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You might be interested to know that there's two different kind of posts on this blog: "Thought of the Day" and "Normal". The "Thought of the Day" category is a once-a-day random tidbit, usually a funny video or picture, and the "Normal" is just what you'd expect from a blog like this:
Unicorn-Butterfly Soup.
--Kyle
p.s. the subscription options to the left (psst! <---- that way) reflect the same content options
I know that sounds like an awesome title, but this isn’t a rant/full-length post. This is a post to let you know I had to put together a brief presentation for a speech I have to make, and it’s full of ironic and funny pictures too!
If you didn’t understand that the link before was a link to the slides, try this.
Sorry for not embedding it… Wordpress doesn’t play nice with Google Presentations.
I emailed Jason to let him know that Mahalo qualified as one of the places that should take my advice on cost-cutting (aka quit), and he had a rather … interesting … response.
So here it is, in it’s full glory.
(Me) Thought you might find this interesting, Captain Wasteo.
http://www.kyle-brady.com/2008/10/10/how-to-cut-your-startups-costs/
It applies to people like you.
(Jason) I’m sorry, who are you?
(Me) One of the many people who don’t like you, and find your “startup” attempts pretty worthless.
(Jason) 1. Clearly you don’t hate me, you’re obsessed with me. Why else would you email?
2. Your advice is based on what success exactly?
Best j
(Me) 1. No. I emailed you because I like getting the people I’m offending riled up.
2. a) I’m 20. You’re an old man. I have time.
b) I’d rather have no success than the “success” you’ve had. Training a bunch of monkeys to manually type in the results from Google is not running a startup- it’s a low-level temp agency for manual data entry. And I wouldn’t even begin to call Mahalo, or any other number of Web 2.0 startups, a success.Not the best.
(Jason) Blahblahblah….
Now consider this: Jason thinks of himself as a god among men, with lots of experience and success that he can rain down upon us from his own slice of Heaven. But when you respond as defensively and immaturely… doesn’t that ruin your credibility?
Just a little.
Apparently there’s trouble in the American financial market. And the economy is falling like a rock through lava. Who knew?
Well the ever-so-bright VC’s thought to put out a memo to “the world” about tough times ahead. Some are even predicting a forthcoming Apocalypse for Web 2.0 itself.
It’s the Four Horsemen! I wonder if they sign autographs…
So here are some tips on how to cut your Web 2.0 Startup’s costs!
Tip 1: Cut the Crap
You know all those company indoor-skydiving events? Or huge launch parties? How about huge spacious warehouse offices in “posh” San Francisco that you don’t need, and only fill 20% of?
Yep. You guessed it! Stop spending your precious (or not-so-precious depending on how “smart” and “intelligent” your “great idea” is) money on stupid and wasteful things. What happened to the “startups are rough” culture? I remember hearing rumors of working out of garages, the “company” being all of three people, and not having time to do anything but product/company development (including socializing).
Nowadays there isn’t a “wonderful startup” in the Bay Area that doesn’t have “I’m a cool hipster!” office space, 2000% more employees than they actually need, or the “employee mood improvement” accessories like nap pods or free espresso to the end of infinity.
“Oh, man! We are so cool.”
But you probably don’t have to do anything about that, do you? Because all these things are important to the startup culture, they’re critical to success! You obviously can’t make a widget for viewing your zombie pokes on someone’s blog without having hundreds of well rested hipster caffeine robot employees.
Tip 2: Have a Real Business Model
As Ted so sagely mentions, the “business model” of “traffic first, profit/sustainability later” no longer flies. Technically, it never did, but the funding community apparently won’t accept that as proposal for your latest Twitter+Digg mashup clone.
So now you have to find a way to make money. Let me suggest not responding with “Google AdSense!” or “We’ll get sponsors!” because you and I both know that won’t work either. You need to find a real way to make money, if that’s even possible.
Even Cartman figured it out.
In the real world, real companies make real products and sell them to real people. Did you know that even happens online sometimes? Or they use their products as a middleman vehicle for other people’s products, or a different one of their own. Again, who knew?
But this probably also doesn’t apply to you either. Not only is no-one going to pay for a “pro” account on your Facebook-but-for-dogs site (Flickr is the exception, not the rule), but you can’t charge people! That goes against all the principles of socialism and Web 2.0! It would be tantamount to treason, probably.
Tip 3: Stop Being Stupid
This third tip is probably the best of them all, and the most valuable to you and your company: fold up shop. Call it quits. Pack up. Go home. Let the fat lady sing.
