adora

clickable link: http://founderdating.com/

I've heard mixed reviews but skewed on the more positive side, so definitely worth checking out.

+1 app engine. It's pretty great.

One of the best programmers I know (became VP of Engineering at a major company at one point) was an English Lit major with no formal CS training.

He started off consulting and worked his way up through a lot of hard work. Point is, I actually think it would be faster to do this (assuming you're willing put in the effort) than to aim for a master's program with the hope the end result is a better opportunity. After your first programming job, experience and recommendations matter much more than a degree.

I talked with one of the guys that works for Google App Engine, and he confirmed that BuddyPoke is one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) apps that run on it. That app serves millions of DAUs on various social networks and runs just fine.

I've set up things on app engine and amazon as well. I found GAE just to be much, much easier and saved me a lot of time and money (yes I know EC2 is cheap but it's not cool to see your bill growing when you're just testing things).

I actually took the time to switch to EC2/S3 for a couple days because I was worried that GAE was not really serious about making it a productive place to run serious applications. Portability was a big factor too. But after a while I figured that all this worry was nonsensical. If I ever have to move things over, it must be a good sign and either someone will have built a tool for it or I just spend a week building a tool for it.

Also, re: SSL. You can actually do it right now on GAE but it involves a few tricky workarounds. That said, the GAE team just pushed a more straightforward feature for this to the top of the roadmap. Beforehand they had said they weren't going to work on it anytime soon, but presumably after so many people complained they decided to go ahead with it -- another good sign that at least they're responsive to developers' needs.

As a general rule, unless you're willing to shell out dollars and buy facebook ads (which many developers do), you need to really optimize your virals, especially the feed.

For more specific advice, what have you done for viral features? It would also help if you explained what your app is as well. Games work differently than say a quiz app.

I'm not sure what trends you are looking at, but most consumer startups usually find it unnecessary to look at historical data points past X months. Things (features, users, etc.) change so much that averaging in those data points so far back would misguide you at the present. I would go with a solution that is almost perfect for you if you started today (for example, Mixpanel might be it) -- gives you the best odds for your future analysis. During the couple weeks after switchover, I would just export the Mixpanel data to a local spreadsheet (and run in R as you mentioned) with your other data. After sometime, you won't need it.

No problem. I think you can get A LOT of data from grad students. They hold the keys to a lot of it, and aren't held to some contract to never release it.

I'm going to guess you know about: http://www.programmableweb.com/apis/directory

I like your UI much better, however.

Gilt Groupe

Yeah, my first thought as well. Was hoping they had ran some crazy experiments or something like that.

This is every grad student researcher's dream... data finding and cleaning is such a major hassle. If only I had this a couple years ago...

This is going to be great especially when the new Census comes out. Lots of data to be sifted through and organized in unique ways that the government never does for us.

Assuming you have no car and are stuck wherever you go, why not just move to the South Bay, e.g. Mountain View.

It meets all your requirements, plus there's no scenery to stare at to even get the slightest bit distracted. AND, there's entrepreneurial activity going on 24/7 to keep you motivated.

As a side note, I had a couple friends go to Thailand with exactly this in mind, and honestly they didn't come back with much. Beaches can be distracting...

make the font of the content bigger :)

also, a much smaller point: consider putting in ads later when traffic makes it legitimate to put an ad in. for now the zoosk ad that I see does not match in the spirit of the type of content you probably are trying to bring in.

cool, sent! :)

Funny enough, there's a whole category called How Quora is different from X? http://www.quora.com/t/2410/How_is_Quora_different_from_X?q=...

It's a good rundown. What's your email? I'll send you an invite.

You're assuming that the product is not going to evolve past its current state. There are many features to be built, and I'm sure they haven't even scratched the surface yet.

Regardless, the primary feed is set up so you're following things you want to follow and your relevant network. This acts as a crucial and necessary filter to avoid too much noise.

Also I've browsed around many topics, and it's definitely not limited to technical subjects. If done correctly, I really think this could be a nice complement to Wikipedia.

Have you used Quora? And/or seen who is using Quora? :) They have built what is simply the most addictive Q&A site. It remains to be seen if the usefulness persists once users start coming en masse. However, the potential is definitely there.

Also the team is very well-respected (previously at Facebook) and I think A LOT of people would love to work and learn from them. Maybe even for free for a limited time.

I've used both. Mixpanel is much, much easier to setup and use. Plus it's more helpful in understanding where your bottlenecks are.

nice I like it