orangethirty

Joined 14 years ago

Karma

3,518

Submissions

1,895

Member since

Jun 7

    package main

    import (
        "fmt"
    )

    func main() {
        fmt.Println("orangethirty AT gmail")
    }

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Recent submissions

Comment · 13 years ago

I stumbled into some weird data as to how startups may be able to use this kind of technique without exploiting people. Yeah, it sounds hard to believe. But you have to understand that every technique out there can be used for good. Anyhow, turns out that there are some tricks that these type of advertisers use to increase their response. One just needs to carefully read the source of their pages (specially the Javascript), and you will find lots of interesting stuff in it. Just beware. Once you dig into this type of advertising your view on the subject might change dramatically. You can learn more about it here: http://bit.ly/13wOrj2

Edit:

16 clicks on 2 minutes. This sort of technique works on everybody, including smart hackers. Its mostly about talking about what you want. Some people want to lose weight, others control their diabetes. Apparently, lots of people want to learn of a little known advertising secrets for startups. I should make a Copy as a Service startup. (:

See how many are suckered into clicking: http://bit.ly/13wOrj2+

Comment · 13 years ago

I think there is a group composed of Hispanic Pyladies. Not sure if its active. Go to their site (pyladies site) and check.

Comment · 13 years ago

Put a price on their advice and connections. Don't hand out 5% just because. They could end up owning your company over the long term. Don't be so quick to hand out equity. Ever.

Comment · 13 years ago

There is one point to understand. This greatly benefits Google as it allows to reduce the response rate of competing marketing products, and increase the response of their own. Not that they should care about being fair. Gmail is theirs. They can do as they please. People should understand that they will simply optimize for their benefit, not for the benefit of some other platform (in this case Mailchimp.

Want to increase your rates? Send your email to the user's facebook account. Those get read almost instantly.

Comment · 13 years ago

As someone who mostly works with user facing web applications:

1. You will always be playing catch up if your growth takes off. Not an excuse to write your system in BASIC, but enough of a reason to forgo efficiency a little bit. Shipping something that is 90% efficient is better than not shipping something that is 100% efficient. I have lost almost one year on the latter.

2. The importance in a web application project (if you are aiming to use it as a business) is your ability to adapt to what the market wants. If you cannot push out features (inefficient ones), then somebody else who can will swoop in.

3. In terms of numbers: I have built systems that handle 10K/requests per second without a sweat. Using standard boxes and Go. Note that as nice a Go is, its still a young language. A typical python/ruby/php system can be made to handle that, but requires a bit more work. Now, what I tell people is build something safe (as in no SQL injections, XSS, etc) first, then focus on growing it. Picking a good stack early on helps, but don't pick a stack you don't know. Someone who is proficient in PHP should not use Rails (example).

4. The key to web services is to find and build things that people want. How do you that? Pay attention to people on social networks.

If you have a background in C, Go and Python feel the most familiar. Some prefer Ruby, which is another fine language. Be aware of the current trend of everything being written in Javascript. Learn to use the language as you move along. You will need it.

tl;dr

Don't think about business-oriented web apps in terms of efficiency from the start. Use what you know to build something secure and stable, and then if it catches on, scale it.

Like PG said, do things that don't scale.