
The 50 Best Websites of 2011 - iamelgringo
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,2087815,00.html
======
dools
I'm sure Gabriel will pass by here at some point so I want to ask a question:
do you find that going into an industry where you have absolutely no "first
mover" advantage, where several others are already "doing it better" and where
those you're competing against are so insanely "better resourced" than you
daunting or comforting?

I guess what I'm trying to learn from you is what your mental state is like on
a day to day basis: are you a long term thinker? Do you believe that you have
many many years to solve the problem well and compete? Do you believe that DDG
may die at any minute but you simply don't care? Do you know unequivocally
that you can do this better than anyone and it's just a matter of sticking it
out?

Yeah. So that's my question :)

~~~
epi0Bauqu
I'm definitely "a long-term thinker." I've already been at it for over 3.5yr
:).

However, I got into it out of pure interest with no original
intention/particular belief that it would get this far. Now though, I believe
we have an established long-term vision and are executing on it.

~~~
dools
Nice to hear some long term thinking going on. We need to cultivate that!

------
timr
So did Hipmunk:

[http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2...](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2088173_2088186,00.html)

...and AirBnB:

[http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2...](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2088173_2088177,00.html)

The Instapaper guy is a long-time HN contributor, as well:

[http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2...](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2087913_2087923,00.html)

The headline should really be changed to something neutral.

~~~
iamelgringo
Hey, Tim.

 _The headline should really be changed to something neutral._

YC startups already get tons of free press and PR by virtue that their
investor controls HN. I thought it would be nice to highlight another
founder's startup as well.

To explain, the original title of the post was "Duck Duck Go makes Time
Magazine's top 50 sites of the year"

Personally, I feel that Gabriel contributes more to HN content and startup
culture than the AirBnb, Hipmunk or Instapaper founders combined. And, that's
not to detract at all from the great work those other startups have done.

The reason that I highlighted Duck Duck Go,and Gabriel, was because he in
particular, has done something amazing: he's boot strapped a search engine
essentially by himself to 8M unique searches a month.

He's also taken things like search privacy, and tithing revenues to Open
Source projects, and brought them to the forefront of discussion. His blog
also has a _ton of great content on it, especially his series on traction is
amazing.

The original title got 10 votes in the first 5 minutes after I posted it. That
Duck Duck Go doesn't get some of the kudos they have coming to them is
disappointing.

</rant>

~~~
timr
_"Personally, I feel that Gabriel contributes more to HN content and startup
culture than the AirBnb, Hipmunk or Instapaper founders combined."_

...and you're obviously free to express your opinion in the thread. But it's
never been fair game to editorialize the headlines on story submissions here.
(And for what it's worth, I think it was a fairly classy move that the editor
didn't change the link/headline to emphasize the YC companies.)

DDG and Gabriel pop up on the front page of HN on a regular basis. They get
plenty of attention here without having to slight the other 49 websites in
this list.

~~~
iamelgringo
_But it's never been fair game to editorialize the headlines on story
submissions here._

I don't understand your comment about editorializing headlines. The process of
editorializing is making changes after the copy has been submitted. And,
that's what happened to both the headline and original url that I submitted.

I submitted a link to this url[1] via bookmarklet. I trimmed extra headline
cruft, and clicked "submit". The community upvoted it to #1, after you posted
your comment, an unknown mod changed/editorialized the headline to remove
references to DDG, and changed the url to this[2], which is pretty crap
content IMHO, that I would never submit. I don't get that.

I'll stop this meta discussion, because it's really not that productive and
uninteresting.

ref:

[1]
[http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2...](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2088176_2088178,00.html)

[2]
[http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,2087815,0...](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,2087815,00.html)

~~~
streptomycin
> The process of editorializing is making changes after the copy has been
> submitted.

No, it's not.

<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/editorialize>

"1. to set forth one's position or opinion on some subject in, or as if in, an
editorial.

2\. to inject personal interpretations or opinions into an otherwise factual
account."

------
arn
One of my sites was also listed. TouchArcade:
[http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2...](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2087939_2087933,00.html)

I was pretty psyched.

------
ck2
Congrats to DDG but wow Time has the worst navigation I've ever seen for a
collection.

Where am I currently in that list? Where is the entire list? How do I start
over? Go to the end? Why does it do full page reloads for every click?

~~~
corin_
Then you haven't seen many list features on major publications' websites. Not
that there are many worse, just that this system is extremely common.

There is a tiny bit of logic behind the thinking that some users prefer lists
this way (the less techy you are, the more likely you're not a particularly
quick browser, so these don't slow you down much, and having them on seperate
pages cuts it into bitesize chunks), but the main reason is simply
advertising, page views equal banner impressions.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>> _Time has the worst navigation I've ever seen for a collection_ //

It's pretty bad, I looked and saw "lists" at the bottom of the page but sadly
it didn't link through to a list just the same page instead.

> _page views equal banner impressions_ //

I wonder how this affects the sites ability to retain people, they're offering
so many off-site links, every tiny bit of content has this big chunk next to
it saying "please leave the site". For those that do make it through would any
of them actually have been less likely to click through with less advertising
on the pages?

What I'm saying is that it certainly is going to increase impressions but at
what benefit to the advertiser and with what cost to the content host ...

