noahth

and when you are living paycheck to paycheck, you don't often have the time or energy to wander the maze of niggling details.

There are others, depending in part on your definition of success. Playfish & Playdom, for example. Non-game success stories are less common (afaik) but there are still some rising stars there, too - biggest example I can think of off-hand is RootMusic.

I came here to suggest fees dropping as volume rises, but of course it's already been covered! All I can add is that you're not even factoring in the cost of finding a competent developer and paying them to make that happen - small nonprofits usually don't have a developer on staff, often just a volunteer or two who may really just be WordPress admins.

exactly one forum post, and it appears to be spam.

kudos for the raw ambition though.

Lots of books have influenced me over time, but these are some of the books that have a lot of influence over my current mindset:

Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas Hofstadter

Imagined Communities - Benedict Anderson

Historical Capitalism - Immanuel Wallerstein

Young Man Luther - Erik Erikson

There are, however, potential problems with this formula, which I think is what the thread parent was getting at.

For example, it is discouraging to log in to HN and see that your karma has fallen since your last visit. Using your formula, this would be a very regular occurrence for all but the most active users. Discouraged users are less likely to continue attempting to engage and many would eventually give up their attempts to maintain a decent karma. Then, while your measure may be "more accurate" in some sense, it would easily be less effective for goals that have more to do with engagement & participation than with notional accuracy.

Not trying to poo-poo the spirit of your post though, because as someone without much of a math background, this type of discussion is very enlightening. Just trying to clarify that inaccuracy may very well be a feature, not a bug.

Ah, good catch - I didn't even think to check whether or not I was on the home page or intended landing page. The actual homepage is definitely better than the video page.

Curious - what is your bounce rate like? I'm in time-wasting mode so I watched a bit of the video to get an idea of what the product was but I would have much preferred to see some bullet points - or anything really - other than the video to give me an idea of what Chorus was about.

60k is absolutely livable for SF assuming you fit the "recent grad" stereotype pretty well. Probably wouldn't work for someone with chronic medical issues, financial dependents, or things of that nature, but it's enough for a single person in decent health.

Getting Likes isn't just about marketing to the friends of people who Like your product - although those feed stories can generate viral growth - it's about marketing to the people who Like your product. Once you're in a person's News Feed then you have plenty of opportunities to turn casual users into evangelists.

I agree that those examples are not great at conveying the main point he's trying to make, but let's consider for a moment that the top .1% evaluates to a larger number than 5. Maybe he was calling out notable exceptions, or maybe it's just a poorly edited piece of writing.

There is some value in geography-based representation! Idealistically, well, there's idealistic value. Cynically, considering that many members of Congress are capable of bringing pork-barrel projects to their home districts, it makes sense for voters that their representative is accountable to the district.

While the idea of decoupling representation from geography is an interesting one and it may seem appealing, in practice I would not be surprised at all to see this result in a rapid deterioration in the quality of representation for areas in which representatives do not live and a corresponding rise in legislative effectiveness for the areas housing the representatives.

Following this line of assumptions a little further, it's easy to understand why Congress is divided into components where representation is based on different geographical scales.

Well, I'm not the OP and this almost sounds snarky, but after checking out your site (nice stuff, btw!) I just searched on FB and couldn't find anything for "fab apps bundle". have you considered marketing your product on Facebook? set up a Facebook Page. add a Like button to your homepage, or go all out with the little widget that links to said FB Page. Another possibility would be submitting your bundle for review by Mashable, SocialTimes, InsideFacebook, & other FB/social media blogs.

Loved the idea, signed up to try it out. Why did I get the same email 4 times?

I would not be surprised if they were wary of going this route. A key ingredient to being "the anti-Facebook" would be to steer clear of spammy third-party applications, and the easiest way to do that is to simply not allow third-party applications.

oh and also - games/apps drive tons of pageviews for FB.

Don't forget ad revenue. Facebook developers spend enormous sums on Facebook ads. Probably bigger than Credits, at least until next month.

I think that in a lot of cases, if you're looking to learn something "concrete" from a piece of art, or art in general, you might be looking at it the wrong way. A lot of the best art is instructive in some way, but not the same way that a wikipedia article or a technical how-to is.

