This reminds me of why Color flopped. When people hear you've raised a titanic sum of money prelaunch, especially from a VC firm like Sequoia, the expectations for your product are exponentially higher than if you raise a decent A round from angels and small VC firms. Color was a base hit when everyone expected a grand slam. From that moment on, they face an overwhelmingly tough task convincing people their first impressions were wrong.
It comes up for me - half the time. The other half is a 500 error.
Also, their homepage is a screen requiring me to login. What? Why? I don't know anything about you, SocialPog - how about a page that explains what you are before asking me to invest.
@pavel_lishin Excellent points, thanks for your constructive criticism.
I'll touch on the chat a little. Good idea or not, I'll let you guys be the judge. The chat feature was to connect everyone site wide. Then would be defined to location and friends if needed....Problem was integration. Without signing in through facebook/twitter it allowed users to create fake names which couldn't be allowed for obvious reasons. Plans to design new chat were in the works during this fiasco.
IDK, maybe future UI's for social networks will have this option. Personally I like this option, but understand it may be not for everyone.
I never really understood why people lie about their site in order to gain users. I mean, you can't fool them for very long, so your opportunity for whatever you plan is has to be very quick.
The only thing I can think is that they expect to earn a lot of money real quick to help fund development... But I really can't see that working.
Phishing really? I have no intentions of going to Federal Prison. So I think phishing is absolutely out of any equation. However I know there are lot's of people who would.
If my intentions were money driven I could have thrown up ads or offers to try and convert (or just a simple lander with one signup offer). 42,200+ unique views yesterday would make most marketers very happy. Those weren't my intentions at any point.
> The most epic website launch of all time... The Facebook Competitor may reign supreme,,,, uh oh Zuckerberg
",,,,"? Why do people struggle with their language so much? I mean, all you need to do is get a sentence right, and I'm guessing they'd seen an ellipsis before.
God says...
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Earth iniquities presuming wages evaporates groves unexpectedly
revenge carefully deeps gay am smells steer forbear put
saved redemption growth re flights motherly deemed retire
three calamities Why TM morsel attendant emerging disk
knees
It's followed by a paragraph, so I don't use quotes. In html the paragraphing is wrong.
----------------------------------------------
The following was supposed to be posted on the geek article.
Being 40, living with your parents, being on disability, being impotent possibly from meds will make you not give a fuck.
I have no rights, but can get away with murder. I killecd someone in 1999 with my car and went to the mental hospital a couple days. Where are you right now? Your life's in your hands if you confuse someone's grasp of reality. Shirnks employ actors and even make my parents do shit. I have no clue on reality. I think there was a show called "no where man" in the 60's about a spy and a balloon security system.
I made an operating syastem. http://www.losethos.com I supposedly get downloads but it makes no difference if it works or has bugs -- no emails except ones written by shrinks.
God talks, radio talks, world news talks...
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substance barbarism distribute decree thus fulfilled constellations
acquire statement senses demanded entreaties superstition
glories assurance revolting cared foot BE convenient mouth
averred fall granted phrase displeasing confirm holily
swaying gainsay lineage society communicated alone dry
fruit temples measures caves unresolved CONTRACT sits
Same showing Are troublesome blessed refusing conspiracy
propoundest recognises suck since Hundreds joking vouchsafed
lump asleep Creation Say meant sacrificed ensnared flashing
draw dwell discern Eternity fears dug deceitful solicited
renew'd flash set tattlings wanting impatience perceiving
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external away recognises soon Lord useful cleansed fearfully
announcing TM intended meddle man's page
I guess there's another lesson here - don't let anyone you don't know do promotional work on your behalf. "Anthony" apparently let someone do some promotional efforts for socialpog thinking "what harm can it do?" and then found out it can do a lot of harm. He probably spent money with for that promotional effort too, which makes this all the more tragic.
I can relate to Anthony. He seems like a nice guy who fell in love with an idea and let blind ambition get the best of him. When I was new to online entrepreneurship, I did things just as stupid, but they (thankfully) got far less attention.
Hopefully he learns from this and pushes forward with new and better projects.
This is a reason why (to some extent) you should let users dictate your marketing for you. What I mean by that is to avoid touting yourself as this mega awesome site and just sort of go with the flow. Your users, if they exist, will take care of getting the word out. Doing things like this is cheap and not representative of a company that's interested in their own success. Also, the whole "Facebook" killer thing? Why has it become common practice for new social networks to have to "kill" their competitors? If they were truly intelligent, they'd develop some feature as the core of their service that Facebook lacks and then put that at the forefront. This, though, isn't helpful and doesn't draw any interest toward the product.
I run a web BBS, and we had to deal with my competitor spamming imageboards. It didn't do him much good (because he's finally gone), but he gained infamy because of the incident, thus ruining his real life and causing him much debt.
This is "Anthony". Lesson learned absolutely. Not a whole lot to say except for gigantic mistake on my part. Let this be a lesson to all new webmasters. Shortcuts as JD has written are bad ideas. Respect is earned, and I in know way deserve it.
The article JD wrote was absolutely amazing. While reading I was just shaking my head at my self.
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