Whatever euphamism you want to use, I’m suggesting you stop doing what you’re doing. Maybe you can change the world with your Javascript-based social network TI-83 calculator replication website, but then again, you aren’t The President of the U.S. … despite what your mommy told you when you were little.
I made this one myself. Pretty talented, eh?
It’s time for Web 2.0 to die, and I’m all for it. There are some companies that will remain, and some of those may even have a right to (RockYou, Slide, etc. … you don’t even qualify as real companies). But the rest need to go away, even if it 6 months for them to burn through their millions in funding by continuing “growth” (hiring their friends) and “development” (creating APIs).
Fun Times
I’d love to say it’s been a fun ride, but it really hasn’t.
See you on the flipside, where you’re a homeless “idea man”, and I’m not.
p.s. Hopefully this means that alot of the Web 2.0 hypecrowd echochamber dies off. I can always hope that my archnemesis Michelle Failington of TechFlunk disappears soon… maybe even MashablePR too.
— — —
Update (10/11/2008 8:10am PST): I sent an email yesterday to Jason Calacanis to bother him about being qualified for my suggestions, but he didn’t really appreciate it. And responded pretty terribly. So, of course, I made the email public.
Something I just fired off to the powers-that-be at ReadWriteWeb:
Dear Read/WriteWeb,
I was poking around, and I came across Tim O’Reilly’s response to the R/WW post about Google being “spread too thin”, and in one of the first comments beneath it, he states that the latest batch of writers aren’t up to par.
I’ve been a fan of R/WW for awhile, and have voiced my opinions about you guys going the echo-chamber direction, and I applaud you for avoiding that disaster over the last few months, remaking yourself into something else entirely.
But what, exactly, is the direction you’re going?
You continue to cover startups that have little to no value (to anyone)… mashups of mashups, aggregators of aggregators, etc. And then you have posts like the “Web 2.0 Grizzled Entreprenuers” (or whatever it’s called) that make absolutely no sense… you can’t be in the Web 2.0 world and be anything but happy with sunshine breath, and “riding the economy” is really not important, or even relevant, to these same people. The only thing that matters is where their money comes from, and most of them have enough to go for at least a year, thanks to the investors I’ve previously ridden so harshly for their pack-mentality.
Web 2.0 is dying, and it seems that only a few people are seeing it. Not that it was ever truly “alive”, but the recent economic events have made some realize the insanity of what was/is going on. And this means that your content will change. Again.
So, my suggestion to you is twofold:
- Reign in your writers. Just because they have access to a high profile blog doesn’t mean they should go writing whatever comes to mind. Even I don’t do that, and I barely have an audience. The image and brand of RW/W is going to be upheld or destroyed on an individual post basis, and, as O’Reilly proved, one false step in the wrong direction can make a bigger impact than having many great posts.
- Focus on important things. At this point, I’m not sure anyone cares (least of all me) about “MuxTape dying, but it’s going to be revived, and, oh, by the way here’s a few writeups about other places that are “the MuxTape for YouTube!”.” Focus on the people who are actually doing difficult things. Things that matter. Ted Dziuba may be nasty and sarcastic, but he has the right idea. Not to mention actually doing something interesting and, God forbid, programmatically difficult.
This is important to you, now more than ever. Not only because of the changing tides, but also because you have an audience larger than before.
Who does not know how great you used to be.
Disclosure: I’ll be publicly posting this on my blog. A reader manifesto is still a manifesto.
I originally wrote about the blog echo chamber a few months ago: how I was frustrated with the “press”, I couldn’t get any attention for anything, and it was all the same crap over and over again. Today I came across a post from RW/W’s Josh Catone about similar concerns, especially regarding taking information as “fact” when it’s quite less than that.
And so I thought I’d re-evaluate my original opinions.
TechCrunch Sucks
I’ve long since given up on anything TechCrunch or Michael Arrington related. Along with many other people, I’ve discovered that unless Mike thinks you (or your product/service) is “cool”, he’s invested in your company (but won’t disclose it), or you’re already on the “post worthy radar”, he won’t write about you. Oh, and since he’s so intelligent, he likes to review things without ever using them.
I’ve even gone so far as asking Mixx.com to include a new feature: filters. That way I can filter out anything that links to any Arrington-related sites, resulting in no accidental ad revenue from me. I don’t seem to be alone in this.
Who I Listed As Good
If you check my original post, you’ll see I listed Valleywag, Uncov, and Scoble as the few interesting ones. Well…
So that kills 2/3’s of my list.
Look! A 1920’s Blogosphere!
Sometimes, It Gets Better
However, I think some people have realized this (maybe along with my help?) and started to change a little. One of my favorites, RW/W was slipping into echo chamber mode, but they’ve since pulled out very gracefully. How? Longer and more in-depth articles, that are original and thought provoking, on important issues, the future of the Internet, and sometimes just a musing on “what if…”. Combine this with less PR SPAM about Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed, and I think they’ve really hit their stride.
I won’t mention any more names, but there are some blogs that refuse to do anything other than the usual repetitive crap, and a small few who’ve started to change. But none of them have been as drastic, or as awesome, as RW/W.
All your base are belong to them.
Sometimes, It Gets Worse
That being said, I feel like large swaths of the Internet are now collapsing into 24/7 promotional crap. No matter what I submit to Digg, I never get more than a few votes… you know why? Because I refuse to SPAM all those “friends” who’ve added me. No matter what I sumbit to Mixx, I seem to be always voted down by the same few people (which means alot when a “popular story” has usually 20 votes up).
Twitter and FriendFeed only add to this problem, creating larger circles for people to flap their jaws about crap everyone’s already heard about and decided they either don’t care or have had enough.
This is what I do to echo-chamber RSS feeds.
Conclusion
I realized yesterday that the modern Internet is just a different version of Usenet, when it comes to data delivery. Most of the people who read blogs and follow things do so with RSS and a feed reader, resulting in just a different GUI for raw data delivery… isn’t that like a cloaked Usenet? I think so.
In a year or so, I think the ‘net will have divided itself between echo chambers and original thoughts, much more clearly than now. And I think that some of the currently popular blogs will disappear… hopefully the “Crunch Empire” dies as the bubble bursts (I can wish, can’t I?).
An early 1990’s Google Reader?
But it’s only going to get worse before it gets better. I’m not a big fan of newspapers, but when you compare their style and delivery to some blogs, the paper comes our far superior: less biased, more original (or at least it’s an interesting take on a repetitive story), and the same story never resurfaces. Ever.
Chew on that.
Well, as you might have guessed, I’ve been pretty busy with OneSwirl (on top of some other … things), but I wanted to post some things about our new “lifestream aggregator” service.
We’ve had writeups in R/WW, CenterNetworks, and KillerStartups (see http://www.oneswirl.com/press.php for a continuously updated list), have had pretty good traffic, and a significant block of user signups. No direct feedback from any of the users yet, but hopefully we’re doing ok.
Already working on the next version release (3/17/2008), and would love for you to go check it out!
So, yeah, I’m famous. Not quite as much as Corey’s glasses (try CollegeHumor if you don’t know what I’m talking about), but hopefully one day I can attain that status.
Anyways, I had a small interview with The Examiner (a paper that has a few local editions in places like Baltimore, San Francisco, San Jose, etc.), Baltimore Edition, about the business and mySHOUToutLOUD. Since it was my first interview, and writeup in a paper, I’m pretty excited about it.
Give Us a Read, Precious.
[This is my first substantial post in a long time, so just as a warning: it's going to be long, full of things no-one will like, and probably very very angry. It's like I have a stockpile of feelings.]
Paradise? Am I talking about Heaven, The Afterlife, The Halls of Valhalla? No. I’m talking about the blogosphere of tech-news reporting.
The Golden Age of Grotesque
Even as little as a year ago, the portion of the blogging world that discussed/”reported” news on the tech world was very diverse and original. You could go to any number of the most popular blogs and find long opinion / editorial pieces, and little gems of news that wouldn’t be on the others. In a word: they were the opposite of mainstream media (”MSM”).
This was a good time.
The Dope Show
But then, something happened. Blogs like TechCrunch, GigaOm, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, Gizmodo, etc. began to cover the same things: the most popular internet applications and their progress (Facebook, Google, etc.) and then alot of shiny AJAX bullshit that shouldn’t even exist. And not just individually, but they would rehash the same subjects over and over again (on the same blog), even when it was seen the same amount of times on their friends/competitors.
The Tech Blogosphere
mOBSCENE
The last few months this is what the world of tech blogging looks like:
And repeat. It’s like you put a newspaper in the washing machine every night, and read it in the morning. The same news, just jumbled around a little bit.
