Nobody should start to undertake a large project. You start with a small trivial project, and you should never expect it to get large. If you do, you'll just overdesign and generally think it is more important than it likely is at that stage. Or worse, you might be scared away by the sheer size of the work you envision. So start small, and think about the details. Don't think about some big picture and fancy design. If it doesn't solve some fairly immediate need, it's almost certainly over-designed.
hey zach, this widget is just the start of what we are building. Our direction will be much clearer over the next few months. As is I would describe the current iteration of the site/widget as a link/photo exchange in the context of a hot or not game. The site generates a lot of traffic to our users myspace profiles and the analytics we provide them is pretty compelling. But to you (a clicker) its just a slick hot or not widget that links to girls myspace profiles. In fact go to the random voter widget and start surfing. If you like someone drop by their profile and say hi (and maybe add her). :)
Think distribution. HotOrNot is a single site, which coincidentally just sold for $20 million. AddHer is distributed across all social networks. It's all about distribution, and as the AddHer team executes the rest of their plans (whatever those may be), they'll have millions of users at their fingertips.
Didn't hot or not actually have revenue of several million dollars per year? I'm failing to see how this is making money. I guess we'll have to wait and see how it evolves going forward.
The idea of embeddable-apps-in-a-box, or "the widget is the platform", seems pretty compelling to me. What are your reasons for thinking it's over-hyped?
I don't find the "most widgets are trivial" argument compelling; the large portion of the internet devoted to porn doesn't detract from the rest of it, and likewise, the uselessness of unpopular widgets doesn't detract from usefulness of popular ones.
I really like Google's widget advertising service that let you dive deep into content without leaving a page. For example, I watched all 6 video clips on a National Geographic widget ad for their new "6 degrees" show. I'd have never navigated to another page to do the same thing.
I think we're just at the beginning of widget up-take... but I could be wrong, and would like to hear the arguments from the other side (perhaps there good discussions of this elsewhere already?)
Great job on the design and keeping it going at a quick pace. You'll definitely get some people addicted. The distribution model is clearly a winner. Good job, Addhers ;-)
I thought initially silly to not let men in, but now that i rethink it, its probably the right thing to do since women want to promote and men want to see hot chicks...
I can see how this has huge revenue potential ala Hot or Not and a great potential to go viral. Catchy names (addHer, addmired) too! You should try harder not to look like another Hot or Not! The jittering photos are a little annoying!