Still working on design. Main challenges I am trying to resolve are merging topics and adding members. Not driving development at all. Method seems to have morphed from iterative design and development to finish design in order to start development.
Wikileaks (below) and Wikipedia are constantly seeking funding. A better system for accummulating and spending public funds would help ensure these guys get their funding.
Begun to solve a problem that I have been mulling on for almost a year (merging topics). This has triggered some redesign.
SS has not delivered yet. It is partly my fault because my attention has been upon design rather than development.
I have stopped using HTML mockups to model the application layout but I am continuing to use them to experiment with style:
Now I model the layout in a wiki document. Wiki documents on a server can be accessed from any computer and, since wiki software records all document versions, I can edit the documents without accidentally losing valuable ideas.
Accepted LH bid of $200 to improve the contact management system. My description, that used a table (see below), proved hard to interpret.
To ensure LH finished the job as required, I created user cases and agreed to pay a $100 bonus.
The next job is to enable topic members to choose their topic Administrator. I have accepted SS bid of $100. He is very enthusiastic about the application (he has read the entire blog).
I learnt, again, that UK and USA rates are 3 times more expensive for, apparently, equivalent skill:
LH has identified a weakness in my method; I cannot quality check code (see below). I do not know how to fix this problem yet.
As I go through the code, I notice how badly written it is. The code is sloppy, inefficient, and under regular traffic, it will certainly bog your server down. It is slowing down the revising process drastically as I have to spend a lot of time figuring out how the code works since it has no real structure. I highly recommend you rewrite the code after this project.
I am having trouble topping up my Scriptlace credit. It is capped at $200 per month for most payment methods. I have attempted a Bank Wire to get around this but the payment seems to have been lost along the way. The manager of Scriptlance, Rene Trescases, gets a bad rap online but, in this instance, it is not his fault.
[Update: 14th January 2009]
Like the phrase ‘frequent difficulty of describing what their invention was for’:
But the founder of the Academy of Applied Science, and the patent lawyer, regularly recognised himself in the inventors, old and young, who came to see him. The streak of craziness; the thrill of the quest; the frequent difficulty of describing what their invention was for; their vulnerability to ridicule, because what they had done or thought was new; and the need to protect that thought, as something interesting and precious in itself.
Economist magazine, “Obituary of Robert Rines, scientist and Nessie-hunter”, November 21st 2009
In principle, there are three ways of limiting human environmental impacts: through population policy, technology and governance.
Economist magazine, “Falling Fertility”, October (?) 31st 2009
The Economist said that world population growth will drop below its replacement rate before 2050 and there is not much that need or can be done to speed it up. This means that, if there is a panacea to be had, it will be of technology or governance.
If it is of governance then it will be either a great leader or a great system of governance. A great system of governance finds and empowers the world’s best leaders, wherever and whoever they may be. Is this a mission statement?
Whilst thinking on these lines, I happened across this excerpt on Wikipedia:
The power of Mass-collaboration is evidenced by the scope and accuracy of the Wikipedia project. On his website Mass-Collaboration.net, Kevin St.Onge discusses the opportunities that mass collaboration presents to the world in achieving a global democracy. He argues that governments as we know them will be dissolved and replaced by the collaborative efforts of the entire world population.
Found article in The Times newspaper which considers how differences between African and British behaviours impact feelings such as companionship and lonliness. Excerpts:
In Britain we shut ourselves off from other people and leave the lonely to themselves, especially at Christmas. Loneliness and depression are serious afflictions, created by the way we live.
A student friend from Ghana tells me that the first time she felt lonely was when she came to London.
While Westerners tend to shed family members, Africans greedily gather and hoard them.
Outside South Africa, very few Africans have lost contact with the village they come from. So even in modern towns, village ways persist.
In the past, the worst punishment in many African societies was expulsion. To be excluded was worse than death.
This communalism ensures that no one is left alone, but it has negative side-effects. For example, distant family members can call on you for money. They will turn up unannounced and expect to receive hospitality. You cannot refuse. When rich men die, their fortune is pulled to pieces and squandered by the many people who can claim a gift from the departing relative. And in most families there is a delinquent who has broken the rules or is disliked. They — and their offspring — are excluded or tolerated, but exploited. These days, when labour is becoming more expensive, the traditional practice of taking the child of a poor relative into one’s family to help them has led to exploitation. Where the child is a girl it has even ended in a relationship of slavery and rape.
Communalism can also make societies deeply conservative. Where maintaining the community is the ultimate goal, important but divisive truths cannot be discussed for fear of creating a rift, so decisions are left untaken. And the African family ensures there is no such thing as a self-made man: the classic rootless entrepreneur of 19th-century Europe or America who tears up the rule book and builds a new world.
Africa’s traditional communalism has a lot to teach a world that suffers from loneliness and depression. Africa still possesses the sort of community that we talk about but rarely experience. And best of all, a society that does not leave its members to grow old and die neglected and alone.
From “In Africa they won’t feel lonesome tonight”, The Times newspaper, December 29, 2009. Author: Richard Dowden [who] is director of the Royal African Society. His book, Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles, is published by Portobello Books
It is the end of 2009. My goal for 2010 is to complete the current version of the application (Version 5).
GS emailed on 15th to find out what I was doing. This girded me back into action. Commisioned GS to build new feature:
The job is to develop Reply feature for threads in a proprietary bulletin board.
Replying to a comment within a thread creates a new topic.
The rationale is that a reply to a comment within a thread is a deviation (i.e. off-topic) and so should be the start of a new topic.
He took about 8 days and charged $60. Sadly, for me, GS has now got a job and is no longer available to help.
Unsatisfied by previous description of system for contact management and so spent time working on it. Finally came up with way to describe it effectively (see pictures).
I worked on improving the contact management system. GS charged $100 for development.
Some comments from edwardtufte.com on managing and promoting bulletin boards:
Another reason to program in pre-approval only is that eventually the moderators of every online forum find other things to do with their lives. The server doesn’t realize this and soldiers on processing postings. Spammers discover a happy home and the database fills up with crud.
Alas, like all security (antiterrorism, insurance, police, copyright), there isn’t a one-sentence answer except to say every site must make, and continuously review, its own complex cost-benefit assessment and maintain a layered defense
There’s nothing like a good argument to inspire interest among members and to attract attention (and even links) from people with similar interests.
I thought of a new term: collaborative search. I prefer this to search-on-search.
Took 2 weeks holiday and, on return, motivation seems to have gone.
Looks like Google Wave is doing something very similar. What do I do?
I have chosen to use CakePHP (an MVC framework) on the advice of Aaron. His advice:
You should ensure some sort of standardized plugin architecture is built into core of the script which would allow ‘extensions’ to be added without modifying the core. Creating such an infrastructure in code is not the easiest thing to do (lots of overhead like in writing lots of code that does not do anything directly and documentation on how to use it) and needs a fair bit of planning. Without it, after adding an extension it will be hard to change/remove without breaking things, somewhat like grafting on a finger rather than putting in a hubcap. The extensions will be prone to becoming a mishmash when there are multiple developers who are not working together.
Frameworks are great for such projects since they usually enforce a specific architectural pattern which makes it easier to build and add new components by providing built-in access points to data, functional code and for output control.
My new development method is working very well.
For each version I develop a model. This describes how the application should look and work once the version is built. I can continue to perfect it without interfering with development.
I develop the model project by project. Each project adds or improves a feature or, in some cases, more than one feature.
There have been 3 projects this month:
Typically, I return in the evening and test the whole application including new work.
I record everything:
Developing a flow diagram for Project 001 turned out to be excellent way to explain unfamiliar functionality:
I am deliberately trying to chop and change the developers I employ. Benefits include:
Bidding tips:
Sample proposal:
The job is to make some changes to a small bulletin board application.
The application URL is Mootka.com.
SKILLS REQUIRED:
CakePHP, PHP 5.1, MySQL 4.1, CSS, HTML
OTHER STUFF:
I have described [changes to] the application using HTML templates [and a flow diagram].
I will help test the application (evenings after work).
I am available via email or telephone.
I will need you to update the application online.
Your code must be fully commented.
You must be willing to fix any bugs with your code.
On completion please supply a copy of the code prepared for localhost.
You must be ready to start immediately.JOB LIST:
1. Add .bold {font-weight: bold;} to style sheet in order to stlye account holder username in main menu.
2. Change layout of main menu and link My Profile to account holder profile.
3. Link all usernames to user profiles.
4. Add <p>Last logged IN: [DTG]</p> to My contacts list items.
5. Add Description field to Profile and corresponding field in Profile Editor.
6. Add Description field to Thread and corresponding field in Topic Editor
7. Add an About page.
8. Ensure matching words in Results are highlighted as per design.
9. Ensure all notifications in right place and that notification meaning, gramma and punctuation is correct.
10. Ensure appearance (i.e. style) matches the design exactly.
11. Make the radio button for topics on the search form selected by default.
Development tips:
Spotting Look2Look look-alikes all over the place now. None have cornered the market. Judging by the increasingly imaginative marketing campaigns, people still believe that the problem is one of critical mass. For example, one start up called Placeconnect offered to share 50% of its value with its first 1m users. I switched to Mootka from Look2Look because I think it is about offering more. Look2Look was like building a classified ads site (such as Gumtree) with only one category available (Missed Connections). Mootka is an attempt to apply the search-on-search technique in a more general purpose way.
I have postponed the attempt to code it myself . Lack of time and lack of enthusiasm. I have learnt SQL, which gives me better insight into functionality, and I have confirmed that I am more designer than coder.
Since the Scriptlance hires had not worked out, I started looking for local programmers. I found a guy on Gumtree who charged £25 per hour. A reasonable rate for London. I met up with him. My target budget was £1-£2,000 to build complete application (Version 4). He estimated 6-8 weeks work which blew my budget.
Since local programmers are too expensive, I re-examined why the Scriptlance contracts were not working out and made some changes. The first change was to make each Scriptlance project smaller. Development is now feature by fetaure, not version by version. This makes it easier for programmers to quote for each job, it makes each job more manageable, it means I need spend less time talking through the functionality and it means that I do not have to expose the whole design at the bidding stage. The second change was to include a flow diagram in the design documents (in addition to the commented HTML templates). This should also reduce the time I spend talking through functionality. These changes were substantial. To celebrate I have assigned the current version, Version 5.
The first job I posted on Scriptlance was to build the core. The core is Version 4 stripped of as many features as possible.
I paid an extra $19 to get my project ‘featured’. I did not provide a guide budget. I provided my private email address. This proved useful insofar as developers were still able (and did) contact me after the bidding closed.
My project had 15 days to run but the interest started to plateau after 24hrs and so, 48hrs after the project was posted I selected a bid. The bids ranged from from $100 in 5 days to $600 in 8 days. The locations included Canada, UK, India, China, America, Pakistan, Thailand and others. I shortlisted 3 from a possible 20 developers (including 10 bids). I discounted programmers who replied with stock answers, bidded too high, did not appear to be truly interested or had dodgy reviews.
From my shortlist, I selected a $300 bid by a UK developer. UK was a big selling point because of increased accountability (subject to same laws) and easier communication (face to face if needed).
Some guys suggested using development frameworks such as Zend or CakePHP. Initially I was concerned that this would limit future hires by adopted framework. Latterly, I realised that a framework would help homogenise coding standards throughout the application and provide a ready structure for modular development.
Finally, this month, my laptop broke and I got swamped at work. Now, I have got a new laptop and some leave so we should see some progress in September.
Still working on SQL. Not started on PHP yet. The SQL is helping me to spot issues with the interface design. Starting to think like a programmer, not just as a user.
Chose to use INNODB database engine because I can test my schema and queries without needing to learn PHP. The INNODB engine enables you to knit data together using primary and foreign keys. The alternative, the ISAM engine, requires you to maintain referential integrity programmatically.
Since returning to work post-shoulder op, I have spent a very small amount of time on development.
Learning SQL. Less tricky than previously anticipated. May yet hire a programmer to do the PHP. For info, my resources:
Discovered a beautifully designed bulletin board called designateonline.com that, somehow, appeared to be lifting my ideas:
But a quick search on The Way Back Machine revealed that their work pre-dates mine. Their website looked like this in August 06, well before bounceideas.com was online:
Incidentally, try putting Google into the Way Back Machine for a fascinating insight into their origins.
Alex got “stuck with debugging” and so we have agreed to cancel the contract. On negotiation of the contract, I was keen for him to build the application from scratch. He persuaded me that the quicker approach was to modify an existing application (e.g. phpBB). No longer am I persuaded: for a non-standard application whose functional design is yet to be worked out, I believe that it is better to trade the security and robustness inherited from an existing application for the speed and flexibility of a lightweight proprietary application.
Hiring non-local programmers (through sites like Scriptlance) to do non-standard jobs, so far, has not proved effective. I will still use Scriptlance but will be more inclined to hire local, and therefore more expensive, programmers – you can knock on their door.
2 days before deadline and 3 days after I had asked for progress update, I was preparing to draw the line but, yet again, a convincing excuse from Alex. And then another. And then another. And then silence. I cannot attribute this to bad luck anymore. It is more likely that he has lost interest.
Found this article (below) about voting systems. I am interested in this because I suspect that the fairness of the application’s voting system will be key to its utility.
What can electoral systems learn from fine wine competitions and ITV’s Dancing on Ice? According to new research from the École Polytechnique in Paris, the answer is nothing less than the holy grail of democracy: a voting system that always picks the right candidates. It has long been axiomatic that there’s no such thing as an entirely fair voting system in a world where tactical voting means that the most popular candidates can still fail to win. According to professors Michel Balinski and Rida Laraki, however, the technique known as “majority voting”—as perfected by oenophile deliberations and sports with judging panels—offers a method for fairly picking the overall favourite every time.
The whole point of majority voting is that participants don’t vote in the old-fashioned sense: they simply evaluate candidates by grading them. For wine—a substance with remarkable analogies to politics—the seven gradations are Excellent, Very Good, Good, Passable, Inadequate, Mediocre and Bad. Every wine in a competition is rated by every voter, and its overall rank is then calculated. Had this system been applied to the 2000 US presidential elections, those voters who thought Ralph Nader was Very Good would still have been able to rate Gore as, say, Passable while dismissing Bush as Bad—and Gore would almost certainly have won. Who but the French could have worked out that wine and dancing are the keys to global justice?