~~~
corin_
In my experience, from a short-term business point of view (read: how most
people think), you're looking for the balance that stops just short of being
such bad UI that people actually decide not to use it; but getting almost that
bad is just fine, if it drives up banner impressions.

Personally I prefer to stay clear of anything that's actually annoying to
users; I mean annoying as in genuinely annoying, rather than just "people will
complain". For example, road block adverts (like when an entire page is taken
over with an advert saying "your content will load in x seconds") are
genuinely annoying, a sponsored site skin is (unless it's implemented/designed
badly) not, because while people might see it and mutter to themselves, it
doesn't actually harm their use of the site at all, and it's not nearly
annoying enough to make them leave the site.

Interestingly, on one of my company's websites (our entire business is based
around advertising), we had discussed the possibility of doing things like
this and decided against it, on the logic that even though we wouldn't
directly drive away users, in the long run it might contribute to their not
liking the site as much. However after various pieces of user feedback, we
ended up doing just this for galleries that our journalists take at events,
now each image loads a new page cleanly, (giving new banner impressions), and
feedback since we made that change has matched the suggestions we had
beforehand: our readers actually prefer it.

------
clark-kent
Time could save us a lot of time by listing it in a single webpage. I just
dislike this stale technique for getting pageviews.

~~~
orky7
full list in single window
[http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29...](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,2012721,00.html)

~~~
emp_
Took me a while, but this is 2010's.

------
iamelgringo
How many founders are able to boot strap a search engine to 8M monthly unique
searches?

Gabe, Jordan, and recent hires...

Respect.

~~~
iconfinder
I made it to 1M so far.

~~~
solipsist
Congratulations! Iconfinder.com is a site I use about every other day it
seems. I've introduced it to a handful of other people and everyone loves it.

Thanks for making such a great site!

~~~
iconfinder
Thanks a lot!

------
dotcoma
How many of you are using it as your default search engine? I am. I don't
think it's as good as Google, but I think it's good enough, some things are
useful, like the quick links, and at least the user interface is cleaner,
there is no stupid auto-complete etc.

~~~
masklinn
I do for now, but its match failures (especially on computers-related stuff)
is making me consider switching back to google more every day. Match results
really are much lower quality than on google.

> there is no stupid auto-complete

That's really something I don't care about, since I never search directly from
the site, always from my browser.

~~~
aw3c2
Same here. I have it set as my primary search engine for months how but
recently noticed that I am more often than not already add the !s or !g to get
Google results instead when entering my terms in the address bar.

One of my biggest gripes is probably that it will only display one result per
domain unless you restrict a search solely to that domain. And it often shows
not the most relevant or logical result for a query for a website. I should
make notes on that and send them in.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Please do send in specific examples -- we really do use them to make a lot of
improvements.

------
suprgeek
For a start-up competing with Google in the search space - DDG has made all
the right moves. Excellent PR and some well deserved respect to my favorite
Search Engine. Kudos...

------
chegra84
Link directly to duck duck go page:

[http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2...](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2088176_2088178,00.html)

------
maxexcloo
I love DDG but it seems to load more slowly then google (obviously, google
takes 20 ms, DDG can take up to 5 seconds).

~~~
roxtar
Yes, the search results load much slower than Google. Parts of the site load
and then the remaining come one at at a time.

------
pbhjpbhj
The full list all on one page, FWIW (yes it's on my own blog),
<http://alicious.com/times-50-best-websites-2011/>.

------
doctoboggan
I've heard a lot of about duckduckgo on here and on reddit. Are there actual
compelling reasons to use this service over google? Is the only reason their
privacy policy?

I saw a commenter on the linked site state that duckduckgo is great for
programming, what does this mean?

~~~
aperiodic
These are the things I use daily that I find the most useful:

Lots of nice zero-click goodies: * StackOverflow integration:
<https://duckduckgo.com/?q=remove+directory+symlink> (can also search directly
with !so) * IP Address: <http://duckduckgo.com/?q=ip> * Common symbol tables:
<http://duckduckgo.com/?q=ascii+table>
<http://duckduckgo.com/?q=html+entities> * Wolfram Alpha integration:
<https://duckduckgo.com/?q=d%28cos%28x^2%29%2F%28e^x%29%29+dx>

Disambiguation (great for software with a common word/term as a name), e.g.
homebrew: <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=homebrew>

Favicons in the results. This lets me easily focus in on the sites that I
think will be most useful.

Direct search of many programming references with bang-syntax: * Ruby:
<http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!ruby+IO> * JQuery:
<http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!jquery+fadeIn> * Clojure:
<http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!clojure+deref>

There are many more goodies I keep discovering (one nice surprise the other
day was that searching for "Community" (a TV show) gave me the air date of the
next episode). The best feature of DDG is the extensive integration with
domain-specific information sources or search tools that often give me the
information I'm looking for with no clicks at all.

