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Actually... I've just tried your site end-to-end and you do have a killer feature and it's not the thing you are making most prominent. The killer feature is t

by buro9 16y ago

Actually... I've just tried your site end-to-end and you do have a killer feature and it's not the thing you are making most prominent. The killer feature is the cache. To know that what I bookmark will have a snapshot at that moment in time, citable and impervious to changes that happen to the source. That is a fantastic feature. My advice to you would be to highlight that. Bookmarks against things that can and will change, disappear or move are moving targets... what you're offering here is a permanent bookmark as it stood at that moment in time. That's a big deal, definitely enough to make me consider trying it out. But you need to communicate that this is possible... it would really help researchers and those who use bookmarks as a searchable source over a long period of time (which is when the effects of things changing becomes most obvious). I think you should possibly look at features like verifying a source (it looks like you cache from the browser, which the user could've modified) and allowing tags to be shared with other users or publicly. Basically... allow academics to use this and to include web citations in their papers and such with histori.us providing the verified cache. Perhaps even extend the bookmarking functionality to include the ability to highlight and add notes to part of the bookmarked page. Permanent cache = big deal.

StavrosK 16y ago
Ah, thanks for that, you're right in that we don't publicise it almost at all (and we should). As for the sharing, you have your personal historious at: http://buro9.historio.us/search/ http://buro9.historio.us/search/ You can publish sites there (including tags) and refer people to it by giving them a link of the form http://buro9.historio.us/?q=some+query http://buro9.historio.us/?q=some+query. Personally, I think that's pretty handy for answering the question "do you have any sites about X?" No items are made public by default, but do note that, when you do make an item public, you are also sharing the cached version. Thanks again for the feedback, and I'm good for that free subscription if you need it!
- buro9 16y ago
  I've thought about it some more. Beware and embrace the slashdotting (insert digg, reddit, HN here). The cache is both your killer feature and your risk. I hope it's statically stored or can be put in memory quickly... are you using Varnish? Encourage it's use... if people are bookmarking using histori.us and a site goes down, you've just gained a very large audience to your service. But only if your site survives the onslaught itself.
  - StavrosK 16y ago
    We are using Varnish, but we're storing the sources in the DB (to take advantage of automatic compression and all-around ease). It's trivial to get Varnish to cache the entire source and invalidate the cache when the document changes (the public/private setting, basically, so it doesn't accidentally share a page that's been changed to private), so that's all good. The biggest problem (by far) is disk usage. The rest of the service is very easily sharded, really, as every user is isolated. Solr is also fantastic (much better than Sphinx, in hindsight we should have gone with that for TP), so that can also scale very well (there's even an implementation of it on hadoop). We'll add the caching feature to the front page as soon as we finish the current round of A/B testing, thanks again (that feature was basically an afterthought, so it was great that you noted its importance)!
    - buro9 16y ago
      Until the TP ref I wondered whether it was you. Hi again :)
      - StavrosK 16y ago
        It is, hi :)
anigbrowl 16y ago
He's right. You (historious) could market that to the academic and legal world, where citation is a big deal but URLs can be ephemeral; the other day I was reading a brief less than a week old, filed in a current (and very prominent) case, and two of the hyperlinks in it 404'ed. If historio.us can get a reputation for having 'certified copies' then everyone will stampede towards the service. For bonus points, a button to search for the current version of the same page, which may be at a different address from the original one.
- StavrosK 16y ago
  We definitely should emphasise that. Also, the way the service works now, each user's cached page might be different (e.g. if you historified it a month ago and I yesterday, the caches will be different if the page changed). Example: http://stavros.historio.us/cached/354988/ http://stavros.historio.us/cached/354988/ Unfortunately, we just lost a day of A/B testing due to an erroneous setting, but we'll start testing this addition to the homepage first thing tomorrow. Thanks again!
  - buro9 16y ago
    Following on again... allowing a legal firm to have a company account whereby the company paid for the storage of their employees would be a good thing. This is a just collection of users, perhaps identified strongly by their company email address... and as each user works on a different case they should see their own thing or things of shared tags (multiple people working on the same account). The company shouldn't lose access to a cached URL just because an employee leaves and decides not to renew their sub with you. Hence the need for a company account. The company should also be able to control what is made public and to review all public items. This takes care of ensuring that research into defence isn't leaked... perhaps a simple approval process on what is made public (whereby a named person for a tag approves items within that tag being made public). Then make it so that you bill the legal firm on a monthly basis and show the proportion of storage per tag (they will re-bill their client accounts) and you have a winner. After that the only thing you have to do is sell it to a few firms.
photon_off 16y ago
This is absolutely an accurate comment. The fact that content is cached actually makes me see value in this to the point that I might pay for it. I haven't looked at your pricing, but I'd probably pay $10-20 a year. Or pehaps I'd just roll my own.
- StavrosK 16y ago
  You (we, really) are in luck, the price is exactly in that range!

