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Re:What do you think of my startup idea? by ardit33 on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @08:46PM (#59648)
utter crap. Go back at the drawing board. Make something more tangible, enough with the pies on the sky.

These are concrete ideas:

Facebook, just like your silly school book, but online, and you can add friends

Google - search engine

Yelp - reviews of restaurants and businesses

las.fm - music recommandations from your friends

pandora - discover music according to your tastes

reddit/digg/news.yc -- recommending news and stories

Yours is not a tangible idea. Narrow it down to one sentence the main idea, and just one paragrapsh on how it will work, and then you have something more tangible.

Re:What do you think of my startup idea? by dcurtis on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @09:15PM (#59658)
I don't think you described those sites very well.

Facebook: Digitize your real relationships

Google: Find websites based on keywords

Yelp: Find restaurants, share experiences about restaurants

Last.fm: Discover new music based on popularity

Pandora: Discover new music based on constituent pieces

reddig/Digg: Discover news based on popularity

This idea: Discover new things based on constituent pieces, popularity, and relationships.

Seems like a natural progression to me, even if it seems complicated in the description.

Re:What do you think of my startup idea? by kabanossen on Wednesday September 26, 2007 @07:19AM (#59777)
Benefits

Facebook: Better contact with more people

Google: Answers to questions. Solutions to problems.

Last.fm: Good music

Pandora: Good music

reddig/Digg: Inspiration, quick and easy learning about tech, internet, politics

This idea: ?

For example, what's the benefit of getting movies that are similar to Jurassic Park? If you say "comfort and delight" I'd like to know how it's more comfortable than checking the movie with imdb and checking the recommendations. It has to be a bit more comfortable than the way people find movies today. Why would they check your service instead of just walking down to the video store and look at the selection?

Re:What do you think of my startup idea? by dcurtis on Wednesday September 26, 2007 @11:07PM (#60137)
This idea: find similar people, good music, good movies, and interesting things.

How are those not benefits?

The benefit of finding movies that are similar to Jurassic Park is that you find new movies that you might enjoy. This is very obvious. What is the benefit of finding new music on iTunes/Pandora? It's the same thing! Of course it's for comfort and delight. That's what you're supposed to be pursuing in life.

IMDB does not recommend movies at all. If it does, it does it horrifically badly because it has never helped me before. IMDB is not a recommendation engine, it's simply a database. And they don't seem to want to innovate beyond that.

Video stores are enormous and movies are ordered alphabetically by genre. There is no way to know which movie is good, or which one you will like, because all you have is a promotional paragraph on the back and a pretty picture on the front. This is also very obvious to me.

Re:What do you think of my startup idea? by nailer on Wednesday September 26, 2007 @09:37PM (#60110)
You have a good idea, but I don't think you're good at communicating it. The above is a good example - I don't know anyone that sets out to 'digitize (their) real relationships'. They might do that, but it's that's a means to an end, not the end itself.

Users are focused on end goals, not means. The end goal for Facebook is to keep in contact with friends, meet new people, organise events, and show off their photos.

Nobody wants to digitize anything. If FB initially told its users they've made a service to digitize their real relationships, they wouldn't be very popular.

Re:What do you think of my startup idea? by dcurtis on Wednesday September 26, 2007 @11:01PM (#60134)
Those are the exact words from Mr. Zuckerberg himself. He said he didn't create Facebook to help you find "friends;" he created it to digitize real relationships and allow you to keep in contact.

Re:What do you think of my startup idea? by nailer on Sunday September 30, 2007 @10:58PM (#61454)
Regardless of who said the words, have they ever been used to market Facebook to users?

The jargon used makes it sounds like a conversation with contemporaries, colleagues or investors.