Yes, but what is rational can be dependent on the environment which you operate in, especially when dealing with economics which is not yet a science.
I'll give you an analogy of a research sample I got from a book.
Bee's by their nature or intelligence you may call it are trained to believe that light at the end of a tunnel is the escape. A rational and even sound analysis in nature.
Now if you put a dozen bees in a glass bottle, and point the closed end towards the window where light is shining, all the bees instinctively fly towards that direction of the light and eventually die of exhaustion.
In the case of the bees what was rational in one environment was render completely useless in another.
From my point of view the internet needs advertising, because if there wasn't Companies like Google orYahoo wouldn't have been able to take on Microsoft with subscription based services.
Okay so if this is the model that their going with, and I've been hearing this one for while. It would seem that they are trying to go after the same market that yelp, uservoice, and getsatification are all gravitating around albeit from different starting points.
Which is fine, its a large profitable market.
But then what differentiates them?
>It will be “simple stuff” such as lightweight analytics
okay...so technology as the driver has just walked out the door.
It seems like their sales pitch towards businesses will be based on the size of their user base. Which if thats the case won't they inevitably lose to Facebook? Facebook has a user base several times larger and as we've all seen Facebook is ready, willing, and happy to copy whatever works from whomever.
I think thats an unfair assessment of a good book.
I was probably seventeen when I read the book, and have all but forgotten most of those laws, but I remembered many of the stories. Greene in the book carefully puts together an array of interesting stories of famous leaders, generals, businessman that makes the book enjoyable to read whether or not one agrees with his laws.
I've only just recently released stable version of my service (like a day and half ago), but my startup goal at least for th early part of 2009 is gaining some traction. Particularly the valuable kind that Paul Buchheit talks of with finding that 100 people that really like your service. Though my service is aimed at bloggers so that might be a little hard I think.
A "newbieish" perspective can sometimes help even the best professionals in whatever industry to become more aware of flaws or improvements that they may have become to accustomed with to notice.
You need to get over whatever that emotion you want to call it that is causing you to react like this, and come to the realization that regardless of what you think of the design or even genre as a whole it is one person operation doing what he's doing.
Yea, I think thats the route i'll end up going, I've already started developing a pattern system, and overnight I thought of a few ways that might make that easier to get the title and date of a page.
There's only one thing I'm still stumped on and thats simply how do you tell when your on the original article page and not the index/tag/search/ that still sometimes contains the same content as the article page.
I would say rather to your current self to live and work in such a way that the person you were a year ago would be proud to shake the hand of the person you are today. And every year both in the effort that you put and the integrity that you keep, your year ago self would would still shake your hand.
A personal note a little over a year ago I didn't know MySQL,Javascript, or PHP. I taught all three to myself and have become quite good or at least competent to develop whatever I can think of.
I can relate to the perfectionism syndrome. But the release early, release often theme seems not a good counter while going at paying users. Sometimes that early release simply isn't worth paying for yet, it may take several iterations to get to something that is worth a package fee. I agree all products are incomplete both in testing and in functionality and that should be used to temper perfectionism.
Though there seems to me a difference between releasing early to get people to use it, and releasing to get people to pay for it. The release early and often theme I tend to think should not be broadly applied to both.
Perfectionism aside...thanks for answering my questions.
The questions I have while working on my project is when to introduce the mium in freemium.
(1) Would you be wise to introduce the premium version at launch with the free version if there is enough value, even without that established free base to leverage off?
(2) Should (being the emphasis here in refering to good business conduct). Should a business have paying customers when a product is in beta version and isn't yet completely tested against up and down times, bugs etc...?
(3) If one were to go the route of having free users before having paid users, should the free users have access to what may be removed and added to the premium release in the future, for the initial purpose of gauging whether there is interest for certain features over others?
To elaborate on that last concern. If users do get to use everything for testing purpose, am I going to get into one of those weired battles with community when certain things get shifted over (even if everyone was notified at the beginning that this would occur).
I hope this is the punch in the face everyone here at Hacker news needed.
Stop listening to the sideline douchebags, that have just been waiting for their "I told you so moment" or the mainstream blogs that write about it because they know its easy pageviews.
If you believe people really want what your creating,then define your value (or potential value), and don't be swayed by the ups and downs of the nah sayers.The best investors know this, and I pretty sure good entrepreurs know this as well.
"Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful"