4 ms·

Hi. What are going to do now? What was your idea? Ours was a DIY mobile content aggregation & distribution platform. Grab your favorite content on the web. Mix

Hi. What are going to do now? What was your idea? Ours was a DIY mobile content aggregation & distribution platform. Grab your favorite content on the web. Mix it, mash it, make it mobile, distribute it.

bootload 20y ago
I've got an idea similar to this, concentrating on aggregating your own content. One of the implications of choosing this model is that you are limiting your audience and potential market. Is it what users want, NOW? For me this is a need as I have lots of distributed stuff over 10 years but for newer users most of their stuff is in a database, CMS etc. The market is short sited in this respect. From what I can tell there is a distinct lack of demand. All the top level blogs are platform focused (blogger, wordpress, typepad, mt). These services are so good they don't seem to go down, thus where's the need? It's a good idea btw, because if you own your own data you become the definitive source. BTW how are you solving the following problems? - extracting data from services with no API? - extracting data from services with API's (have to do coding for each service) - problem of input? Service side input & extraction via API v's Client side input and exporting via API's (if the content is yours) - How do you visualise the mixing of data? - Which (key) services do you concentrate on extracting data? Or is it any service? They key things I got out of thinking making a biz out of this particular idea is that you can get into problems ... - focus on individual users and miss out any network effects (user foo connects to user bar). - not creating a new market - restricting sales by creating a secondary market because users use other services to create and yours (if needed or others) to backup. So while I'm still building this tool, I'll be looking at areas in this space that I can extract the best/better value (something that people want, faster, savings in time & effort etc) and looking for new ideas associated (and new) while solving this particular problem space for me. Remember Joshua Scharacter took about 4-5 ideas before he refined delicious & created a useful site. My gut instinct is that manipulating, saving and creating data (in its various forms) is a growing space and finding the edge niche is a potential starting point. Reference [0] Ycombinator-StartupSchool, 'Joshua_Schacter, MP3, 28Mb' http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Ycombinator-StartupSchool/~3/106570501/Joshua_Schacter.mp3 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Ycombinator-StartupSchool/~3/106570501/Joshua_Schacter.mp3
- rokhayakebe 20y ago
  hi BL, like your input. send me an email so we can discuss off site.
  - bootload 20y ago
    em's are not shown. check my bio for em ~ http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bootload http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bootload
  - bootload 20y ago

bootload 20y ago

I've got an idea similar to this, concentrating on aggregating your own content. One of the implications of choosing this model is that you are limiting your audience and potential market. Is it what users want, NOW? For me this is a need as I have lots of distributed stuff over 10 years but for newer users most of their stuff is in a database, CMS etc. The market is short sited in this respect. From what I can tell there is a distinct lack of demand. All the top level blogs are platform focused (blogger, wordpress, typepad, mt). These services are so good they don't seem to go down, thus where's the need? It's a good idea btw, because if you own your own data you become the definitive source. BTW how are you solving the following problems? - extracting data from services with no API? - extracting data from services with API's (have to do coding for each service) - problem of input? Service side input & extraction via API v's Client side input and exporting via API's (if the content is yours) - How do you visualise the mixing of data? - Which (key) services do you concentrate on extracting data? Or is it any service? They key things I got out of thinking making a biz out of this particular idea is that you can get into problems ... - focus on individual users and miss out any network effects (user foo connects to user bar). - not creating a new market - restricting sales by creating a secondary market because users use other services to create and yours (if needed or others) to backup. So while I'm still building this tool, I'll be looking at areas in this space that I can extract the best/better value (something that people want, faster, savings in time & effort etc) and looking for new ideas associated (and new) while solving this particular problem space for me. Remember Joshua Scharacter took about 4-5 ideas before he refined delicious & created a useful site. My gut instinct is that manipulating, saving and creating data (in its various forms) is a growing space and finding the edge niche is a potential starting point. Reference [0] Ycombinator-StartupSchool, 'Joshua_Schacter, MP3, 28Mb' http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Ycombinator-StartupSchool/~3/106570501/Joshua_Schacter.mp3 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Ycombinator-StartupSchool/~3/106570501/Joshua_Schacter.mp3

rokhayakebe 20y ago
hi BL, like your input. send me an email so we can discuss off site.
- bootload 20y ago
  em's are not shown. check my bio for em ~ http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bootload http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bootload
- bootload 20y ago