thesethings

Dashboard is more like a "reader." Everybody you follow is found there. Also any tags you subscribe to are there. Interactions like replies are also found there. I'd compare it to your Facebook feed or Twitter.com stream. It's your base of operations.

Lots of read-only content, and then a decent amount of interactions and events (messages/new follows/like notifications).

Kout doesn't really seem to be launched (you can only sign up for list). Whereas Gumroad lets you sign-up right now.

Gumroad's design is also a bit more inviting.

I hadn't heard of either of them until today, but one is definitely in a place where I would share the link with buddies, and the other I wouldn't.

You ask about "buzz" and I definitely think launching a working product is more newsworthy than a beta sign-up page. That said, Kout seems interesting as an idea.

Well put. I do marketing work on a few projects that have commercial blogs. In mose cases, we're able to get 1K+ Tumblr followers in < 3 months (not counting "regular" RSS subscribers). (And none of the projects are famous/have famous founders/services/products) To get the same amount of regular RSS subscribers is much more difficult.

Tumblr is comparable to Twitter in that it's a common place to meet your readers/customers. Unlike a self-hosted blog, you don't have to ask visitors to leave where they are to visit you. So you're likely to get a bit more foot traffic/interaction, not to mention people passing it on/sharing it out (via reblogs).

Now if you're an already established service/otherwise famous, you might have no problem getting people to check you out. But even then, Tumblr has its benefits.

I don't think the choice is necessarily all or nothing between self-hosted or Tumblr. Many companies with "real" blogs also have Tumblrs. In many cases companies have multiple Tumblrs. (Not unlike Twitter, it's becoming common to have a separate Tumblr for different events/products/branches/divisions. IBM has at least 3. NBC has at least 4...)

I won't disagree that Tumblr has horrible performance issues. But it's still worth it. Twitter 3 years ago had bad performance issues, but it was/is still definitely investing in. No social site is forever, but they're great tools as long as you're aware of costs + benefits.

Cool to hear about your positive incubator experience. I'm a little confused though. The main vibe of the blog post was generally critical of the value of most incubators and you said you "tend to agree." Not that these opinions are technically mutually exclusive, but i did go "wait. what?" and reread your comment over a few times.

Can you go a bit more into your incubator experiences (positive) and the parts of the post you agree with (negative?)?

(Not asking you to rant/heap praise/ do anything you're not comfortable with.)

I can't speak for him. But for me, "beautiful novelty" is often a site that impresses me, but doesn't convince me to use it (even if i am its target- so it's not like just because i don't have a dog, and it's a site for dog-owners or whatever).

I imagine that beautiful novelty, like beauty, is subjective and something not everybody would agree on a case by case basis. Though I bet most people have seen a site that had no flaws, was stunning (and yes all you designers- i know it's not just visual, it's interaction, etc) but still didn't convince your head or your heart.

Ah, I just meant that things can seem like a straw man if nobody is arguing the other side... but it isn't a straw man just because nobody identifies with that side (but do actually live and breathe that side).

"Beautiful novelty" is the phrase he used to describe "pretty (but) shitty" start-ups (another phrase in the post).

(I submitted this, but don't know the author personally, so there are some assumptions built into to the following.)

[edit- regarding issue of straw man perception] The issue is that nobody who makes beautiful novelty thinks their own work is beautiful novelty. (So nobody will appear in favor of it, even if they make it.)

So it's not quite a straw man. Everybody agrees that a certain type of thing is bad, but nobody thinks they themselves are responsible for that thing.

I suspect the author has some specific start-ups in mind but didn't want to call them out. Why have people be distracted by the drama of him dissing $startup in a blog post when he really wants people to ponder a more big picture idea?