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30,562 | adamsmith | 2007-06-25T17:58:59 | Why Engineers/Programmers Suck at Selling | null | http://blogs.xobni.com/asmith/archives/39 | 24 | 3 | [
30642,
30608
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,580 | null | 2007-06-25T19:05:24 | null | null | null | null | null | null | [
"true"
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,582 | dawie | 2007-06-25T19:11:44 | Monetizing Facebook applications | null | http://blogs.zdnet.com/social/?p=215 | 3 | 0 | [
30638
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,586 | paul | 2007-06-25T19:30:00 | The Dilbert Blog: Champagne Moments (the slow success of Dilbert) | null | http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/champagne-momen.html | 19 | 1 | [
30617
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,589 | wendyp | 2007-06-25T19:37:55 | The Holy Crap Reaction to Competition | null | http://www.instigatorblog.com/the-holy-crap-reaction-to-competition/2007/06/25/ | 10 | 3 | [
30655,
30682,
30597
] | null | null | no_error | The Holy Crap Reaction to Competition | null | null | Every company has competition. If you don’t think you have competition you’re wrong. It’s out there. And more is on its way.
There are pros and cons to keeping an eye on your competition, but obsessing over them is a mistake.
Still, when you’re working on a stealth startup, moving at a 100 miles a minute to get to market, and you think you’ve got a killer idea worth millions, you can’t help but feel stunned when you discover new competition.
It’s the “holy crap” reaction.
The “holy crap” reaction goes something like this:
Someone tells you about a new company “in your space”, or you discover them on your own.
You take a cursory look.
You’re stunned by the slickness and “Web 2.0” style of their website.
You read their tagline and a bit of their messaging on the home page. It sounds a lot like what you’ve been talking about.
You quickly glance at their feature set or demo, but by this time you’re too panicked to really look. You see a couple keywords and feature items that look similar to what you’re planning and you scream…
Holy Crap! They’re doing exactly what we’re doing!
Often, you’ll scream this out loud to your co-founders sitting nearby, and they’ll go through the motions, and get to the same conclusion. Hopefully no one jumps out any windows, or breaks into heaving sobs.
Ultimately, every company has competition, remember?
After fully engaging in the “holy crap” reaction for a few minutes, it’s time to calm down and investigate things a bit further. Most likely, you’ll draw these conclusions:
They’re not doing exactly what we’re doing.
They’re not that far ahead.
In order to truly get past the “holy crap” reaction to competition you need to have an ultra-clear understanding of your company’s purpose and value proposition.
It’s not about the competition. It’s all about you. When you look at competition and panic, restore your faith through your own company’s strengths; not the competitions’ weaknesses and differences. Without a clear purpose, value proposition and plan of attack for getting things done, you’ll get so rattled by the competition that you’ll stumble and possibly fail.
Holy crap.
| 2024-11-08T03:41:50 | en | train |
30,593 | ashu | 2007-06-25T19:46:51 | Buxfer facebook app released - comments welcome! | null | http://apps.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2216806192&b | 8 | 2 | [
30635
] | null | null | http_other_error | Error | null | null | Sorry, something went wrong.We're working on getting this fixed as soon as we can.Go back Meta © 2024 · Help | 2024-11-08T09:29:22 | null | train |
30,599 | fredngo | 2007-06-25T19:58:06 | $10000 for a Successful Job Referral | null | http://blog.standoutjobs.com/10000-for-a-successful-job-referral/ | 3 | 1 | [
30602
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,603 | plusbryan | 2007-06-25T20:10:17 | We made something that at least one person really wanted. | null | 2 | 1 | [
30605,
30604
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
30,607 | andre | 2007-06-25T20:18:05 | 10 Weaknesses of Your Intelligence (In Computer Language) | null | http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/06/10-weaknesses-of-human-intelligence/ | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,613 | jsjenkins168 | 2007-06-25T20:32:59 | YC startup Slapvid does P2P video from a browser | null | http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/25/slapvid-peer-to-peer-video-in-your-browser/ | 14 | 18 | [
30774,
30637,
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31047,
31058,
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] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,621 | null | 2007-06-25T21:10:26 | null | null | null | null | null | null | [
"true"
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,622 | andre | 2007-06-25T21:11:10 | Are "help files" useless, in light of Google? | null | 1 | 2 | [
30623
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
30,627 | szczupak | 2007-06-25T21:30:19 | A great startup to stay informed and connected | null | http://www.businesshackers.com/2007/06/11/a-great-startup-to-stay-informed-and-connected/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,628 | dawie | 2007-06-25T21:57:24 | Create Your Own Twitter Network | null | http://mashable.com/2007/06/25/frengo-buzz-platform/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | no_error | Frengo Launches Buzz Platform: Create Your Own Twitter Network | 2007-06-25T19:05:23+00:00 | null |
Credit:
Frengo, the mobile social network, has recently launched its new Buzz Platform, which is a pretty fun way of creating your own mobile interaction with the community as well as with friends.With Buzz, you can create interactive messaging channels for any topic you'd like. Create a poll for others to choose an answer from those you've provided, pose a question that can be answered in free form, or start a game of some sort. There are existing categories within Frengo, such as sports and celebrities, that you can make a Buzz channel for. Public channels allow anyone from the Frengo community to participate while private channels allow for a more intimate communication stream.The easiest way for me to describe Frengo's new Buzz platform is to liken it to your own Twitter network that you've created for your own personal use. When you combine the effects of all your buzz channels, or those from the Frengo community, you get a bit of the Facebook Newsfeed feel as well. With Twitter we're seeing a lot of niche components that can be applied to your existing Twitter experience, but with Frengo Buzz, you've got a platform in place that allows you to define the parameters of your Twitter-like stream, forming channels around gossip, games, or getting together with friends.The best part of this platform is its flexibility in becoming whatever type of mobile messaging you need it to be, for groups of any size. In this way, Frengo is really addressing a core issue of providing a mobile network, and its success, along with that of Twitter and Jaiku, speak to the fact that enabling this type of mobile messaging is incorporating our present schema and realistic functionalities is the best way to go about engaging a mobile audience.A similar service that has recently launched is Tapatap.