The article was published by Prospect Magazine, Diary, April 2009. Article title: Dancing on Ice: the future of democracy. A related lecture on voting in London School of Economics (LSE) has been recorded as podcast on LSE website. I tracked down a short summary of how different voting systems work and the original paper (English version).
Alex missed another deadline and then, on cancellation of project, resurfaced. He provided a convincing reason and so I decided to trust him. He now has until 11th April.
I am concerned that the changes in the last version of the design were too big. I think that I have given Alex indigestion. Lesson here is to keep the changes small and manageable.
Alex began building Version 3 on 8th Feb. It took a while to explain the differences between Version 2 and Version 3. We agreed a fixed price of $400. He was supposed to deliver by 1st March 09 but illness has interupted progress.
Google releases Latitude which enables people to be tracked by their mobile phone signal. May have a bearing on future design.
Alex built Version 2 for $300. He did a good job. Accurate interpretation of my design.
For Version 3, I have simplified style. My reasoning:
It has occured to me that, to find each other, you do not need to cross-match fields (i.e. match “I am looking for you” with “you are looking for me”). You just need to describe a unique situation (i.e. the combination of my clothes and your clothes). In retrospect, Look2Look was more complicated than it needed to be.
Alex asked:
What is the reason for topics without comments?
I replied:
The purpose of this application is to bring people together based upon common expressions of interest.
Keywords are shorter and more precise expressions of interest than comments (or titles).
Keywords are the nucleus about which everything should coalesce.
Alex has struggled to get anything done this month due to domestic disruption – including moving to Georgia.
Have reduced some old ideas about community further. This statement encapsulates these ideas:
We lived in groups to survive the tyranny of nature.
We were less free and less lonely. Now we are more free and more lonely.
We are torn. This is expressed everywhere.
The fix is to have both freedom and tyranny.
I bet the following:
Still struggle to explain what the application does. Some possibilities:
Decided to quit pursuing patent. Under current US law, I could still apply arguing that I was ‘first to invent’. Not overly fussed.
Hi Michelle,
For the time being, I have decided not to pursue this patent. I understand and will shoulder the risks.
I first approached you with little more than a concept. I have since discovered that the real value is in its execution.
I have spotted 7 businesses launch using the same concept but none, as far as I am aware, have become popular.
Best regards,
[Below this is a review of 2008, moved from standalone post to December 2008 post in December 2009.]
Looking back over 2008, I have had a good go at making Look2Look work. I spent almost a year (August 2007 to June 2008) tweaking Look2Look in the belief that I was on the verge of making it compelling enough to succeed. I came to the conclusion that there was no breakthrough to be had. Of the 7 direct competitors identified, none seem to have succeeded either. The business idea seems flawed. The urgency ‘to get there first’ has dissipated. My biggest strategic error was to shun Facebook. Look2Look’s best chance was as a Facebook application. Currently, my focus is on Mootka. Mootka is an attempt to apply the search-on-search technique more generically. My hope is that it will do everything Look2Look does and much more besides. I am still working it out.
Having agreed approach last month, agreed scope of next stage of development this month. Placed $300 in escrow. Alex has disappeared since 22nd (also according to Scriptlance). Giving it until 5th Dec before I start looking for a new programmer.
Built complete interface (HTML and CSS) as a way to describe product. Very effective method. Will make it standard method.
It occured to me that if I chose to introduce more than one discussion per result, I could transpose the discussions one down and call the top level ‘forums’.
I realised that it is OK for users to edit their tags because every time they do, they risk losing their audience and/or ranking – the needs are counterbalanced.
The month was spent trading emails with Alex. It was a painstaking process. We settled on this development approach:
Watched an interesting TED lecture which, I think, relates to this application.
Spent $500 plus $200 bonus on development for Version 1. Work done by Ukrainian programmer called Alex. Used Scriptlance.
Alex asked to see the complete design before quoting. I felt uncomfortable about handing over my precious ideas to a stranger. However, it turned out that it took a lot of additional explanation to get the ideas across. The lesson is don’t worry about handing your design over – it’s probably far from self-evident.
Before Alex, I nearly committed $1000 to a probable fraud called Greentech12. At the last moment I Googled them and discovered they were a sham. Lesson is do not rely solely on the Scriptlance ratings system.
Invested time searching for a better name. Received advice from friend who came up with ‘Ice Patrol’ for her forthcoming documentary on Antarctic research vessel. She slammed my candidates; none were compelling or communicable:
People must know how to spell the name on hearing it and have no trouble remembering it.
I used the ‘Friday Quiz’ at work to gain feedback on my domain names from my unsuspecting colleagues. Out of all my domain names, Look2Look came out on top.
I let LooktoLook back onto the market earlier in the year and, after rekindled interest in the name, I tried to buy it back. I discovered it had been acquired by a Swiss person and he/she was offering to sell it back to me for about £1000. The lesson here is to think twice before letting a domain name go.
