inspiring way to look at it. I'm starting to feel better :-)

------
yaacovtp
Clearly they're having fun with their blog. Did you look at the comments? I
wish my blogs launched with that much traffic.

------
ashu
Uncov is the FOX News of the tech world.

------
henning
Uncov is stupid, unfunny, and they have an ugly layout.

------
omouse
"unoriginal idea"

He should stop using gmail then...