| 2024-11-07T15:07:37 | en | train |
30,632 | sharpshoot | 2007-06-25T23:03:20 | Niklas Zennstrom - Founder of Skype, Kazaa & Joost on how simple propositions can get 100million users | null | http://atomicoinvestments.com/OurBlog/MattiasLjungman/NiklasAtZeitgeist.xml | 8 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,636 | elq | 2007-06-25T23:19:19 | Google Developers Day - Theorizing from Data (Norvig on large data sets) | null | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU8DcBF-qo4 | 10 | 0 | null | null | null | no_article | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T20:21:48 | null | train |
30,641 | staunch | 2007-06-26T00:10:46 | LiveJournal's Brad Fitzpatrick: Golden Handcuffs Removed at SixApart -- What's Next? | null | http://brad.livejournal.com/2328180.html | 9 | 1 | [
30672
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,643 | terpua | 2007-06-26T00:44:39 | FTP over S3 - Feedback please | null | 2 | 6 | [
30654,
30644,
30908
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
30,645 | bootload | 2007-06-26T00:55:23 | Should Designers & Developers Do Usability? (smaller dev teams can benefit doing own user testing & usability) | null | http://www.useit.com/alertbox/own-usability.html | 2 | 1 | [
30735
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,646 | lupin_sansei | 2007-06-26T01:29:33 | (Classic) How Palm defined themselves against Windows and Balmer | null | http://web.archive.org/web/20060507080617/http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/docs/zenofpalm/Enlightenment.html#971112 | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,647 | null | 2007-06-26T01:31:39 | null | null | null | null | null | [
30648,
30650
] | [
"true"
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,652 | amichail | 2007-06-26T01:46:45 | Relationship between simple logical specifications & intuitive user interfaces (they don't coincide often do they?) | null | 2 | 4 | [
30657,
30653
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
30,656 | smity | 2007-06-26T01:58:32 | Another Facebook App Acquisition: Slide buys Favorite Peeps for $60k, or 4.6 cents US per user | null | http://www.insidefacebook.com/2007/06/25/another-facebook-app-acquisition-slide-buys-favorite-peeps-for-60k/ | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,659 | acmegeek | 2007-06-26T02:10:08 | I made this a while ago, but I don't know what to do with it? Ideas? | null | http://www.colorblynd.com | 3 | 6 | [
30671,
30663
] | null | null | no_article | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T04:34:23 | null | train |
30,662 | staunch | 2007-06-26T02:20:43 | Q&A with Max Levchin: Slide more than a widget-maker | null | http://venturebeat.com/2007/06/25/q-and-a-with-max-levchin-slide-more-than-a-widget-maker/ | 3 | 1 | [
30742
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,664 | gyro_robo | 2007-06-26T02:25:23 | Google Code: Search before you spend 2000 hours porting Rails to JavaScript | null | http://code.google.com/p/trimpath/wiki/TrimJunction | 4 | 1 | [
30958
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,665 | staunch | 2007-06-26T02:27:30 | Techcrunch Database: Y Combinator's Profile Page | null | http://db.techcrunch.com/c/ycombinator | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,673 | pg | 2007-06-26T02:52:03 | 90+ Online Photography Tools and Resources | null | http://mashable.com/2007/06/23/photography-toolbox/ | 6 | 1 | [
31003
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,677 | moses1400 | 2007-06-26T02:59:08 | CenterNetworks discussion with Flock CEO Shawn Hardin about the future of Flock | null | http://www.centernetworks.com/my-discussion-with-flock-ceo-shawn-hardin | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,681 | nickb | 2007-06-26T03:25:31 | Niklas Zennstrom on Entrepreneurship & Scratching Your Own Itch (and not having a business plan) | null | http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2007/06/25/niklas_zennstro.html | 3 | 1 | [
30733
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,688 | donna | 2007-06-26T03:50:21 | Artificial Intelligence Is Lost in the Woods | null | http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18867/ | 3 | 8 | [
30695,
30724,
30699,
30690
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,693 | abstractbill | 2007-06-26T03:57:48 | The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 4: The only thing that matters | null | http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the-pmarca-gu-2.html | 46 | 26 | [
30730,
30749,
30741,
30807,
30709
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,694 | abstractbill | 2007-06-26T03:59:49 | Mitch Kapor's Foxmarks To Leap Into Search World | null | http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/25/mitch-kapors-foxmarks-to-leap-into-search-world/ | 7 | 3 | [
30822,
30848
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,718 | sigma3dz | 2007-06-26T05:38:09 | Niklas Zennstrom talks about venture itch | null | http://www.ventureitch.com/?p=255 | 1 | -1 | null | null | true | cut_off | Molecules and Compounds Worksheet atoms Elements Molecules Pounds Lessons Tes Teach | null | null |
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| 2024-11-07T23:58:12 | en | train |
30,728 | thm | 2007-06-26T07:09:47 | a thought provoking list of current trends on the web | null | http://tomatic.com/s/beacon-dump | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,729 | ivan | 2007-06-26T07:15:03 | Announcing Gigpack › Gigs for geeks. Subscription for early access. | null | http://www.gigpack.com/ | 1 | 2 | [
30778
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,750 | staunch | 2007-06-26T09:00:26 | How Wrigley Went From Soap Salesmen to Chewing Gum Mogul | null | http://www.wrigley.com/wrigley/about/about_story_wm_wrigley_jr_bio.asp | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,767 | bootload | 2007-06-26T12:07:56 | Twitter meets podcasting, day 3 (TwitterGrams) | null | http://www.scripting.com/stories/2007/06/25/twittergramsDay3.html | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,768 | bootload | 2007-06-26T12:08:19 | SuperHappyDevHouse (shdh, a hackers' home away from work) | null | http://superhappydevhouse.org/ | 1 | 2 | [
30878,
30773
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,769 | bootload | 2007-06-26T12:10:26 | VC Trending: Ditch Your Business Plan | null | http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/06/vc-trending-dit.html | 2 | 1 | [
31070
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,771 | vuknje | 2007-06-26T12:20:25 | Interview with Markus Frind - AdSense Millionaire | null | http://www.workhappy.net/2006/06/interview_with_.html | 1 | 2 | [
30787
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,776 | brlewis | 2007-06-26T12:38:29 | seeking 20-second feedback on ourdoings.com front page | null | 2 | 25 | [
30842,
30800,
30813,
30777,
30847,
30801
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
30,785 | keven | 2007-06-26T13:10:06 | Facebok apps are getting bought | null | http://venturebeat.com/2007/06/26/facebook-apps-are-getting-bought/ | 16 | 7 | [
30836,
31079
] | null | null | timeout | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-07T08:49:07 | null | train |
30,789 | staunch | 2007-06-26T13:21:31 | Seth's Godin: How to make a million dollars | null | http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/06/how-to-make-a-m.html | 9 | 4 | [
30859,
30918,
30838
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,805 | sigma3dz | 2007-06-26T14:35:37 | Why Europe lags behind Silicon Valley? | null | http://www.ventureitch.com/?p=256 | 1 | -1 | null | null | true | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,810 | gibsonf1 | 2007-06-26T14:43:07 | Sun eyes supercomputing glory ("The density of ports, and the large number of them, creates a cascading effect in performance and pricing") | null | http://news.com.com/Sun+eyes+supercomputing+glory/2100-1010_3-6193207.html?tag=nefd.lede | 4 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,811 | gibsonf1 | 2007-06-26T15:04:55 | U.S. Net access not all that speedy ("Pathetic") | null | http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2007-06-25-net-speeds_N.htm | 4 | 5 | [
30817,
30936
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,814 | knewjax | 2007-06-26T15:20:46 | Bandsintown.com Feedback | null | http://www.bandsintown.com | 1 | 3 | [
30816,
30841
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,819 | abstractbill | 2007-06-26T15:28:25 | Site I've been working on every evening for six weeks - ycnews feedback would be awesome | null | http://clutu.com/ | 16 | 32 | [
30821,
30850,
30820,
30827,
30880,
30870,
30903,
30892,
31113,
30844,
30999,
30856
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,823 | entrepreneur | 2007-06-26T15:50:35 | Building Purpose into Your Business | null | http://mindfulentrepreneur.com/blog/2007/06/25/internet-business-purpose/ | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,824 | yubrew | 2007-06-26T15:51:29 | Organizing Monthly Hackathon in Boston, who might be interested? | null | 5 | 3 | [
30829,
30924,
30930
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
30,826 | dawie | 2007-06-26T15:52:30 | Spock - Vertical Search Done Right | null | http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/spock_vertical_search_done_right.php | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,831 | byosko | 2007-06-26T15:58:07 | Top Web Apps in Canada | null | http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_web_apps_in_canada.php | 6 | 1 | [
30872
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,832 | apenwarr | 2007-06-26T15:58:53 | Richard Feynman on Quality "Assurance" at NASA | null | http://alumnit.ca/~apenwarr/log/?m=200706#26 | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | no_error | The Lumnit | null | By wiki |
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Games are a fantastic way to make learning about computers engaging and effective, whether you're a beginner or trying to master more advanced skills. Instead...
Freeze drying, scientifically known as lyophilization, stands out as a method of preserving perishable items by removing their water content while maintaining their structure and...
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Games are a fantastic way to make learning about computers engaging and effective, whether you’re a beginner or trying to master more advanced skills. Instead of traditional quizzes, using test review games can turn complex topics into fun challenges, helping you retain information better. In this article, we’ll explore some popular test review games you can use to reinforce your computer knowledge and make studying enjoyable.
1. Kahoot for Computers
Kahoot is a popular online quiz platform where you can create custom quizzes or use pre-made...