Mootka is still relatively unpopular. I encountered ‘Ka’, ancient Egyptian for ‘spirit’, in the novel that I am reading.
At the end of the month my template looks like this:
It is a fragment of the design in order to protect ideas.
This diagram illustrates where search-on-search (new) may fit into existing user search habits (old):
A quote from Wikipedia that has a bearing on this project:
Others suggest that the term social software is best used not to refer to a single type of software, but rather to the use of two or more modes of computer-mediated communication that result in “community formation”.[6] In this view, people form online communities by combining one-to-one (e.g., email and instant messaging), one-to-many (Web pages and blogs), and many-to-many (wikis) communication modes.
A quote from Wikipedia describing Google Groups. My solution is very similar:
“Google has introduced a new concept in Google Groups to reduce redundant threads and therefore helping moderation of forums. Basically, the idea comes from the fact that many users do not bother to search a forum and directly create new threads to seek an answer to a question. When the user types a new thread subject it brings up similar threads automatically on the side. This helps keep the number of redundant threads (or the overall forum pollution) to a lower level as users that neglect to search for a topic and are posting a thread may find the answer to their question as they are creating the new thread. In essence it’s a search combined with creating a thread. Instead of having to search the forum, and then creating a thread if there is no satisfying answer, this duplicate thread prevention allows the user to go and seek the answer to a topic. In Google Groups [this feature uses an] AJAX type interface and only draws from the subject field of the thread to find similar threads.”
Matt delivered Mootka (see below). It was not what I had hoped for. In retrospect, the ‘hands-off’ approach was probably wrong. I am afraid that my feedback was rather tactless. I believe that Matt has had enough. He has been astonishingly patient and dedicated; I owe him a great deal in money and kind. With Matt’s absence, I am turning to Scriptlance. Means my ideas are more exposed but it should mean that I have more control over development.
Found some great comments on The Register by Anonymous Coward. Here is his take on hiring IT staff:
The good thing I’ve noticed is companies have realised they can vet cvs quicker than agents, so they have one woman in personnel stick out a job advert and catch a thousand cvs. At this point some 2 techies short list over their lunch hour removing all those who, can’t spell, think they were using ODBC when they were using OLE DB etc, have hobbies such as “Socialising”, “Music”, etc — eg coming in with a hangover or tired, and texting mates all day. Then they’re cut down again, removing all the premenopausal women, but keeping all the women you’ve got with children all over 7, one of these women will know exactly how to solve the company’s woes because she’s been there 20 years, and is brilliant but noone listens to her because she’s female and doesn’t have any ambition. Then you throw 50% of the rest in the bin – who wants to employ someone who is unlucky?
At the end you’re left with a few dozen, so you get them in, and reject all the tall project managers – tall people are universally overestimated so they’re not going to be as good for the same level of promotion as someone who has got promoted despite being a dwarf. On the techie side you look at their career history for success. The brilliant never fail inspite of the management, so they’ll have worked on a load of difficult, but still successful projects.
Weed out those who want to use every latest bit of technology, they leave before they’ve finished, and hey presto you’ve got your men.
New competitor called Chanced It (see below) spotted by Marjorie. Closest technique to Look2look so far. My bet is that they will face the same issues as Look2look. Could be wrong; their design, styling and copy is way better than anything I managed.
Went on sunny holiday and had a think. Main conclusion I came to was that there is a popular application still to be made out of ‘search-on-search’. Other conclusions were:
Had some more thoughts on the ‘groups application’ . Here they are:
I have asked Matt to start building the ‘groups application’. In order to encourage him, I am taking a more ‘hands-off’ approach:
I attempted learning MySQL and PHP myself but lost heart when, after 7 days of trying, I failed to fix one simple bug in Look2Look.
Look2Look is still online but is, effectively, shelved. I have asked Matt to fix the bugs and put it on Facebook but it is lower priority than building the ‘groups application’.
Some general tips about domain names:
Some rules that I have tried to follow when searching for a good domain name:
Currently, the name for the ‘groups application’ is Mootka. It’s the best I can do for the moment. Some feedback that I have received for Mootka:
“It’s shit” (Jason)
“It’s brilliant” (Matt, Andrew, Nick)
“Sounds like a new thing that come on the internet thatyou might want to look into” (Shanks)
Pull a face (Mum, Alex, Joe)
“Sounds like Russian vodka” (Ashworth)
“Still like ‘mootka’ more than other options. I am too used to feel this word ugly now, but it still sounds extraordinary. Like the term ‘reciprocal search’ too.” (Tomoko)
“It’s OK” (Ashan)
“Sounds more interesting than others” (Cathy)
“Interesting. Sounds ‘tribal’. Uniqueness is a good thing – easy to find.” Mal (added 03 Feb 090)
Some feedback for Look2Look:
“I like it” (Jason H-R, Alex H-J, Mum, Mohammed)
“Numbers in name sound cheap” (Alex M)
“Dating agency” (Tomoko,Patsy)
“No good” (Victoria)
“Doesn’t register” (Ben)
“Sounds like optician” (Cathy)
Read a fascinating article about Craigslist, a very successful web application. Here are the key facts:
Below, Oliver Lindberg interviews Jim Buckmaster, CE of Craigslist, in .Net magazine, August edition 2008.
