blader

22 ms·

1. 241.▲
   by blader 19y ago

   If Google-like valuations is the bar for 'importance', then what's important on the internet other than Google?
2. 242.▲
   by blader 19y ago

   Facebook is different from MySpace for exactly the use case of keeping up with your friends. Facebook is the only social network so far that rigorously enforces real names, identities and relationships through both social design and brute f
3. 243.▲
   by blader 19y ago

   Okay, that was a little flippant on my part. I agree with the other two guys that there isn't a whole lot of correlation between profitability and importance. I just think you're underestimating the importance of social tools that help peop
4. 244.▲
   by blader 19y ago

   I'd parody this with 'Email Is Not Really That Special', but I'm too busy building a profitable company on Facebook.
5. 245.▲
   by blader 19y ago

   1. No. 2. Yes. 3. When you find you are out of your element, for example when raising financing or negotiating an acquisition.
6. 246.▲
   by blader 19y ago

   The best chili I've ever had.
7. 247.▲
   by blader 19y ago

   Softlayer.
8. 248.▲
   by blader 19y ago

   Except the page hasn't looked like that in about a month with the new UI tweak.
9. 249.▲
   by blader 19y ago

   This is pretty cool, it's kind of like a CRM for your friends.
10. 250.▲
    by blader 19y ago

    Yeah we looked at EngineYard. They are good if you don't ever want to deal with deployment at all, but I really can't justify the premium. The 17K price quoted is probably for their basic cluster of 3 machines - we run on 10 now so it's pro
11. 251.▲
    by blader 19y ago

    It's just the Facebook app.
12. 252.▲
    by blader 19y ago

    Here are some numbers from our application, let me know if this helps: We have 400K daily active users, doing 200 requests a second and around 10MM page views per day. All requests are dynamic and hit the full Rails stack. We're probably ea
13. 253.▲
    by blader 19y ago

    We do 400K+ users an day on our Rails app, 10MM pageviews, and 200 requests a second. YellowPages.com, which is probably the largest Rails site (yes larger than Twitter) does a lot more than that. I used to buy in to the whole 'scale later'
14. 254.▲
    by blader 19y ago

    Here's a business lesson: don't implement features that cost more than your expected marginal increase in revenue. e.g. supporting edge case platforms at the expense of most of your users.
15. 255.▲
    by blader 19y ago

    Yeah, I think it's bullshit how they don't support my 320x240 machine running Mosaic on Windows 3.1. These guys are amateurs.
16. 256.▲
    by blader 19y ago

    I'm not a fan of the spammy stuff either. Those are tactical methods and apps which rely on those tactics at the expense of actual utility quickly decay. The apps that actually stay at the top are there because there's a demand for them. Re
17. 257.▲
    by blader 19y ago

    This is their fourth round of funding - it's quite common to go to a larger institution for later rounds of funding for a mezzanine round before an IPO.
18. 258.▲
    by blader 19y ago

    It's not overvalued at all. They could probably pull in $50M-$100M a year in revenue right now with their traffic, extrapolating a bit from the revenues we're getting from our single application. I'm pretty surprised by how many hackers her
19. 259.▲
    by blader 19y ago

    You are 100% correct. I didn't point out that that 'ugliness' is not universal, and can co-exist with great usability.
20. 260.▲
    by blader 19y ago

    It is beautiful - part of my point.
21. 261.▲
    by blader 19y ago

    I think we're too quick to attribute what we don't understand to just plain luck. I wouldn't underestimate Markus - running a site with 300MM page views per month single handedly is pretty impressive. One quick observation: it's not an acci
22. 262.▲
    by blader 19y ago

    Taste is not universal. This not PC, but there is a correlation between class and taste in design. The clean, uncluttered design appeals to the 'elite', but the masses just have different taste in things. There are reasons why CNN and Fox N
23. 263.▲
    by blader 19y ago

    Their prices are pretty outrageous, but if you don't want to ever worry about ops and deployment, they are your ticket.
24. 264.▲
    by blader 19y ago

    We have 6 boxes with Softlayer and they've been night and day with our previous host, RailsMachine. RailsMachine is an excellent VPS host but it took a month to get our flapping DB server repaired. Softlayer built us a cluster in 2 hours, a
25. 265.▲
    by blader 19y ago

    The "English major" Zed mentioned is a friend and co-worker of mine. Zed and him has had some beef going way back. Kevin is no script kiddy, I can guarantee you that. His 20% time project at Powerset is contributing to Rubinius. I don't kno
26. 266.▲
    by blader 19y ago

    Xin nian kuai le. Pronounced: Sxeen neeyan kooai luh.
27. 267.▲
    SocialPicks Funded (YC Company)(mashable.com)

    14 points by blader 19y ago|0 comments
28. 268.▲
    Amazon SimpleDB Goes Beta(informationweek.com)

    44 points by blader 19y ago|29 comments
29. 269.▲
    by blader 19y ago

    I wouldn't worry about doing things that have been done. I would worry about doing it better than what's already been done.
30. 270.▲
    by blader 19y ago

    Combined with this news: http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=60 , this effectively kills OpenSocial dead in the water, in my opinion.