4 ms·

Well theres alot of people with technical expertise reading this. Give us a summary of your idea, or maybe a way to contact you.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
jpsnell 18y ago
contact me at gacxllr10@gmail.com if you're interested in helping to develop this web application: I wanted to create a site for wanderlusts - people who want to use the internet to find exciting places to see and things to do. Contact me if you're interested in seeing some mock-ups.If it's not overly apparent, I haven't refined my pitch yet.
- jpsnell 18y ago
  I want to organize the world. I don't want to organize the world's information - as Google does, but simply the places and venues that make up our world - amusement parks and museums and baseball fields and movie theaters. I want a user to be able to go onto this web application and find out where the best skate park within twenty miles of his or her new house in Portland, ME is. I want a user to be able to come back from a vacation and create a list of the places where they went. I want to make the world more active, taking users away from their computers and into the thick of things. It's sort of like a real-life Delicious.
  - aaronblohowiak 18y ago
    AKA yelp. edit: or judysbook or (to a lesser extent) citysearch
    - grahamkeg 18y ago
      No. One way in which we differ considerably from Yelp is that the venue itself produces the initial content. The profiles are fuller and more meaningful because the venues are building the initial product rather than users. Very few Yelp pages, for example, have any photos. When a venue is paying for inclusion in this service, they are more attentive to the page than a user. Every venue on our web application has people behind it, working at the venue, who are reading the user reviews, adding content, creating announcements, writing a short description of the place, uploading pictures of products or services they offer, and describing their venue using up to fifty tags. Users can do many of these things, too, but the initial set of content is created by the venue.
      - aaronblohowiak 18y ago
        that's a good way to guarantee slow growth. yelp is so popular because they made it a competitive sport to review new places and add in new information (with the reward being elite yelp status and access to special elite parties.) a lot of yelp's paying customers do have dates and times and photos and menus and such. in fact, afaik, the only way to get some of the info on there is to pay yelp. i wish you the best of luck, but i hope you have a bigger differentiator than placing more of a burden on small businesses.
        jpsnell 18y ago
        My pitch is ill-defined and I realize now how similar it must seem to Yelp. However, I would like to elaborate on this point that you made about "slow growth" with a question: Would Facebook be as popular if anyone could create anyone else's page? They would upload basic information - maybe a picture or two, a few interests, add a few friends, hardly ever write in the blog. When the person writing content for these pages has a personal investment in the business or venue, the page becomes much more vibrant. Users on Yelp are given points for adding and reviewing places, but the number of pictures they upload, for example, is a non-factor in their user ranking. Thus, I respectfully disagree with your assessment that this will slow growth. I'm planning on starting with a small and well-defined geographic reach - say, one small area like a city or a state. Once that user base is satisfied, then I'll work to expand the application's reach. One more thing, though - I would not be quick to call the profile creation on this web application "burdensome." Most venues, including several branches of a national chain, have difficulty reaching their customer base. The chain "Chili's" for example, has a Web site for their national chain, but few if any (I couldn't find any on a recent search) of their individual venues have Web sites. That means there's very little interchange between the consumer and the venue. This web application was initially created so that people could not only organize their places, but shape them to some extent. If enough people complain in reviews of an individual Chili's venue that the cash registers are understaffed, that venue will take notice.
        aaronblohowiak 18y ago
        I may well be missing something, but you still haven't differentiated yourself. Companies can upload photos to their yelp page, if they pay. The people can also put their info in google base or other directories. What I want to know from you is: Why are ou going to beat yelp? Why are you going to beat citysearch? Why did judysbook and insiderpages fail? How do you compare to americantowns.com ? I wish you the best of luck. Really, i do. I am in the minority of people who go to the internet for everything, and hope/expect that everything is going to be on there. if there was more than just the hipster-overridden yelp, then i'd be a happier man. I just don't see the business case.
  - anamax 18y ago
    The point of view seems wrong. You may want these things, but why does a user want to work this way? The "good places near new house" service doesn't seem all that compelling. If I want a skate park, I'm a skater and I'll quickly meet other skaters. How am I going to know about it anyway? ("welcome wagon" appears to be dead.) And, you're competing with the "city" sites. They've been trying to do this for years and failed. (They've failed so miserably that it's understandable that you've never heard of them. However, you still need to understand why they failed. I can't see any difference.) The travel thing is neat, but is it a biz or a feature of a travel site? (Yes, it might be the feature that makes a travel site.)
- anamax 18y ago
  I doubt that the lack of pitch refinement is an issue. In fact, too much refinement may be an obstacle. (Beginning song writers often pitch songs with recordings that are overly produced. This makes it hard for the artist to see how she'd do the song.) Unless, of course, you're just looking for contract programmers. They'll do exactly what you want, but they want cash. It's important to realize that if most of the payoff that you're offering is equity, folks expect to contribute as well. If you want to pay folks like founders, you have to treat them like founders. If you want to treat folks like employees, you have to pay them like employees.
noel_gomez 18y ago
I am in the same boat as far as being technical goes.(although I have some programming background). One of my ideas is to create a better networking application. By that I mean a better version of linked-In (which I think is a total waste since those connections at best are mostly superficial). If you are interested, contact me. (see profile)

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

jpsnell 18y ago

contact me at gacxllr10@gmail.com if you're interested in helping to develop this web application: I wanted to create a site for wanderlusts - people who want to use the internet to find exciting places to see and things to do. Contact me if you're interested in seeing some mock-ups.If it's not overly apparent, I haven't refined my pitch yet.

jpsnell 18y ago
I want to organize the world. I don't want to organize the world's information - as Google does, but simply the places and venues that make up our world - amusement parks and museums and baseball fields and movie theaters. I want a user to be able to go onto this web application and find out where the best skate park within twenty miles of his or her new house in Portland, ME is. I want a user to be able to come back from a vacation and create a list of the places where they went. I want to make the world more active, taking users away from their computers and into the thick of things. It's sort of like a real-life Delicious.
- aaronblohowiak 18y ago
  AKA yelp. edit: or judysbook or (to a lesser extent) citysearch
  - grahamkeg 18y ago
    No. One way in which we differ considerably from Yelp is that the venue itself produces the initial content. The profiles are fuller and more meaningful because the venues are building the initial product rather than users. Very few Yelp pages, for example, have any photos. When a venue is paying for inclusion in this service, they are more attentive to the page than a user. Every venue on our web application has people behind it, working at the venue, who are reading the user reviews, adding content, creating announcements, writing a short description of the place, uploading pictures of products or services they offer, and describing their venue using up to fifty tags. Users can do many of these things, too, but the initial set of content is created by the venue.
    - aaronblohowiak 18y ago
      that's a good way to guarantee slow growth. yelp is so popular because they made it a competitive sport to review new places and add in new information (with the reward being elite yelp status and access to special elite parties.) a lot of yelp's paying customers do have dates and times and photos and menus and such. in fact, afaik, the only way to get some of the info on there is to pay yelp. i wish you the best of luck, but i hope you have a bigger differentiator than placing more of a burden on small businesses.
      - jpsnell 18y ago
        My pitch is ill-defined and I realize now how similar it must seem to Yelp. However, I would like to elaborate on this point that you made about "slow growth" with a question: Would Facebook be as popular if anyone could create anyone else's page? They would upload basic information - maybe a picture or two, a few interests, add a few friends, hardly ever write in the blog. When the person writing content for these pages has a personal investment in the business or venue, the page becomes much more vibrant. Users on Yelp are given points for adding and reviewing places, but the number of pictures they upload, for example, is a non-factor in their user ranking. Thus, I respectfully disagree with your assessment that this will slow growth. I'm planning on starting with a small and well-defined geographic reach - say, one small area like a city or a state. Once that user base is satisfied, then I'll work to expand the application's reach. One more thing, though - I would not be quick to call the profile creation on this web application "burdensome." Most venues, including several branches of a national chain, have difficulty reaching their customer base. The chain "Chili's" for example, has a Web site for their national chain, but few if any (I couldn't find any on a recent search) of their individual venues have Web sites. That means there's very little interchange between the consumer and the venue. This web application was initially created so that people could not only organize their places, but shape them to some extent. If enough people complain in reviews of an individual Chili's venue that the cash registers are understaffed, that venue will take notice.
        aaronblohowiak 18y ago
        I may well be missing something, but you still haven't differentiated yourself. Companies can upload photos to their yelp page, if they pay. The people can also put their info in google base or other directories. What I want to know from you is: Why are ou going to beat yelp? Why are you going to beat citysearch? Why did judysbook and insiderpages fail? How do you compare to americantowns.com ? I wish you the best of luck. Really, i do. I am in the minority of people who go to the internet for everything, and hope/expect that everything is going to be on there. if there was more than just the hipster-overridden yelp, then i'd be a happier man. I just don't see the business case.
- anamax 18y ago
  The point of view seems wrong. You may want these things, but why does a user want to work this way? The "good places near new house" service doesn't seem all that compelling. If I want a skate park, I'm a skater and I'll quickly meet other skaters. How am I going to know about it anyway? ("welcome wagon" appears to be dead.) And, you're competing with the "city" sites. They've been trying to do this for years and failed. (They've failed so miserably that it's understandable that you've never heard of them. However, you still need to understand why they failed. I can't see any difference.) The travel thing is neat, but is it a biz or a feature of a travel site? (Yes, it might be the feature that makes a travel site.)
anamax 18y ago
I doubt that the lack of pitch refinement is an issue. In fact, too much refinement may be an obstacle. (Beginning song writers often pitch songs with recordings that are overly produced. This makes it hard for the artist to see how she'd do the song.) Unless, of course, you're just looking for contract programmers. They'll do exactly what you want, but they want cash. It's important to realize that if most of the payoff that you're offering is equity, folks expect to contribute as well. If you want to pay folks like founders, you have to treat them like founders. If you want to treat folks like employees, you have to pay them like employees.

noel_gomez 18y ago

I am in the same boat as far as being technical goes.(although I have some programming background). One of my ideas is to create a better networking application. By that I mean a better version of linked-In (which I think is a total waste since those connections at best are mostly superficial). If you are interested, contact me. (see profile)