by buro9 16y ago

StavrosK 16y ago

Ah, thanks for that, you're right in that we don't publicise it almost at all (and we should). As for the sharing, you have your personal historious at: http://buro9.historio.us/search/ http://buro9.historio.us/search/ You can publish sites there (including tags) and refer people to it by giving them a link of the form http://buro9.historio.us/?q=some+query http://buro9.historio.us/?q=some+query. Personally, I think that's pretty handy for answering the question "do you have any sites about X?" No items are made public by default, but do note that, when you do make an item public, you are also sharing the cached version. Thanks again for the feedback, and I'm good for that free subscription if you need it!

buro9 16y ago
I've thought about it some more. Beware and embrace the slashdotting (insert digg, reddit, HN here). The cache is both your killer feature and your risk. I hope it's statically stored or can be put in memory quickly... are you using Varnish? Encourage it's use... if people are bookmarking using histori.us and a site goes down, you've just gained a very large audience to your service. But only if your site survives the onslaught itself.
- StavrosK 16y ago
  We are using Varnish, but we're storing the sources in the DB (to take advantage of automatic compression and all-around ease). It's trivial to get Varnish to cache the entire source and invalidate the cache when the document changes (the public/private setting, basically, so it doesn't accidentally share a page that's been changed to private), so that's all good. The biggest problem (by far) is disk usage. The rest of the service is very easily sharded, really, as every user is isolated. Solr is also fantastic (much better than Sphinx, in hindsight we should have gone with that for TP), so that can also scale very well (there's even an implementation of it on hadoop). We'll add the caching feature to the front page as soon as we finish the current round of A/B testing, thanks again (that feature was basically an afterthought, so it was great that you noted its importance)!
  - buro9 16y ago
    Until the TP ref I wondered whether it was you. Hi again :)
    - StavrosK 16y ago
      It is, hi :)

anigbrowl 16y ago

He's right. You (historious) could market that to the academic and legal world, where citation is a big deal but URLs can be ephemeral; the other day I was reading a brief less than a week old, filed in a current (and very prominent) case, and two of the hyperlinks in it 404'ed. If historio.us can get a reputation for having 'certified copies' then everyone will stampede towards the service. For bonus points, a button to search for the current version of the same page, which may be at a different address from the original one.

StavrosK 16y ago
We definitely should emphasise that. Also, the way the service works now, each user's cached page might be different (e.g. if you historified it a month ago and I yesterday, the caches will be different if the page changed). Example: http://stavros.historio.us/cached/354988/ http://stavros.historio.us/cached/354988/ Unfortunately, we just lost a day of A/B testing due to an erroneous setting, but we'll start testing this addition to the homepage first thing tomorrow. Thanks again!
- buro9 16y ago
  Following on again... allowing a legal firm to have a company account whereby the company paid for the storage of their employees would be a good thing. This is a just collection of users, perhaps identified strongly by their company email address... and as each user works on a different case they should see their own thing or things of shared tags (multiple people working on the same account). The company shouldn't lose access to a cached URL just because an employee leaves and decides not to renew their sub with you. Hence the need for a company account. The company should also be able to control what is made public and to review all public items. This takes care of ensuring that research into defence isn't leaked... perhaps a simple approval process on what is made public (whereby a named person for a tag approves items within that tag being made public). Then make it so that you bill the legal firm on a monthly basis and show the proportion of storage per tag (they will re-bill their client accounts) and you have a winner. After that the only thing you have to do is sell it to a few firms.

photon_off 16y ago

This is absolutely an accurate comment. The fact that content is cached actually makes me see value in this to the point that I might pay for it. I haven't looked at your pricing, but I'd probably pay $10-20 a year. Or pehaps I'd just roll my own.

StavrosK 16y ago
You (we, really) are in luck, the price is exactly in that range!