~~~
mayanksinghal
[Requests formatting]

~~~
aperiodic
Yikes, sorry about that.

These are the things I use daily that I find the most useful:

Lots of nice zero-click goodies:

* StackOverflow integration: <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=remove+directory+symlink> (can also search directly with !so)

* IP Address: <http://duckduckgo.com/?q=ip>

* Common symbol tables: <http://duckduckgo.com/?q=ascii+table> <http://duckduckgo.com/?q=html+entities>

* Wolfram Alpha integration: <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=d%28cos%28x^2%29%2F%28e^x%29%29+dx>

Disambiguation (great for software with a common word/term as a name), e.g.
homebrew: <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=homebrew>

Favicons in the results. This lets me easily focus in on the sites that I
think will be most useful.

Direct search of many programming references with bang-syntax:

* Ruby: <http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!ruby+IO>

* JQuery: <http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!jquery+fadeIn>

* Clojure: <http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!clojure+deref>

There are many more goodies I keep discovering (one nice surprise the other
day was that searching for "Community" (a TV show) gave me the air date of the
next episode). The best feature of DDG is the extensive integration with
domain-specific information sources or search tools that often give me the
information I'm looking for with no clicks at all.

~~~
mayanksinghal
Thanks :)

(And yeah, I understand that I could have done that myself and hence the
downvote)

------
qeorge
DearPhotograph.com is an amazing site, never seen it before

This one broke my heart for some reason:

[http://dearphotograph.com/post/8311735731/dear-photograph-
if...](http://dearphotograph.com/post/8311735731/dear-photograph-if-i-could-
turn-the-corner-in)

------
antimora
Darya Pino's site (<http://summertomato.com/>) on there too.

I came across her site through Kevin Rose's introduction on G+.

------
quizbiz
Good PR. Congrats. :)

------
winton
Bleacher Report (#11 on the list) is looking for Ruby people in San Francisco.
Great opportunity to work for a high traffic site and a fun company:

<http://bleacherreport.com/careers/engineering>

------
voxmatt
As much as this is obnoxious, pageview link-bait, they do have some smart
calls. In addition to the YC crowd, Marco, DuckDuckGo, etc. I think they
really highlighted some great blogs, including This is my Next, among others.

------
craigmc
Time.com is certainly not one of the best, given the terrible user experience
they have created with this list in order to maximise page views...!

------
yid
Would any of the founders reading this care to post about the traffic bump the
Time story brought?

------
revorad
Time.com is not featuring on that list any time soon. </minirant>

------
thecombjelly
Great work DDG and yegg! I love DDG and have been using it for well over a
year. The quality is just so good that anytime I get on computer set to search
Google by default, I only get through a few searches before I'm compelled to
head over to DDG.

------
scorpion032
Thanks to the SF billboards, non-nerdy people have noticed it.

------
vynch
Nothing but respect for Gabriel!

------
donaq
Way to go!

~~~
donaq
Eh. Weird. Congratulating Gabriel got me -4 votes? Sometimes I just don't know
HN anymore.

------
neuromage
So did 49 other sites.

~~~
rtrunck
You're obviously getting downvoted, so I probably will too, but I have to
somewhat agree. But more specifically, why duckduckgo? Are they better than
the other 49? Why is this submission rated number 1 on hn? I really don't get
it.... One of 50 on a list?

I work at one of the other 49, and didn't feel the need to submit when the
list came out many many hours ago....

So, I guess I agree with the sentiment you express. Why duckduckgo in this
situation? Maybe I'm honestly missing something

~~~
AndrewWarner
I can see from your comment that you honestly don't understand why DDG is the
#1 post on HN right now, so I'll answer it honestly.

You don't say which company you work for in this comment.

You don't use your real name in your HN profile.

You're not giving us a way to connect and root for you.

If you were more open. If you openly talked about your company and taught us
what you learned, you'd give us a way to feel connected to you and your
company. Then we'd probably all root for you too.

Give us a chance to get to know you and relate to you.

~~~
rtrunck
I appreciate the comment - and now much better appreciate popularity of the
submission. Build a respect for your company and the support will follow.

Also, my username is my abbreviated real name, and pretty transparent.
However, I do also have a company social posting policy I must follow...

I look forward for the one day in the future to talk about my own startup with
you Andrew.

Thank you for the insight.

~~~
AndrewWarner
Email me any time. I met Sivers from a comment on HN. He ended up doing an
interview and becoming a friend.