.Net comments:
Online classified advertising site Craigslist is run more as a public service than for profit.
Maximising revenue has never been part of the company’s motivation and it’s how it survived the dotcom bust.
Craiglist only charges for recruitment ads in the San Francisco Bay area and 10 US cities, and brokered apartment rentals in NY City.
Craiglist doesn’t even have a logo, but instead uses the peace sign as a favicon.
Jim Buckmaster comments:
“It’s important for us to be a profitable concern because we don’t want to borrow money. We don’t want to have to sell shares.”
“Everything we do and every decision is made from the perspective of the users of the site.”
“We don’t consider [text ads or banner ads] because users aren’t asking for [them].”
“We’re not fans of unnecessary complexity.”
“Our design criteria really only includes things lke usability and accessibility.”
“Any time you add a newer user interface technology, you tend to exclude some small percentage of people from using your site [...]. Another design criterion is page load performance.”
“Design, from a user perspective, does little more than distract and obstruct them from what they’re trying to do.”
“There are thousands or tens of thousands of businesses that offer classifieds, maybe hundreds of thousands. Looking at what other companies are doing is mostly time wasted. Our time is best spent concentrating on what our users are asking for and trying to do the best we can for them.”
Screenshot of Craigslist:
Screenshot of upgraded Craigslist upgrade:
I have come to the conclusion that this particular use of the search-on-search technique (i.e. two people looking for each other) is a lame duck however you cut it.
I released first version of Look2Look in March 2006. It flopped. I put it down to poor appearance, mainly. I spent from August 2007 to June 2008 trying to make the application more compelling by experimenting with the way it looks, its pitch and the way it works. Not achieved.
I worked hard, haunted by the idea that someone else would get there first. I have spotted about 6 other websites attempt the same thing over this same period but, apparently, without success.
Still working on appearance. Final design for this month looked like this:
Right at the start of the month, Nick got in touch. I showed him what I’d done…
He said:
I personally think the layout is far too simplistic, I suppose its important to balance between usability and unique design, although I do think you are on the right lines. Need a hand with the design at all?
This blue one was greeted by Mark Osgood, a colleague, with a flat and emphatic, “it’s worse”.
Spotted a new competitor. It’s called Bountybox:
Matt’s disappeared for a while due to illness.
Still working on appearance. Had very helpful input from colleagues. Stripped out lot of features as a result. This month’s experiments (having trouble letting it go):
Here is the latest design attempt. It feels ‘elegant’ and colleagues who have seen it like it.
Good points:
Bad points:
Phil Shanks (colleague) spotted new competitor called findmyship.com. Here it is:
Emailed the owner and, much to my surprise, got a reply. Owner was Brendan based in Dublin. Good bloke. He said the site had been up for a year already but he has only just started to market it. Here are some of the things he said:
On what he is doing right now:
“Yup this is my baby, although there are more bodies getting involved in particular around the marketing side, and we’re about to do a tech upgrade, providing I can justify the spend. (To date it’s just been a ’spare time’ project really).”
On his previous experience:
“Really though it’s an experimental ‘toe in the water’ thing. I’ve been a keen follower of the social networking trend for years. We tried launching an online dating site around 8 years ago back here, but were beaten to the punch and pulled back.”
I am not the only one who thought there was a market:
“Since then I’ve just watched all these social sites grow and felt there was a market for a product like ours.”
Where he got the idea:
“For me it was a girl I met in a taxi rank at 3am on a Saturday morning. We got on famously, really clicked, but she was so suddenly whisked away by her friends who pulled up in another cab. We had that, “ooh what now” moment but everything went so quick that no contact info was shared and the ship sailed on!! I went back and said to myself, ‘ok, how do I find this person again?’ but obviously couldn’t. “
How he is marketing it:
“I’ll keep you posted on our progress, but really everything about what we’re doing now is in around the marketing area and specifically around viral marketing campaigns. The Metro link was a result of an email blitz on a range of radio station and magazine emails based in Ireland and the UK. I wasn’t expecting anything to come out of it but it popped up on the radar in a couple of places which is all we want really. We’ve also been doing some local late night flyer and card hand out advertising which has generated some interest too.”
My kick off was Shepherd’s Bush. His is Dublin:
“I agree with you completely on the local issue too. Our initial concentration is on Dublin, and specifically key venue locations within Dublin. The biggest threat is the ‘run out of marketing steam/budget’ issue too I think. We need that user base to really kick off any type of advertising revenue in the longer term.”