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Freeze drying, scientifically known as lyophilization, stands out as a method of preserving perishable items by removing their water content while maintaining their structure and nutritional integrity. This process has gained significant popularity due to its ability to produce lightweight, shelf-stable products that retain much of their original flavor and nutrients.
At https://space-man.ca/ we can learn, how freeze drying works and explore the advanced technology behind this preservation technique.
Understanding the Freeze Drying Process
Freeze ...
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Federal legislation revisions have been made since the second half of 2018, paving the way for the legalization of CBS oil or cannabidiol in Canada as a result.
With today’s widespread acceptance of cannabis for recreational purposes, cannabis companies have made several impressive technological innovations to the market, from patented extraction processing via microwaves to e-cigarettes technology. CBD-related innovations are just some of the handful of technological breakthroughs that have ...
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As technology evolves through time, gadgets are becoming smaller and smarter – a concept that also applies to vaping. Bargain E-Juice says that evolution has resulted in modern e-cigarettes entering the multi-billion market.
Hon Lik, a Chinese pharmacist, invented the modern e-cigarette in 2003. It has since then become a technologically-challenging and increasing thriving business. Many companies consistently release the latest products related to vape devices to appease the market’s demands.
Many tobacco companies who have added vape items into their product lines ...
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Accountants created accounting software that works well with open-source software. It is called GoDBLedger. It addresses issues that have disturbed other solutions for accounting software and increase productivity drastically.
The industry of software development and accounting has definite parallels. Imagine that the accountant’s ledger is a codebase and that it is the job of the accountant to edit and navigate the ledger before ensuring that it is compiled into reports that a user can consume, understand, and work with.
It is the same way Linux enterprise’s codebase is developed, maintained, and released to users.
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| 2024-11-08T14:51:29 | en | train |
30,839 | dawie | 2007-06-26T16:13:04 | Web App Autopsy | null | http://particletree.com/features/web-app-autopsy/ | 33 | 4 | [
30843,
31169
] | null | null | no_error | Web App Autopsy | null | null |
IntroductionSome of the most difficult questions about a startup have to do with making predictions about the future. Estimates are just part of the game if you’re trying to manage the precious few resources you have at various points in the beginnings of your company. The problem is we’re all pretty terrible about extrapolations because if you’re an entrepreneur, by definition, all your estimates will be wildly optimistic.Making mistakes about your skills and speed can lead you to hold off on a billing system until the last minute or estimate that you have 1 month to launch when you really have 4. And if you’re not careful, hubris might kick in and have you predicting a $1 million in revenue within 8 months of launch.In this feature, we’d like to help you minimize those mistakes by dissecting 4 very different web application companies that are at varying stages of their life cycle. In addition to age and size, these companies vary in their business models, programming languages and views on approaching the web as a platform. Specifically, we’ll be sharing code line counts, business processes, conversion rates, support requests revenues per customer. It’s good stuff and we’re hoping it’ll help you identify some trends that’ll make your predictions a bit more accurate.The ParticipantsHere is a quick overview of the companies featured in this article:
Wufoo is our web application. It’s an online HTML form builder that helps anybody collect information over the Internet. When you design a form with Wufoo, it automatically builds the database, backend and scripts needed to make collecting and understanding your data easy, fast and fun.
Blinksale is used to invoice clients for services or products sold. Blinksale is used by attorneys, accountants, designers, IT professionals, software developers, journalists, contractors, engineers, architects, videographers, and more. Basically, if you need to send invoices, Blinksale can work for you.
FeedBurner is the leading provider of media distribution and audience engagement services for blogs and RSS feeds. Their web-based tools help bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers promote, deliver and profit from their content on the Web.
RegOnline is one of the largest online registration systems on the web having processed over 3,537,094 registrations for more than 49,133 events worldwide. Over the past eight years they’ve invested over 20,000 development hours into the system and is considered one of the most mature and robust event registration systems available today.
The BasicsLooking over the basics, everything is fairly standard. The longer a startup has been around, the more employees it has, and programming language alone will not make or break a company.
LanguageTime to LaunchLaunch DateCurrent Employees
WufooPHP6 monthsJuly 20063
BlinksaleRuby on Rails3 monthsJuly 20056
FeedBurnerJava5 monthsFebruary 2004~30
RegOnline.NET3 years199650
The largest discrepancy is with time to launch. All companies were started with 3 or less people working on the code, but RegOnline in particular took the tough route: bootstrapping. The original founder worked a full time job, and wrote the code in his off time. This approach is definitely more demanding and requires much more dedication than receiving funding or backing by your freelance firm, but it can be done. All participants agreed that language had little to do with time to launch.Code Line CountsNot surprisingly, the longer a company has been around the more code it has. Experience also shows that once you are past your base set of code, the percentage dedicated to server side code starts to increase. This is primarily due to added complexity of features and other enhancements (spam protection, security, error handling, etc.) that do not necessarily have an interface element attached to them.As far as the original interface is concerned, it’s interesting to see how Wufoo, the youngest company, has 29% of it’s code invested in JavaScript with the second highest line count for that language among all 4 companies. Arguably, this trend will probably continue with other young “Web 2.0” apps as they adopt more Ajax intensive programming techniques.As far as choice of language goes, all 4 companies are satisfied with their choices. There are a few minor complaints — FeedBurner wishes to some extent that the lighter, simple web interface tasks were in a different language (but they’re just fine with the heavy processing in Java), while RegOnline is aware of the fees that need to be paid in order to use a Microsoft based development platform — but overall, everyone is happy. In the end, it seems that choosing a language that you’re comfortable with can result in less lines of code and a quicker development time.Line Counts per Business ProcessThe goal of this section was to uncover any task that might be overlooked. When writing a software product, the tendency is to focus 100% on the application. Items like support, marketing, and especially billing never cross your mind — in addition to the rest of the underbelly.While these business processes seem to only contribute towards 10% of the code base for the two most established companies, it is important to recognize that the core for the business code has to be in place during launch, if not shortly after.Support RequestsBefore even looking at the numbers, it is worth noting that support is more demanding than most would anticipate. While multiple things can lead to support requests (poor code, bad interface, complexity, lack of documentation, etc.) what seems to matter the most to customers is how quickly, friendly, and accurately you handle it.
Support Requests
Wufoo12/day
Blinksale8/day
FeedBurner45/day
RegOnline234/day
A few successful approaches to reducing the number of requests that have worked for the above companies are the introduction of the following:
Forums
Knowledge Base
Documentation (with videos & screenshots)
Useful, custom tools for support staff
The amount of time dedicated towards improving support can speak volumes. A majority of the panel agreed that support requests tend to lean towards “How do I …” and “It would be cool if …”, which is why when RegOnline established their knowledge base they saw a huge decline in tickets of that nature. Personally, I am in agreement that this type of support reigns supreme, but be aware that heavy use of JavaScript (with JSON) and foreign characters will also keep you up for quite a few nights.Conversion RatesGetting users is one of the more stressful aspects of a startup. Without users, you have nothing. And contrary to grand expectations pre-launch, those users are tougher to convert than anticipated. In fact, 1% is a fairly standard number to expect. So of 100 people visit your homepage, 1 person will become a paying customer.
FreePaid
Conversion per 100 Visits
Wufoo7%1%
Blinksale11%1%
FeedBurner8%N/A
RegOnline1.52%1.14%
Free accounts can also generate revenue through ads, awareness, and link backs, but the amount of free accounts you have does not necessarily increase the conversion rate that leads to getting paid. Blinksale has the highest conversion to free ratio (even though their signup form has 20 fields!), but they still come in at 1% paid. On the other hand, RegOnline has a very limited free plan, which shows a significant drop in free signups along with a much higher free to paid conversion.To place more emphasis on the difficulty to convert, we can look at the conversion of beta testers and free advertisements for Wufoo. After a few months of limited beta testing, everyone who provided active feedback was given a free account. Of 7000 other testers, less than 1% became paying customers even though they were given a 50% off lifetime discount. Similar to that, ads that we place on both Particletree and on free forms result in approximately a 1% conversion to paid.Average Revenue per CustomerThe three companies listed all rely on monthly and/or usage fees in order to make money. Obviously, RegOnline is in an enviable position here. A few things that may result in their revenue is the maturity of their product (and the number of features they have available) along with their 10 year reputation. Not to mention, their customers are all making money (event registration), so they are willing to spend money in order to make money.
