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Last year, me and a friend built a chat application which would connect you to someone random. We had an impressive backend, and some really neat features inclu

Last year, me and a friend built a chat application which would connect you to someone random. We had an impressive backend, and some really neat features including mining abuse reports to extract offensive conversations, etc. (Even considered applying to YC with this) A week before we were set to launch, omegle.com came out which was the same thing - simpler - but essentially the same. We abandoned the idea immediately because the internet was abuzz with omegle's brilliant concept, and we'd be seen as imitators and won't get enough people interested. One week, that's all we lost by. If I hadn't pushed for combing the site for security holes and writing in spam protection, over-optimizing the comet-server, etc, it would've been our site over there getting several hundred thousands of hits. This taught me the importance of releasing early and iterating and improving quickly. Still, every time I see omegle.com in the news or other sites, I feel sad that it could have been us, but I also feel proud that I came up with, and implemented an idea which would've worked nevertheless.

sorbits 17y ago
“We abandoned the idea immediately because the internet was abuzz with omegle’s” I can’t help but read that as giving up at the first sign of trouble. Sure, competition sucks, but if you had just a single advantage you could have used the Omegle buzz to your advantage and effectively ride their coattail, what many tablets are presently trying to do with the buzz surrounding the iPad.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- antileet 17y ago
  Our tool wasn't a startup, it was a little app I wrote in a short while to learn how to work with comet servers. I don't subscribe to the "giving up is cowardice" line of thought. We had nothing really new to offer the world and I had a bigger, more important project to focus on. While I will gladly compete when I feel that there is a potential for becoming better than the competitor (like I'm doing right now with my current startup), I can't bring myself to do something that offers nothing new and attempt to "out-market" the competition.
  - TheSOB88 17y ago
    Out-marketing is where all the battles are won. You have to make people aware of what you're doing, not sit there and wait for them to do it.
wheels 17y ago
This is badly, badly, mistaken. (a) You don't get buzz just by getting something out there. Usually, nobody cares when you launch, no matter how cool your idea is. What you were seeing was either effective PR or dumb luck, neither of which can be duplicated trivially. (b) One friggin week advantage is nothing. Usually the first player in a space takes it in the shins. It's so exceedingly rare for a first mover to win that calling it an advantage seems to ignore market realities.
- antileet 17y ago
  Thanks for your advice. I never saw it this way. Maybe I didn't give enough details in my original post. This was a little hack that I thought would be cool, and would help me learn how to write comet-based apps (which it did). When Omegle came out, was a little annoyed but since our project was a few days of work, I put the code away and focused on my main project. I didn't even hear of omegle again after then until a few weeks after that. But still, my current project is chasing a first mover with a few months' head start and it's nice to get reaffirmation that we don't need to be first movers to get ahead. P.S. If you're interested, here are slides from a presentation we gave in our local startup interaction session: http://www.slideshare.net/guest3cff7f/connr http://www.slideshare.net/guest3cff7f/connr
- encoderer 17y ago
  I'm fond of the saying... the pioneers get the arrows, the settlers get the land.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  What a waste man, I've never even heard of omegle. Keep that in mind please. In spite of whatever the buzz is today, except for the top 10 sites or so the majority of websites have not been visited yet by the majority of the people on the planet. There definitely is room for more than one in almost every space except for social networks that are 'feature comparable', sooner or later one will gain the momentum and crowd the other one out.
  - gridspy 17y ago

sorbits 17y ago

“We abandoned the idea immediately because the internet was abuzz with omegle’s” I can’t help but read that as giving up at the first sign of trouble. Sure, competition sucks, but if you had just a single advantage you could have used the Omegle buzz to your advantage and effectively ride their coattail, what many tablets are presently trying to do with the buzz surrounding the iPad.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
antileet 17y ago
Our tool wasn't a startup, it was a little app I wrote in a short while to learn how to work with comet servers. I don't subscribe to the "giving up is cowardice" line of thought. We had nothing really new to offer the world and I had a bigger, more important project to focus on. While I will gladly compete when I feel that there is a potential for becoming better than the competitor (like I'm doing right now with my current startup), I can't bring myself to do something that offers nothing new and attempt to "out-market" the competition.
- TheSOB88 17y ago
  Out-marketing is where all the battles are won. You have to make people aware of what you're doing, not sit there and wait for them to do it.

wheels 17y ago

This is badly, badly, mistaken. (a) You don't get buzz just by getting something out there. Usually, nobody cares when you launch, no matter how cool your idea is. What you were seeing was either effective PR or dumb luck, neither of which can be duplicated trivially. (b) One friggin week advantage is nothing. Usually the first player in a space takes it in the shins. It's so exceedingly rare for a first mover to win that calling it an advantage seems to ignore market realities.

antileet 17y ago
Thanks for your advice. I never saw it this way. Maybe I didn't give enough details in my original post. This was a little hack that I thought would be cool, and would help me learn how to write comet-based apps (which it did). When Omegle came out, was a little annoyed but since our project was a few days of work, I put the code away and focused on my main project. I didn't even hear of omegle again after then until a few weeks after that. But still, my current project is chasing a first mover with a few months' head start and it's nice to get reaffirmation that we don't need to be first movers to get ahead. P.S. If you're interested, here are slides from a presentation we gave in our local startup interaction session: http://www.slideshare.net/guest3cff7f/connr http://www.slideshare.net/guest3cff7f/connr
encoderer 17y ago
I'm fond of the saying... the pioneers get the arrows, the settlers get the land.
jacquesm 17y ago
What a waste man, I've never even heard of omegle. Keep that in mind please. In spite of whatever the buzz is today, except for the top 10 sites or so the majority of websites have not been visited yet by the majority of the people on the planet. There definitely is room for more than one in almost every space except for social networks that are 'feature comparable', sooner or later one will gain the momentum and crowd the other one out.
- gridspy 17y ago