The problem of ‘critical mass’:
“In talking with friends and family I realised that this was so much more common than I originally thought, and the concept of findmyship was born. I mean in theory, like your site, it’s a great idea, but depends ENTIRELY on the brand being a common, household name! If everyone knew that such a site existed and what its primary purpose was then I’d have no doubt such a site would be a raging success. Educate the masses!”
On motivation:
“At the moment it’s all just a labour of love, albeit a strange warped and perverted love!”
It is remarkably rewarding to have met someone who is under apparently similar circumstances, has had similar experiences, drawn similar conclusions and made similar decisions. Good luck Brendan.
Hoping I can rekindle Matt’s enthusiasm by moving onto the groups application but, in case this does not work, I am looking for local developers.
First attempt was a guy (Alex Tingle) who had developed a WordPress plug-in and, I discovered from his website, lived locally.
Second, I attended phpLondon event on Alex Tingle’s advice. I demonstrated the product to two programmers I met there. They thought it was cool but were not in a position to help with development. Then met programmer who was local, avaialble and apparently capable. His price was £30 per hour. Useful benchmark.
Sidenote, Nick got back in touch offering to work on style/design for free in exchange for future profit share. Nice offer and nice to know that someone else still has faith in this whole enterprise.
Tricky month for development. Matt was elusive due to other commitments. I had to start analyzing my programming options again. What can I do to pick up the pace?
The site has been up for three months. I have not generated interest with online advertising. I am beginning to sense that it is time to let go of Look2Look and to turn focus onto the ‘groups application’. Last time we tried figuring out the groups application, we got stuck. I have done some more thinking and I may have cracked the problem. No details yet. As a research exercise, I studied Google Groups. It does pretty much everything I had hoped my groups application would do which leaves me wondering whether there is anything that I can add.
My quest for the perfect pitch and design hasn’t quite dissipated yet. Here is my latest effort:
Have made some functonal changes. Here they are:
1. The idea is to attach a discussion thread to each search. Up to this point, a discussion thread is only created when one user contacts another and is ‘private’ because only the two participants can see it. I saw that online classified advertising sites like Gumtree had public discussion threads linked to each search and thought a similar arrangement for Look2Look would make the application more compelling.
2. I also noted that Gumtree ads enabled the ad owner to write a personal message or expound upon the basic listing. I thought this feature on Look2Look might help make the application more compelling. Matt and I had difference of opinion about execution but resolved by end of month.
3. We got rid of a module that listed the latest chats by, instead, re-ordering the contacts in the Contacts module by activity (most recent at the top of the list).
4. We have struggled with how to persuade the new user to sign up to the application. Previously, our method was to ‘talk them into it’. Again, taking my cue from Gumtree, I thought a better way would be to make the application immediately interesting by enabling new users to see and search for searches without having to log in first. Initially, our concern was that this would undermine the point of the application – which was to record what people searched for – because people could search and leave no trace. However, I felt that there would still be a strong incentive to log in if the search facility on the logged outside was much less powerful than the facility on the inside. In other words, we had ‘quick search’ on the outside and the full cross-matching and filtering form on the inside – which saved your searches.
Development slow. Matt does not see where the project is going.
I am still figuring out how to get users. I still believe the key lies in how it looks. What is the look that I am after? I discussed this with a colleague (Lee) who has graphic design background. We concluded that, because the application was somewhere between a search engine and an online social network, it should give the impression of an ‘online social network that feels like a search engine’. Like me, he thinks that achieving a design that communicates this will make or break the site. Below are some screenshots of my design attempts for this month. This one attempts to mimic Google’s page layout:
Discovered that dropping title cases and some punctuation greatly improved the application’s appearance.
Advertising online in order to encourage someone to sign up. No luck so far.
Realised that I can have ‘midwife pages’. A user coming from, say Gumtree, lands on a ‘midwife page’ that pitches the application, specifically, to Gumtree users. It could only be accessed from a link on the Gumtree site.
The Subject Matter Application was due to expire. Had to decided whether to pursue the patent process or drop it altogether. Short history of advice:
Dec 2006 – bunch of PWC executives said ‘patent your idea’.
Mar 2007 – submit preliminary application which establishes priority.
Aug 2007 – bright technical bloke says ‘there’s nothing new in your idea’.
Feb 2008 – bright strategy consultant says ‘without the prospect of real revenue, even if the patent was valid, its worthless’.
I wrote to Keltie (my patent agents) asking them to confirm the costs of going ahead with the patent process. Here are some excerpts from their reply:
“Drafting costs of approximately GBP 9,000 (excluding VAT).”
“PCT filing costs of approximately GBP 3,000 (excluding VAT).”
“Filing of a US application from the PCT will be largely the same as a direct filing and will be approximately GBP 3,000 to GBP 4,000 including our service charge and our US associates fees, together with the official fees.”
“Unfortunately, it is not usually the case that patents go straight through to grant, and so it is very unlikely that no further costs would be involved.”