There were 4 third-party tickets in 2008 which were on the ballot in enough states to theoretically win the presidency, and about a dozen more that appeared on the ballot in at least a few states. If you really don't like any of those either, perhaps you should get involved in helping a candidate you do support get on the ballot in your state.

There are plenty of other ways to become involved and have an influence, however small. Not liking the choices is not a good excuse for not participating.

(source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_third_party_and_i...)

If you're willing to call Max/MSP/etc work programming (I am but I'm sure some here will be willing to dispute that), you can add a lot of musicians to the list, including Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead and a whole bunch of electronic artists.

Did you know that you can also add articles on iOS by copying the URL and opening the Instapaper app? I didn't realize that there was a way to add a bookmarklet to mobile Safari, and I discovered the clipboard method by accident. Not that I use it often, but when I do, it's good enough.

As a Chrome/Instapaper user, Apple has not killed Instapaper for me at all. Then again, he's already got my $4.99, so that's probably not much of a consolation.

I'd also attribute Ping's failure to 1) Failing to get an agreement for Facebook Connect in time for the launch and 2) Largely ignoring the portion of your music library not purchased from Apple.

In this day and age, when I join a new network I want it to be easy to find my existing "friends" on said network. SC2 nailed this - I was playing with friends within minutes of my first login. Ping, on the other hand... I saw a couple updates from friends and a lot of more-or-less fluff from Yo-Yo Ma. OH! and the spam. Sweet monkey jesus there was a lot of spam the first week. Not exactly a compelling social experience.

I'm not saying that they're a paragon of virtue or anything, but if you don't have respect for Zynga's abilities then you're missing some really valuable insights. Sure, they "ripped off" the idea for almost every game they've ever made, but as many commenters here love to point out, it's not just the idea that matters, but the execution (setting aside for now the point that everyone steals ideas - remember when those jerks at Google "ripped off" the idea of a search engine?).

Zynga didn't just make another farm game, they used their familiarity with FB's viral channels to make it the biggest silly little farm game on the platform. Then they turned around and used that audience as a springboard for a number of other games that, while derivative, were simply the strongest distillations of their respective types.

I get it, everyone loves to hate Zynga, but the fact is that they are really good at what they do, and lots of people out there enjoy their games.

Zynga has proven their ability to cross-promote new games to their existing userbase again and again, most recently with FrontierVille and CityVille (although these games were - and still are - also bolstered by extensive advertising through Facebook ads, CPI campaigns, etc). They currently run 3 of the top 5 apps by MAU - CityVille, FrontierVille, & Texas HoldEm Poker, at about 90MM, 46MM, and 35MM MAU respectively. Even their "customer loyalty" Facebook Connect site (RewardVille) is a top-25 FB app (about 25MM MAU).

In my own experience, it's also the only FB games company that most laypeople (people who neither work in tech/social games nor play Facebook games) recognize.

It's hard to say whether they'll ever achieve the stature or reputation of a Blizzard, but I can't even think of many traditional game companies that enjoy the same type and intensity of customer loyalty that Blizzard does. Maybe Valve? Very few people buy every EA title but the Madden franchise has incredible loyalty... where does something like that fit into a comparison like this?

Hey guys! My limited anecdotal experience on this topic TOTALLY explains the situation.

Great story, nice site. I have one small suggestion: replace FaceBook with Facebook. It looks weird with the capital B.

why on earth would you trust anyone with anything?

not saying I'm retiring my gmail account, just that there are plenty of ways that it might make sense for certain cases, despite some folks' knee-jerk inclination to distrust this one particular company.

paypal.com

Over the past year I've been slowly teaching myself python (mostly for stuff related to my current job) and django (partly just for fun, partly in preparation for the day when I'm not at said job, I suppose). Since I don't have a strong, immediate and personal reason to hit it hard, I haven't been, but I do try to write a little bit of code every day and learn something meatier on a weekly basis.

While I'm sure that a beginner class would still have plenty of value for me, I find that most beginner resources spend a lot of time on stuff that I'm already comfortable with, and it's a pain to dig through to the part where they start covering the topics I'm trying to learn atm. I don't suppose this is a helpful suggestion for your current idea, but what would be most valuable to me is some kind of mentor who could help me figure out what topics/ideas/practices to learn next, where to find the right intermediate-level resources, etc.