

I coded a blog and a digg / reddit style application - 7media

I coded a digg and reddit style application and also my blog (www.irintech.com/x1/) .  this is not exactly my question, I did quite a bit of this with zero VC money, and it was not popular, well my blog is getting hits.  <p>I would like to know what application be in a look a like or something out of the blue, will kick in users and not specific about vc funding, but yes will help with a point.<p>Thanks
Jean
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willarson
Jean, your site is pleasant, but it doesn't have anything to distinguish
itself from established entities in the same field (Digg and Reddit among
others). Your application needs to have something distinct and interesting
about it. At this point is essentially a Digg clone down to even the small
details like "bury it" and the box that shows the number of Diggs... eh...
votes.

Chalk this up as a loss. You probably learned a lot doing it, and thats what
you should take away from it. Without a sizable user base you won't get
funding for this website. You need to satisfy a need that isn't being
satisfied, or satisfy an existing need better than it is currently being
satisfied.

If you blog is doing well by all means move your focus to that while you look
for a more original idea to implement. I hope things go well for you, I can
sympathize with your situation, as I too have learned that "If you build it
they will come" isn't always quite true.

~~~
7media
you are right willarson. if you build they will come isnt always true. What do
you think would be the tech to lookout for in the coming 5 years.

by the way your blog is offline?

~~~
willarson
As for the blog it was having a brief issue with psycopg2, apache, and python
eggs... _mutter_. I'm still learning the sys admin side of things (but it is
fixed now). In general it has been stable... (Apache2, Lighttpd for serving
media, memcached for caching...).

I think the way to look for the future is like this: find something that
everyone uses, and think of what unexamined assumptions we are making about
it.

For an example, look at how comments work in blogs, maybe we could make a more
localized comment system (you can make your comment close to the context you
want to commenta bout), or at least inserting comment footnotes.

Essentially, look for places where the "proper" shape and form for an idea
have crystalized, and then find a way to do it differently. At this point I
don't think that web innovation is bounded by technology (horizontal scaling
to build massive and efficient systems is a reality, albeit a n occasionally
unpleasant reality for the implementors), but more by ideas.

Development frameworks (Rails, Django, TurboGears, CakePHP, et al) continue to
trivialize internet development, so I think we'll continue moving towards an
era where (for internet applications) ideas and design are the limiting
factors rather than technology.