(S)aint[s]
There are a few diamonds in the rough at the moment, the few originals that do what they feel like, even if it’s not politically correct or even always based on hard facts. Which makes it interesting.
Valleywag is like a tabloid for Silicon Valley, without all the aliens and pregnancies. Uncov is probably my favorite thing ever, because he/they bash all of the things about “Web 2.0″ and the industry that I absolutely hate (read: stupid crap), and he has a basis in reality that most bloggers don’t: real knowledge, coming from an engineering background. Scoble (”Scobleizer”) is not always interesting, but when he is… man he is. Oh, and people love to hate him, and I like to see the backlash from even just simple statements.
Oh yeah, MSM!
Cake and Sodomy
What sparked this? Aside from being tired of reading the same things on 140,000 different blogs about the same stupid things that don’t matter (or do, but have been rehashed to death), it’s simple: these blogs will only cover your startup/application/company/whatever if you meet at least one of three requirements.
I know I’m not the only one who’s noticed this, and yet I haven’t seen anyone else gripe about it. Hello, people? Yeah the Internet called, it wants to give your soul back, you spineless tool.
Mechanical Animals
The reason I bring this up is that I’ve recently launched my first web service/application, mySHOUToutLOUD. We spent some money on Facebook advertising, which turned out to be pretty worthless, but I also thought I might get some coverage from the blogs that (you would think) care, so I sent this email:
We thought you’d be interested to hear about the v1.0 Launch of our service, mySHOUToutLOUD, as of January 1st, 2008. As a new consumer complaints vehicle, we hope to have success in letting individual consumers have a voice in the public eye, in order to help their problems / concerns be resolved with any product or company.
We have attached the press release for this (PDF), but you can view other details at the press site: http://press.myshoutoutloud.com
Hopefully you find this informative, and give our new service a try.
Here’s to a brighter future for the consumer public!
–
The mySHOUToutLOUD Team“real consumer complaints, for real people”
The press release that was attached can be found here. What happened? Nothing. No reply emails. No signups from the people who check this stuff out.
I got a great reply email from a few people over at Wired and San Jose Mercury News. Does that feel good? Knowing that MSM is more professional and has more basic courtesy than all of you couch slobs that make money from doing nothing?
Oh, Hello! I didn’t see you there, Michael Arrington!
User Friendly
So, in closing, here’s my suggestion to you wannabe-journalists who cover only what Arrington thinks is interesting:
Get your thumbs out of your asses, lose some weight, and find your spine. You wonder why MSM doesn’t see you as a threat, and even CSE didn’t give you “credentials” (albeit diminished) until this year? Probably because of things like this.
—-
P.S. Mahalo sucks.
P.S.S. All song titles courtesy of Marilyn Manson.
I’ve written before on why some/many tech startups are just doomed to fail, but O’Reilly (the company behind the phrase “Web 2.0″) seems to agree with me on certain points.
The Basics
If you’re a company that wants to have a successful web application/service, you need three things:
While the legitimacy of point number 1 is in question, that’s not what I’m getting at. Many companies, regardless of their grand (or not so grand) visions, and potential programming power, forget that your web application/service doesn’t mean anything if no-one can get to it, it’s slow, or it breaks.
Maybe you should recruit for intelligence…
MySpace
MySpace is a perfect example of failing to prepare for the future. First, it’s written in ColdFusion. Second, it’s coded on a very low level. Third, it’s not built to be easily scalable. Have you seen the URL’s (”?fuseaction.item=123455&action=etc.etc.”)? Why do you think the site is so slow, even after it’s received alot of money and attention? Because the core code has not been rewritten and was not built with the future in mind (there’s a link to this statement somewhere on TechCrunch or R/WW, but I can’t find it at the moment).
Sweetness
You know, with all of the money that some of these web applications/services get, you’d think they would do something right. Facebook managed to, MySpace didn’t; Jaiku (and Twitter) did, Pownce hasn’t… the list goes on and on.
My Experience
I’m not claiming to be the best programmer in the world, but in coding my upcoming application “mySHOUToutLOUD (real consumer complaints, for real people)“, I’ve kept an eye on what I want the future to be. Here’s how…
Wow, impressive. Want to go draw with crayons now?
My Future
I’ll find out in the coming months if my theories, which are supported by many others, are correct, and I implemented them properly… but the one thing I do know is that many many don’t.
This is why many web startups fail, or just break in half when they get any number of users. Stupidity is not an excuse.