Avg Revenue/Customer
Wufoo$13.03/month
Blinksale$12.25/month
RegOnline$131/month
Wufoo and Blinksale have a similar approach in that they are trying to get a swarm of users paying less money. The goal is to reach some of the smaller businesses that are more reluctant to jump into a big purchase, and also to increase word of mouth through the volume of customers. Finding the target price to charge for your product or service is no easy feat. When Blinksale first launched, they realized they underpriced their product, and had to make the appropriate adjustments later down the road. The grandfather adjustments worked out for them, but time and programing effort had to be provided to solve the problem.Equally challenging is how to raise the average price per customer. There are a couple of ways to attempt this:
Keep adding features, and create truly worthwhile features that are only available to higher paid plans.
Improve the marketing/site direction of new users, so that they are more compelled to sign up for a higher paying plan.
Make it obvious in the application that certain features are missing from their lower paying account, without being blunt and obnoxious about it.
Make upgrading, downgrading, and canceling as painless as possible.
Varying levels of support.
Speaking for Wufoo, we’ve been working on these ideas for a year now, and noticed varying levels of success. The worst payoff has been premium support, but we haven’t tried throwing phone support into that package. One noted benefit of phone support is the ability to resolve an issue immediately. Adding features is definitely a plus, but nothing drastic. Actually, slow and steady seems to be the way things are, so there may be no home run solution that increases this number by 20% in one go.Seasonal TrendsPerhaps the most demoralizing thing that can happen to a first year startup is the change in sales from month to month. The only way to get through it is to go through a year and see what happens, but try to prepare yourself for the fluctuations, and to predict what months will and will not work for you.
BestWorst
WufooFebDec
BlinksaleJanDec
FeedBurnerJan/FebDec
RegOnlineSeptDec
For most web services it will be a given that December is a horrible month comparatively. To put it into perspective, RegOnline has noticed an 18% decrease of registrations compared to the annual average, and Wufoo saw a 50% decrease. And even though the 50% figure is distorted by growth, December was still 25% lower than the prior October. A best guess prediction for the drop in sales is the trifecta of budgets running low towards the end of the year, the holiday season, and money being spent elsewhere (bonuses, travel, consumer goods).Thank You Participants!This article is based on the panel we presented at SXSW 2007. Many thanks goes out to hours of data collection put in by all the members: John Zeratsky (of FeedBurner), Josh Williams (of Blinksale) and William Flagg (of RegOnline). We asked a lot from them and they were generous enough to help us out and share their company’s information. You can download a copy of the graphs from the presentation’s slides here.
| 2024-11-07T23:31:22 | en | train |
30,853 | ess | 2007-06-26T16:49:55 | What's your honest opinion on Ingolingo? | null | http://www.ingolingo.com | 13 | 26 | [
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30,879 | dawie | 2007-06-26T17:38:44 | Amazon Web Services "success story" on 37signals | null | http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=325812011 | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,888 | pg | 2007-06-26T17:59:54 | Bechtolsheim working on new supercomputer for Sun | null | http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/technology/26sun.html?ex=1340510400&en=b823557c723d4dd6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss | 11 | 8 | [
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30,890 | transburgh | 2007-06-26T18:03:40 | Have a Life Outside of Your Startup | null | http://www.gobignetwork.com/wil/2007/6/26/how-to-have-a-life-outside-of-your-startup/10170/view.aspx | 5 | 11 | [
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30,904 | ph0rque | 2007-06-26T18:56:37 | How does debuting your app on news.yc affect a possible future application to yc? | null | 6 | 7 | [
30905,
30917,
30937
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
30,910 | dawie | 2007-06-26T19:45:38 | Google: Why we're buying DoubleClick | null | http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/why-were-buying-doubleclick.html | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | missing_parsing | Why we're buying DoubleClick | null | null |
Official Blog
Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture
| 2024-11-08T12:48:46 | null | train |
30,912 | waleedka | 2007-06-26T19:59:03 | YCNews: I can't find the search box | null | 9 | 7 | [
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|
30,920 | startupdaze | 2007-06-26T20:20:59 | Down2Night.com: New nightlife platform lets you search, invite, keep track of your nights | null | http://down2night.com | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,922 | jkush | 2007-06-26T20:23:57 | Just Say No To Google: Internal Microsoft Email | null | http://no2google.wordpress.com/2007/06/24/life-at-google-the-microsoftie-perspective/ | 47 | 13 | [
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The following has been making the rounds on just about every internal email list I belong to in Microsoft. Here it is to share a little insight with the rest of the world. Microsoft is an amazingly transparent company. Google is not. Any peek is a good peek.
Many of you were asking for the feedback I received from my interview with the former Google employee I hired into ABC Development as a Sr.SDE. Here it is. This candidate is also a former MS employee who left the company and founded a “Start-up” called XYZ. XYZ was purchased by Google and he was hired on as a Senior Software Engineer II / Technical Lead. Here is his take on Google’s environment as well as areas Microsoft should consider improving in order to be more competitive.
Enjoy
1. What is the culture really like? How many hours are people actually working? What are the least amount of hours you can work before you are looked down upon?
The culture at Google is very much like the old culture at Microsoft – back when the company felt like most employees were in their mid 20’s. These kids don’t have a life yet so they spend all of their time at work. Google provides nearly everything these people need from clothes (new T-shirts are placed in bins for people to grab *twice* a week!) to food – three, free, all-you-can-eat meals a day. Plus on-site health care, dental care, laundry service, gym, etc. Imagine going from college to this environment and you can see how much everyone works. People are generally in the building between 10am and about 6pm every day, but nearly everyone is on e-mail 24/7 and most people spend most of their evenings working from home.
This culture changes a bit with more experienced folks. They generally work 10a – 6pm like the new hires, and most of them are on email until around midnight. It’s pretty common for them to be working most of the evening, too.
2. 20% of your time on personal project. How many people actually get to use it? If so, how do they use it? Does Google own your personal project?
“20% is your benefit and your responsibility.”
In other words, it’s your job to carve out 20% of your work week for a project. If you don’t carve out the time, you don’t get it. Your project needs to be tacitly approved by your manager. Whatever it is, is owned by Google. If you’re organized, you can “save up” your 20% and use it all at once. It’s not unheard of for people to have months and months of “20% time” saved up.
Most people don’t actually have a 20% project. Most managers won’t remind you to start one.
3. What are the office arrangements like? Do you have an office or cube space?
Google believes that developers are, with few exceptions, interchangeable parts. This philosophy shows through in their office arrangements which in Mountain View are all over the map. There are glass-walled offices, there are open-space areas, there are cubicles, there are people who’s desks are literally in hallways because there’s no room anywhere else. There are even buildings that experiment with no pre-defined workspaces or workstations – cogs (err, people?) just take one of the available machines and desks when they get to work.
In terms of employees per square-foot, every Microsoft Building 9-sized office is a triple at Google.
Google doesn’t seem to think that private offices are valuable for technical staff. They’re wrong.
4. What is the management structure like (hierarchy)?
There are front-line developers, and then their manager. My manager had over 100 direct reports and is the common case for managers at Google. Managers quasi-own products and their employees tend to work on their projects, but not always. It’s possible for a developer on your product to actually work for a manager in research (a completely different division). This makes it really interesting at review time. Oh and conflict resolution between team members is very complex – the product’s manager isn’t involved day-to-day, probably doesn’t actually manage all of the peers who are trying to resolve a conflict, and likely hasn’t spent any time with their employees anyway.
The overall structure is:
tons (a hundred or more) of individual contributors report to
a middle manager who reports to
a division v.p. who reports to
the management team (Larry, Sergie, etc.)
5. Do they actually have plans for career development?
Not really. There is no career development plan from individual contributor to manager. Basically if you get good reviews, you get more money and a fancier title (“Senior Software Engineer II”) but that’s about it.
6. Who would you recommend Google to? Is it for the college kid or family type, worker bee or innovator?
College kids tend to like it because it’s just like college – all of their basic needs are taken care of. In fact, even most of your personal-life can get tied up in Google benefits. Google provides free or subsidized broadband to every employee. Google runs its own, private, bus lines in the Bay Area for employees. Google provides free or subsidized mobile phones. A college kid can literally join Google and, like they did as freshman at university, let Google take care of everything. Of course, if Google handles everything for you, it’s hard to think about leaving because of all the “stuff” you’ll need to transition and then manage for yourself.
Mid-timers, people who’ve worked at other places for a few years tend to be a mixed bag. For some, this is the first stability they’ve seen after a few failed startups. For others, this is the company that represents a “better” way to run a company than the company they worked at before. Either way, for these folks to succeed at Google they have to drink the cool-aid and duke it out with the college kids because Google doesn’t place any value on previous industry experience. (It puts tremendous value on degrees, especially Stanford ones).
“Old-timers” tend to like Google because they’re the ones who know to take the most advantage of the perks. These are the people who religiously take their 20% time, use as many of the services as possible, and focus on having a “peaceful” experience. They’re here to do a job, enjoy the perks, and that’s about it. They still put in a lot of hours, but the passion of the college kids isn’t there.
7. Please provide any additional information that you believe will help in our battle for talent against Google?
Make the food in the café free. If an employee eats an average of $15 of food per day (the actual average at Google which is closer to $10) it would cost Microsoft $3,750 per year per employee to offer 3 meals a day. Instead of increasing starting salaries, switch to free food. Give everyone else half the merit increases we would have gotten AND ANNOUNCE THE FREE FOOD AT THE SAME TIME. For that quoted $10 average Google provides free soda, free organic drinks (odwalla, naked juice), breakfast, lunch, and dinner (most people only eat lunch), free sport drinks (vitamin water, etc.), and free snacks (trail mixes, nuts, chips, candy, gum, cereal, granola bars).
That single benefit gets people to work earlier because hot breakfast is served only until 8:30. And since dinner isn’t served until 6:00 or 6:30 the people with a home-life tend to skip it.
Google actually pays less salary than Microsoft.
Google’s health insurance is actually not nearly as good as Microsoft’s.
Google has no facility for career growth. Microsoft has more, but could do better. Continuing Microsoft-specific education for things like project management, managing people, communication skills, etc. should be promoted. A structured career plan for each discipline would be great – e.g. training, experiences, milestones, etc. Paths like “Developer to Development Manager” “Developer to Technical Architect” which show what courses and experiences (e.g. being a mentor) are encouraged for the different paths.
Private offices for employees is a big benefit. See http://joelonsoftware.com/oldnews/pages/March2007.html. Play this up. Take a cue from Google and loosen up a little about offices. Let people call facilities and have their office painted any color they want. Have the standard office come with a guest chair and a brightly colored Microsoft branded bean-bag chair.
Google has the concept of “Tech Stops.” Each floor of each building has one. They handle all of the IT stuff for employees in the building including troubleshooting networks, machines, etc. If you’re having a problem you just walk into a Tech Stop and someone will fix it. They also have a variety of keyboards, mice, cables, etc. They’re the ones who order equipment, etc. In many ways the Tech Stop does some of what our admins do. If your laptop breaks you bring it to a Tech Stop and they fix it or give you another one (they move your data for you). If one of your test machines is old and crusty you bring it to the Tech Stop and they give you a new one. They track everything by swiping your ID when you “check out” an item. If you need more equipment than your job description allows, your manager just needs to approve the action. The Tech Stop idea is genius because:
1. You establish a relationship with your IT guy so technical problems stop being a big deal – you don’t waste a couple of hours trying to fix something before calling IT to find out it wasn’t your fault. You just drop in and say, “My network is down.”
2. Most IT problems are trivial when you’re in a room together (“oh that Ethernet cable is in the wrong port”)
3. The model of repair or replace within an hour is incredible for productivity.
4. It encourages a more flexible model for employees to define their OWN equipment needs. E.g. a “Developer” gets a workstation, a second workstation or a laptop, and a test machine. You’re free to visit the Tech Stop to swap any of the machines for any of the others in those categories. For example, I could stop by and swap my second workstation for a laptop because I’m working remotely a lot more now. In the Tech Stop system, this takes 5 minutes to walk down and tell the Tech Stop guy. If a machine is available, I get it right away. Otherwise they order it and drop it off when it arrives. In our current set up, I have to go convince my manager that I need a laptop, he needs to budget for it because it’s an additional machine, an admin has to order it, and in the end developers always end up with a growing collection of mostly useless “old” machines instead of a steady state of about 3 mostly up-to-date machines.
.
Who might be interested in this?
Mary Jo Foley might be interested in seeing Google from a Microsoftie
Same for Todd Bishop (Google Windows Vista changes should go further)
Maaaaaybe Joe Wilcox
Certainly Long Zhen will be interested in this…
And probably Brier Dudley
This entry was posted on June 24, 2007 at 9:05 pm and is filed under Google, Microsoft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
| 2024-11-08T13:27:00 | en | train |
30,925 | tomh | 2007-06-26T20:34:56 | Does anyone actually read software EULAs? | null | http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000892.html | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | timeout | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T06:35:33 | null | train |
30,950 | SwellJoe | 2007-06-26T22:34:03 | Virtualmin (a YC company) has a new website, feedback wanted | null | http://www.virtualmin.com | 9 | 31 | [
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30,952 | danw | 2007-06-26T22:49:37 | Location. Location. Location: Get the Best Out of 3 Presence Apps | null | http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/06/26/location-location-location-get-the-best-out-of-3-presence-apps/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,954 | brezina | 2007-06-26T23:10:43 | Walt Mossberg's iphone video review - "A beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer" | null | http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118289311361649057.html?mod=hpp_us_editors_picks | 13 | 14 | [
31011,
30969,
30973,
30974
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,956 | terpua | 2007-06-26T23:17:21 | 2 good markets for a startup, which would you choose? | null | 1 | 2 | [
30957
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
30,960 | null | 2007-06-26T23:50:01 | null | null | null | null | null | null | [
"true"
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,961 | dawie | 2007-06-26T23:52:02 | Roundup: Apple iPhone Reviews | null | http://crunchgear.com/2007/06/26/roundup-apple-iphone-reviews/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,968 | nickb | 2007-06-27T00:28:55 | 10 Developers For The Price Of One | null | http://haacked.com/archive/2007/06/25/understanding-productivity-differences-between-developers.aspx | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | missing_parsing | 10 Developers For The Price Of One | 2007-06-25T00:00:00+00:00 | Phil Haack |
Update: For an interesting counterpoint to the myth of the 10x engineer,
check out this blog post by
Shanley. My post is more
focused on what makes a good developer than the 10x myth.
In the The Mythical
Man-Month,
Fred Brooks highlights an eye opening disparity in productivity between
good and poor programmers (emphasis mine).
Programming managers have long recognized wide productivity variations
between good programmers and poor ones. But the actual measured
magnitudes have astounded all of us. In one of their studies, Sackman,
Erickson, and Grant were measuring performance of a group of
experienced programmers. Within just this group the ratios
between the best and worst performances averaged about 10:1 on
productivity measurements and an amazing 5:1 on program speed and
space measurements!
Robert Glass cites research that puts this disparity even higher in his
book Facts and Fallacies of Software
Engineering.
The best programmers are up to 28 times better than the worst
programmers, according to “individual differences” research. Given
that their pay is never commensurate, they are the biggest bargains in
the software field.
In other words, the best developers are generally
underpaid
and the worst developers overpaid.