“Typically, each round of examination will cost approximately GBP 500 (for a very simple response) to GBP 4,000 (for a very complicated response incurring our time-based charges and a local US agent’s charges for reviewing and filing the response).”
“Typically, costs of GBP 1500 to GBP 2000 are not unusual for responding to a US Office Action, and one or two rounds of examination are not uncommon.”
“If you have not disclosed your concept, you may feel that it would be preferential to withdraw and re-file the UK application at minimal cost. However, if you have disclosed your concept out of confidence this option is not advisable.”
Matt thought £20K (rough total) was ‘insane’. Piers (strategy consultant) pointed out that the USA awards patents to ‘first-to-invent’ which means my original Subject Matter Application, with it’s early submission date, still counts as useful evidence in the USA. Michelle (Keltie) felt there had been insufficient public disclosure to void the patent and so I decided to re-file for approximately £400 – which gives me another year’s grace.
Someone pointed out that “all applications look dreadful without users or content”. Didn’t stop me trying…
I opened a Twitter account out of curiosity yesterday. Good name, good design but Twitter is a success because it is instantly rewarding (like any other blog) and novel (currently, nobody else offers the ability to publish by text). Good article about the founder and its foundation from a December edition of the Economist magazine:
I was looking at Gumtree’s ‘sponsored links’ with a view to advertising there and discovered a new competitor. They are called meetupagain.com:
The product and pitch are still not good enough yet. Despite this we are back online for the second time. Was using 2 column layout to accommodate inline help but was unhappy with it because I do not like using floats (reduces browser and small screen compatibility). Tried various ways to make it look more appealing. I want to use browser defaults as much as possible but this limits what I can do. Taking inspiration from Craigslist, Google and Wikipedia.
Maybe I need to show the site is ‘alive’. Could do this by showing something topical – for example, winter photos in winter time or usage statistics.
Read some interesting stuff about web design in Mind (Scientific American). Web-designers have 10 seconds for their homepage to snare user, sentences need to be very short – no paragraphs and, if you want people to pay more attention, make something harder to read.
Main effort is still design. Efforts this month met with conflicting responses: “uninspiring” and “simple is good”.
With traditional search “salsa dancing Kensington last Tuesday guy in red shirt at the bar” is unlikely to return a meaningful result, no matter how many people use it. With search-on-search, the next person who searches for say “Kensington salsa Tuesday red shirt white socks” will find a meaningful result and, in consequence, make the first person’s saved search meaningful.
My interest is in social applications but there may be other problems search-on-search may solve. I know, from speaking to an ex-Detective Inspector, that the Metropolitan Police have an application that uses something like search-on-search on their intranet. Helps them solves crimes.
Found a paper by a guy I saw in the Royal Society called Martin A. Nowak, a mathematical biologist. He talked about indirect reciprocity. Here is a key line from the paper:
In a fluid population, in which most of the interactions are anonymous and people have no possibility of monitoring the social score of others, indirect reciprocity has no chance. In a socially viscous population, in which people know each other’s reputation, cooperation by indirect reciprocity can thrive.
In other words, indirect reciprocity cannot thrive in modern society and, therefore, neither do the feelings and behaviors that it induces.
Spotted a competitor to the groups application. It’s called GroupsNearYou.com:
Spotted new competitor to Look2Look called Icebrkr.com (see scan below). Same problems and solutions I had on launch. Thanks to Patrick for spotting the article in FT Money. Here is how they describe their technique:
This month, tried adding photos. Will that do the trick?
Or maybe bold primary colours is the answer.
Invented an alternative name to search-on-search: ‘reciprocal search’. Is a reference to ‘indirect reciprocity’ or ‘reciprocal altruism’. Google search (below) suggests the term exists but not much literature.
Spotted a new competitor. Here it is:
I imagine an application that induces a sort of ‘communism for the free world’. A solution that increases the occasion means for indirect reciprocity without forcibly reducing freedoms:
My best design effort was reviewed at the end of the month by a trusted friend. She thought it looked ‘rubbish’. Her advice, as an accomplished business woman, was to not release now.
Guardian article, Social networking sites don’t deepen friendships. This is very interesting. I suspect that an application that got more out of your friendships would be more valuable than an application that got you more friends.
I have run out of money. Dropped Nick (design), kept Matt (programming). Matt is getting busier with other customers.
Have bought Mootka.com because it sounds more ambiguous than Look2Look and so more can be done with it.
Now I am doing the day job and learning how to do the design work myself. This involves reminding myself about HTML and learning CSS. Here is my first design using CSS:
Facebook has invited external developers to build their own add-ons. I do not know what this means for Look2Look. Does it present an opportunity or has it killed Look2Look? A friend, Christopher, wondered why anyone would use Look2Look given the success of Facebook. I met a Facebook founder (Matt Cohler) last year and his opinion of my application was that it was a ‘feature’ of an application, not an application of itself. But becoming a Facebook add-on feels like a bit of a come down.
Spotted another competitor called Kizmeet. Variation on the technique:
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