But don’t leave your job just yet. This is not to say that there should
be a 1 to 1 correlation between productivity and pay. People should be
paid by the value they bring and productivity is only part of the value
proposition, albeit a big part of it. Even so, we’d expect to see some
amount of correlation in pay with such a drastic productivity
difference. But in general, we don’t. Why is that?
It’s because most managers don’t believe this productivity disparity
despite repeated verification by multiple studies. Why should they let
facts get in the way of their beliefs? That would only mean the
factonistas have won.
Kidding aside, why is this productivity difference so hard to believe?
Allow me to put words in the mouth of a straw-man manager.
Well how in the world can one developer write code 28 times faster than
another developer?
This sort of thinking represents a common fallacy when it comes to
measuring developer productivity. Productivity is not about the lines
of
code.
A huge steaming pile of code that doesn’t get the job done is not
productive. There are many aspects to developer productivity, but they
all fall under one main principle (borrowing a term from the finance
industry), TCO.
TCO - Total Cost Of Ownership.
In general, I’ve tried to always hire the best developers I can
find.
But I’ve made mistakes before. Yes, even me.
One situation that comes to mind was with a developer I had hired (under
a lot of pressure to staff up I might add) at a former company. I handed
off a project to this erstwhile coworker to take over. A few days go by
and I don’t hear anything from the guy, so I assume things are humming
along nicely.
Fast forward another few days and I swing by to see how it’s going and
the developer tells me he doesn’t understand a few requirements and has
been spinning his wheels trying to figure it out this whole time.
Good Developers take Ownership so You Don’t Have To
This is one of the first ways that good developers are more productive
than average developers. They take ownership of a project. Rather than
spend a week spinning wheels because they don’t understand a
requirement, a good developer will go and grab the decision maker and
squeeze out some clarity.
Likewise, a good developer doesn’t require you to prod them every few
moments to make sure they are progressing. If they get overly stuck on a
problem, they’ll come to you or their coworkers and resolve the problem.
A developer who can write code fast, but doesn’t take ownership of their
projects is not very productive because they end up wasting
yourtime.
Good Developers Write Code With Less Bugs
I once worked with a developer who was praised by my boss for being
extremely fast at writing code. He sure was fast! He was also fast at
introducing bugs into code. His code was sloppy and hard to understand.
The key measure that wasn’t figured into his productivity measurement
was the amount of productivity lost by the QA team attempting to
reproduce bugs introduced by his code, along with the time spent fixing
those bugs by this developer or other developers.
Everyone focused on his time to “completion”, but not on the total cost
of ownership of that code. Code is not complete when a developer says it
is complete. That is not the time to stop the stopwatch. It’s when QA
has had its say that you can put the stopwatch away for the moment.
As I like to say, productivity is not about speed. It’s about velocity.
You can be fast, but if you’re going in the wrong direction, you’re not
helping anyone.
Good Developers Write Maintainable Code
Hand in hand with writing less bugs is
writing understandable maintainable code. As soon as a line of code is
laid on the screen, you’re in maintenance mode on that piece of code.
Code that is brittle and difficult to change wastes hours and hours of
developer cycles when trying to amend a system with updates and new
features. By writing maintainable code, a good developer can make these
changes more quickly and also improves the productivity of his or her
team members who later have to work on such code.
Good Developers Do More With Less Code
Another hallmark of a good developer is that they know when not to write
code. As a friend always tells me
Why build what you can buy? Why buy what you can borrow? Why borrow
what you can steal?
With a few exceptions, the NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome is a
pathological productivity killer. I’ve seen developers start out to
write their own form validation framework until I point out that there
is already one built in to ASP.NET that does the job (It’s not perfect,
but it’s better than the one I saw being written).
All of that time spent reinventing the wheel is wasted because someone
else has already written that code for you. And in many cases, did a
better job as it was their only focus. In such a situation, finding an
existing library that gets the job done can provide a huge productivity
boost.
The caveat in this case is to be careful to avoid non-extensible and
rigid 3rd party libraries, especially for very specialized requirements.
You might a lot of time trying to fit a round peg in a square box.
Even when you must invent here, good developers tend to write less (but
still readable) code that does more. For example, rather than build a
state machine to parse out text from a big string, a good developer
might use a regular expression (ok, some will say that a regex is not
readable. Still more readable than hundreds of lines of text parsing
code).
Back to TCO
Each of these characteristics I’ve listed keeps the total cost of
ownership of a good developer low. Please don’t let the term ownership
distract you. What I mean here is the cost to the company for having
such a developer on the payroll.
By writing less code that does more, and by writing maintainable code
that has fewer bugs, a good developer takes pressure off of the QA
staff, coworkers, and management, increasing productivity for everyone
around. This is why numbers such as 28 times productivity are possible
and might even seem low when you look at the big picture.
Hopefully seeing this perspective will convince managers that good
developers really are as productive as the studies show. Negotiating a
28x pay increase on the other hand, is an exercise left to the reader.
| 2024-11-08T21:30:41 | null | train |
30,970 | nickb | 2007-06-27T00:32:08 | Google Scalability Conference Trip Report: Lessons in Building Scalable Systems | null | http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/06/26/GoogleScalabilityConferenceTripReportLessonsInBuildingScalableSystems.aspx | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
30,971 | nickb | 2007-06-27T00:33:01 | Google Scalability Conference Trip Report: Scaling Google for Every User | null | http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/06/26/GoogleScalabilityConferenceTripReportScalingGoogleForEveryUser.aspx | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | no_error | Google Scalability Conference Trip Report: Scaling Google for Every User - Dare Obasanjo | null | null |
These are my notes from the talk Scaling Google for Every User by Marissa Mayer.
Google search has lots of different users who vary in age, sex, location,
education, expertise and a lot of other factors. After lots of research, it
seems the only factor that really influences how different users view search
relevance is their location.
One thing that does distinguish users is the difference between a novice search
user and an expert user of search. Novice users typically type queries in
natural language while expert users use keyword searches.
Example Novice and Expert Search User Queries
NOVICE QUERY: Why doesn't anyone carry an umbrella in Seattle?
EXPERT QUERY: weather seattle washington
NOVICE QUERY: can I hike in the seattle area?
EXPERT QUERY: hike seattle area
On average, it takes a new Google user 1 month to go from typing novice
queries to being a search expert. This means that there is little payoff in
optimizing the site to help novices since they become search experts in such a
short time frame.
Design PhilosophyIn general, when it comes to the PC user experience, the more features
available the better the user experience. However when it comes to handheld
devices the graph is a bell curve and there reaches a point where adding extra
features makes the user experience worse. At Google, they believe their
experience is more like the latter and tend to hide features on the main page
and only show them when necessary (e.g. after the user has performed a
search). This is in contrast to the portal strategy from the 1990s when
sites would list their entire product line on the front page.
When tasked with taking over the user interface for Google search, Marissa
Mayer fell back on her AI background and focused on applying mathematical
reasoning to the problem. Like Amazon, they decided to use
split A/B testing to test different changes they planned
to make to the user interface to see which got the best reaction from their
users. One example of the kind of experiments they've run is when the founders
asked whether they should switch from displaying 10 search results by default
because Yahoo! was displaying 20 results. They'd only picked 10 results
arbitrarily because that's what
Alta Vista did. They had some focus
groups and the majority of users said they'd like to see more than 10 results
per page. So they ran an experiment with 20, 25 and 30 results and were
surprised at the outcome. After 6 weeks, 25% of the people who were getting
30 results used Google search less while 20% of the people getting 20 results
used the site less. The initial suspicion was that people weren't having to
click the "next" button as much because they were getting more results but
further investigation showed that people rarely click that link anyway. Then
the Google researchers realized that while it took 0.4 seconds on average to
render 10 results it took 0.9 seconds on average to render 25 results. This
seemingly imperciptible lag was still enough to sour the experience of users
enough that they'd reduce their usage of the service.
Improving Google Search
There are a number of factors that determine whether a user will find a
set of search results to be relevant which include the query, the actual user's
individual tastes, the task at hand and the user's locale. Locale is especially
important because a query such as "GM" is likely be a search for General
Motors but a query such as "GM foods" is most likely seeking information about
genetically modified foods. Given a large enough corpus of data, statistical
inference can seem almost like artificial intelligence. Another example is that
a search like b&b ab
looks for bed and breakfasts in Alberta while
ramstein ab
locates the Ramstein Airforce Base. This is because in general b&b
typically means bed and breakfast so a search like "b&b ab" it is assumed
that the term after "b&b" is a place name based on statistical inference
over millions of such queries.
At Google they want to get even better at knowing what you mean instead of
just looking at what you say. Here are some examples of user queries which
Google will transform to other queries based on statistical inference [in
future versions of the search engine]
User Query
Google Will Also Try This Query
unchanged lyrics van halenlyrics to unchained by van halen
how much does it cost for an exhaust systemcost exhaust system
overhead view of bellagio poolbellagio pool pictures
distance from zurich switzerland to lake como italytrain milan italy zurich switzerland
Performing query inference in this manner is a very large scale, ill-defined
problem. Other efforts Google is pursuing is cross language information
retrieval. Specifically, if I perform a query in one language it will be
translated to a foreign language and the results would then be translated to
my language. This may not be particularly interesting for English speakers
since most of the Web is in English but it will be valuable for other
languages (e.g. an Arabic speaker interested in restaurant reviews from New
York City restaurants).
Google Universal Search was a revamp of the core engine
to show results other than text-based URLs and website summaries in the
search results (e.g. search for nosferatu). There were a number of challenges in building this
functionality such as
Google's search verticals such as books, blog, news, video, and image
search got a lot less traffic than the main search engine and originally
couldn't handle receiving the same level of traffic as the main page.
How do you rank results across different media to figure out the most
relevant? How do you decide a video result is more relevant than an image
or a webpage? This problem was tackled by Udi Manber's team.
How do you integrate results from other media into the existing search
result page? Should results be segregated by type or should it be a list
ordered by relevance independent of media type? The current design was
finally decided upon by Marissa Mayer's team but
they will continue to incrementally improve it and measure the user reactions.
At Google, the belief is that the next big revolution is a search engine that
understands what you want because it knows you. This means personalization is
the next big frontier. A couple of years ago, the tech media was full of
reports that a bunch of Stanford students had figured out how to make Google five times
faster. This was actually incorrect. The students had figured out how to
make PageRank calculations faster which doesn't really affect the speed of
obtaining search results since PageRank is calculated offline. However this
was still interesting to Google and the students' company was purchased. It
turns out that making PageRank faster means that they can now calculate
multiple PageRanks in the time it used to take to calculate a single PageRank
(e.g. country specific PageRank, personal PageRank for a given user, etc). The
aforementioned Stanford students now work on Google's personalized search
efforts.
Speaking of personalization, iGoogle has
become their fastest growing product of all time. Allowing users create a
personalized page then opening up the platform to developers such
Caleb to build gadgets lets them learn more about their users. Caleb's
collection of gadgets garner about 30 million daily page views on various
personalized homepage.
Q&A
Q: Does the focus on expert searchers mean that they de-emphasis natural language processing?
A: Yes, in the main search engine. However they do focus on it for their
voice search product and they do believe that it is unfortunate that users have
to adapt to Google's keyword based search style.
Q: How do the observations that are data mined about users search habits get
back into the core engine?
A: Most of it happens offline not automatically. Personalized search is
an exception and this data is uploaded periodically into the main engine to
improve the results specific to that user.
Q: How well is the new Universal Search interface doing?
A: As well as Google Search is since it is now the Google search interface.
Q: What is the primary metric they look at during A/B testing?
A: It depends on what aspect of the service is being tested.
Q: Has there been user resistance to new features?
A: Not really. Google employees are actually more resistant to changes in
the search interface than their average user.
Q: Why did they switch to showing Google Finance before Yahoo! Finance when
showing search results for a stock ticker?
A: Links used to be ordered by ComScore metrics but ince Google Finance
shipped they decided to show their service first. This is now a standard policy
for Google search results that contain links to other services.
Q: How do they tell if they have bad results?
A: They have a bunch of watchdog services that track uptime for various
servers to make sure a bad one isn't causing problems. In addition, they have
10,000 human evaluators who are always manually checking teh relevance of
various results.
Q: How do they deal with spam?
A: Lots of definitions for spam; bad queries, bad results and email spam.
For keeping out bad results they do automated link analysis (e.g. examine
excessive number of links to a URL from a single domain or set of domains)
and they use multiple user agents to detect cloaking.
Q: What percent of the Web is crawled?
A: They try to crawl most of it except that which is behind signins and
product databases. And for product databases they now have Google Base and encourage people to upload their data there so
it is accessible to Google.
Q: When will I be able to search using input other than search (e.g. find this
tune or find the face in this photograph)?
A: We are still a long way from this. In academia, we now have experiments
that show 50%-60% accuracy but that's a far cry from being a viable end user
product. Customers don't want a search engine that gives relevant results half
the time.
| 2024-11-08T14:12:47 | en | train |
30,972 | dbosson | 2007-06-27T00:42:52 | Eric Enge interviews Seth Godin | null | http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-seth-godin.shtml | 3 | 2 | [
31044
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,001 | gibsonf1 | 2007-06-27T03:33:57 | Review: Don't Get "Hung Up" on Buying an iPhone (You should wait for the next version) | null | http://www.nypost.com/seven/06262007/news/columnists/dont_get_hung_up_on_buying_an_iphone_columnists_glenn_fleishman.htm | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | http_404 | Page not found | New York Post | null | null |
Did You Get Lost?
It seems we can’t find what you’re looking for. Perhaps searching can help.
Search
| 2024-11-08T15:46:54 | null | train |
31,006 | gibsonf1 | 2007-06-27T03:43:32 | Review: The iPhone Matches Most of Its Hype (The iPhone is amazing. But no, it's not perfect.) | null | http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/technology/circuits/27pogue.html?ex=1340596800&en=90d00beee782f2be&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss | 5 | 0 | null | null | null | bot_blocked | nytimes.com | null | null | Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker | 2024-11-08T13:30:23 | null | train |
31,043 | phil | 2007-06-27T07:41:13 | 5&1/2 lessons that legitimate retailers can learn from pirates [dive into mark] | null | http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/06/26/piracy-lessons | 3 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,048 | lupin_sansei | 2007-06-27T07:53:40 | Working at Microsoft compared to Google compared to Yahoo | null | http://tastyresearch.wordpress.com/work-stories/ | 4 | 1 | [
31051
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,059 | elq | 2007-06-27T08:34:14 | Stevey's Blog Rants: Rhino on Rails (straight from the horse's mouth) | null | http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rhino-on-rails.html | 32 | 14 | [
31176,
31151,
31078
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,061 | bkrausz | 2007-06-27T08:41:24 | Would you delay your education for a startup? | null | 2 | 2 | [
31063,
31065
] | null | null | invalid_url | null | null | null | null | 2024-11-08T16:37:59 | null | train |
|
31,069 | null | 2007-06-27T09:32:59 | null | null | null | null | null | null | [
"true"
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,072 | shawndrost | 2007-06-27T10:05:39 | In the state of Hawaii, tax breaks make tech investments nearly risk-free? | null | http://www.enterprisehonolulu.com/html/display.cfm?sid=225 | 15 | 10 | [
31073,
32373,
31303
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,075 | davidw | 2007-06-27T11:03:19 | Contracting rules of thumb from one of the Postgres guys, plus database advice | null | http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/database/soup/archives/joshs-rules-of-database-contracting-17253 | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,081 | yubrew | 2007-06-27T12:01:28 | Facebook App users have 5 apps installed on average | null | http://lsvp.wordpress.com/2007/06/27/facebook-app-users-have-5-apps-installed-on-average/ | 5 | 0 | null | null | null | no_error | Facebook App users have 5 apps installed on average. | 2007-06-27T00:57:01+00:00 | null |
Posted by jeremyliew in facebook, platforms, social media, social networks, viral, widgets.
trackback
Facebook apps continue to proliferate, but there is a strong “long tail” effect to their adoption. Below is a graph of the number of users of the top 100 apps as of 4pm on June 26th according to appsaholic.
While much attention has been focused on top apps like iLike and Top Friends, there are only 20 apps over 1 million users in the directory, 53 over 100k users and and 145 over 10k users.
In aggregate, the top 100 apps have 63.5m users. Given that the 100th app, LOLcats, has 22k users, and even accounting for apps not yet in the directory, its likely that no more than 70m apps have been installed so far.
A recent WSJ article says:
Already all the activity has helped Facebook grow to 27 million active users from 24 million before the platform launch, with more than half using at least one of the new services, Facebook says.
So if there are 13.5m Facebook users with at least one app, then a Facebook user with at least one app has around 5 (~70m/13.5m) apps installed on average. There is likely a long tail distribution to this statistic as well, with many users with just one app installed (likely Top Friends given that it has 7m users) and some “application sluts” with 12 or more.
This suggests that there is still a lot of room for growth for apps on the Facebook platform.
| 2024-11-08T16:00:54 | en | train |
31,084 | moses1400 | 2007-06-27T12:35:37 | dukudu.de sells for $58,192 | null | http://www.centernetworks.com/dukudu-final-ebay-auction-price | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,087 | tracksuitceo | 2007-06-27T12:40:22 | Programming a hurricane-tracking website from scratch | null | http://stormpulse.wordpress.com/2007/06/27/part-ii-the-python-discovery-and-the-early-grind/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,088 | sbraford | 2007-06-27T12:46:19 | LinkedIn IPO Looming? | null | http://mashable.com/2007/06/26/linkedin-ipo/ | 2 | 1 | [
31202
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,090 | sbraford | 2007-06-27T12:57:50 | Facebook Frenzy: Facebook Apps Getting Acquired | null | http://mashable.com/2007/06/26/facebook-frenzy/ | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,091 | rokhayakebe | 2007-06-27T12:58:25 | Help test this facebookIM. what do you think? | null | http://apps.facebook.com/IMessenger | 1 | 2 | [
31104,
31093
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,094 | sbraford | 2007-06-27T13:04:28 | Valleywag Jobs: Engineers Wanted (a few startups) | null | http://valleywag.com/tech/valleywag-jobs/engineers-wanted-272406.php | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,096 | sbraford | 2007-06-27T13:07:58 | Warcraft "Support Group" Funded | null | http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/archives/2007/06/warcraft_suppor.html | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,109 | brlewis | 2007-06-27T13:56:59 | MySpace Videos To Become MySpace TV, YouTube Competitor | null | http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/27/myspace-vidoes-to-become-myspace-tv-youtube-competitor/ | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,111 | transburgh | 2007-06-27T14:07:59 | What Really Happens After your Company gets Bought | null | http://www.gobignetwork.com/wil/2007/6/27/what-really-happens-after-your-company-gets-bought/10172/view.aspx | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,112 | gibsonf1 | 2007-06-27T14:08:25 | The Lean Blogosphere (Lean can be and actually has been applied to practically every industry) | null | http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2007/06/the-mysterious-.html | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,114 | gibsonf1 | 2007-06-27T14:10:37 | When developers design (be invisible: don't create something that some people may love, but the majority completely hate) | null | http://www.boagworld.com/archives/2007/06/when_developers_design.html | 8 | 3 | [
31336,
31257
] | null | null | http_404 | Page Not Found - Paul Boag - User Experience Advice | null | null |
Oh no, the page is missing!
That’s a bit embarrassing, a user experience designer that loses a page. Apologies.
GIVE SEARCH A GO
Unlike most site search, it is pretty damn good and at some point I have written about most UX subjects.
Try One of These
Visit the homepage for loads of content to get you started.
Browse through my archive of posts.
Listen to our latest podcast episodes.
Find out more about me and the work I do.
Give me a shout on LinkedIn.
Send me an email and I will do my best to help.
Get advice on
Content Strategy
Advice on improving the quality of the content you deliver via digital services. Whether that be copy, imagery, video or audio.
Development
Ideas and thoughts on how development has a significant impact on the user experience through everything from security to performance.
Digital Marketing
Opinions on the role of marketing in a digital world. Advice on balancing marketing objectives with the user experience.
Strategy
A look at the business strategy, governance and culture that drives a company’s approach to their digital strategy and ultimately the user experience.
How To Guides
Want to know how to run a 5-second test or create a high converting landing page? These concise how-to guides will point you in the right direction.
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Advice on how to make your digital services available to the widest possible audience.
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Advice on how to improve the user’s experience beyond the edge of the screen. Where user interface design stops, UX continues.
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Paul has the ability to see what is hiding in plain sight. He… validated ideas under consideration and provided new, actionable recommendations. The most valuable insight was illustrating how our issues were symptoms of an inefficient UX project team structure.
JAMIE TAYLOR
University of Oxford
Unique Talent
Paul used his unique talent to help us pull together a business case… to implement a UX team here at the University of Oxford. During the process, Paul provided insight into the wider UX community and offered his personal recommendations on how best to present the opportunity to our Pro-Vice-Chancellor. This helped us develop a compelling business case and quickly secure funding for a UX team.
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Demonstrates his prowess
As we talk, a pronounced pattern in Boag’s patter becomes apparent: he enthuses… about a topic, demonstrates his prowess and then knocks himself down with a swipe of self-deprecation.
Gerry McGovern
Author of Transform
Smart & Generous
Paul is one of the smartest, most passionate, most generous people I know… in the web / online industry. He is truly committed to helping organizations become simpler and more customer-centric.
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Paul has the ability to see what is hiding in plain sight. He… validated ideas under consideration and provided new, actionable recommendations. The most valuable insight was illustrating how our issues were symptoms of an inefficient UX project team structure.
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QUEEN MARY’S UNIVERSITY LONDON
An inspiration
Paul is an inspiration, I only wish I’d worked with him earlier in… my career. His ability to understand and break down problems and offer advice, drawing on his many years of experience is unrivalled. He genuinely wants to get the best out of you and your organisation and you can’t ask for more than that.
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MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES
Invaluable
Medecins San Frontieres, being a decentralised international association, faces challenges in meeting the… needs of a diverse global audience. Paul and the team at Headscape have been invaluable in helping us see the potential of digital for doing this. They have helped us recognize the changes needed to engage with our connected audiences, bringing clarity and innovation to our digital strategy.
JENNIFER RUSSELL
THE SAMARITANS
Supportive and Challenging
It’s been a pleasure working with Paul. He manages to be both supportive… and challenging at the same time and has a very accessible approach. It’s been a really inspiring process and I would love the opportunity to work with him again.
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MOTIF STUDIO
Best investment
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| 2024-11-08T09:58:05 | null | train |
31,120 | gibsonf1 | 2007-06-27T14:23:00 | MySpace, Chasing YouTube, Upgrades Its Offerings (MySpace TV will be set up as an independent Web site) | null | http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/technology/27video.html?ex=1340596800&en=551d7fe15e4c0131&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss | 2 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,122 | dawie | 2007-06-27T14:29:38 | Positives, not negatives | null | http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/06/positives-not-n.html | 1 | 0 | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,124 | gibsonf1 | 2007-06-27T14:37:51 | Silicon Valley building boom under way ("You can't add 5,000-7,000 jobs a month without there being growth.") | null | http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_6230766?nclick_check=1 | 1 | 1 | [
31130
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
31,125 | ralph | 2007-06-27T14:39:58 | US-VISIT to increase number of fingerprints on entry to USA | null | http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/26/1944228 | 1 | 1 | [
31127
] | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | null | train |
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