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How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

mixergy.com

31–40 of 41 posts

Re: How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

#31
post #30
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently from all the downvotes I am the only one that hates a small iframe with a wall of text?

When evaluating the awesomeness of a site, layout is usually not the no. 1 concern, content is.

Content that can be effectively accessed easily and well. Why do I clarify that... here's an example, do you like experts exchange?

Re: How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

#32
post #8

Whitepages.com always seems to recruit very aggressively at career fairs at my school (U of WA). They'll be at a booth nestled in between Intel and Google pitching their hearts out. Commendable, to say the least. However, they majorly over-played the "rockstar programmer" meme by handing out branded drumsticks and guitar picks last year. I always laugh upon noticing my pair of Whitepages.com drumsticks when unpacking…

Drumsticks is a way forward from the usual stuff like mugs, t-shirts and so on.

Re: How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate? From what I've seen this statement seems to be true.

Well, I'm not the one making the claim, and so I don't feel like proving a negative, but his shtick is pretty straightforward (for all the characters, with some variations): 1. Set up a fake interview or staged encounter. 2. Immediately confuse the interlocutor with completely unreal mannerisms/speech. People watching the movies maybe don't pick up on this because they're used to the behavior, but if Borat started ta…

excellent interview

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P842Tmi6lrc

Re: How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

#34

Hey Andrew I'm glad to see how much work you are putting into becoming a better interviewer, I haven't watched all of your interviews but from the ones I have seen, I can see you are really refining your technique and pushing the boundary between what your interviewees want to reveal and what they actually reveal. But you gotta decide once and for all, are you going to be an asshole or not? Because I can see your fru…

Thanks. My response was so long that I just blogged it: http://mixergy.com/comment-a-hole/

Re: How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

#35
post #19

Impressive interview, very inspiring. Mixergy is an awesome site.

unless you want to read a transcript.

Hey ohashi & netcan, do you have any suggestions for how I can improve the way I show the transcript?

I'm using a scrolling div after a few readers told me it's ideal for SEO, but I'm open to other options.

Each hour-long interview is about 10,000 words. In comparison, pg's latest essay on Apple is about 2,000. So I'm pumping out a lot of text.

As icey says, text isn't the main attraction on Mixergy, but I'm open to a better way to display it. If you have any suggestions, hit me.

Re: How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate? From what I've seen this statement seems to be true.

Well, I'm not the one making the claim, and so I don't feel like proving a negative, but his shtick is pretty straightforward (for all the characters, with some variations): 1. Set up a fake interview or staged encounter. 2. Immediately confuse the interlocutor with completely unreal mannerisms/speech. People watching the movies maybe don't pick up on this because they're used to the behavior, but if Borat started ta…

This is called the "Gunston Technique":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Gunston#Format

(Scroll down a bit ..)

Re: How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

#38
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unless you want to read a transcript.

Hey ohashi & netcan, do you have any suggestions for how I can improve the way I show the transcript? I'm using a scrolling div after a few readers told me it's ideal for SEO, but I'm open to other options. Each hour-long interview is about 10,000 words. In comparison, pg's latest essay on Apple is about 2,000. So I'm pumping out a lot of text. As icey says, text isn't the main attraction on Mixergy, but I'm open to…

I've sent you an email with some suggestions.

Re: How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate? From what I've seen this statement seems to be true.

Well, I'm not the one making the claim, and so I don't feel like proving a negative, but his shtick is pretty straightforward (for all the characters, with some variations): 1. Set up a fake interview or staged encounter. 2. Immediately confuse the interlocutor with completely unreal mannerisms/speech. People watching the movies maybe don't pick up on this because they're used to the behavior, but if Borat started ta…

When I talk about Sacha I am not really referring to his movies (which have all sucked pretty bad) but more his tv show, particularly his original tv show in Britain before he got famous.

Truth is revealed. Whether you are able to see it or not that is an individual reaction. You are right he is going more for comedy than any truly meaningful interview but there is stuff to be learnt there.

Re: How A Student With $1,100, Launched Whitepages.com, A $57 Mil A Year Business

#40
post #31
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When evaluating the awesomeness of a site, layout is usually not the no. 1 concern, content is.

Content that can be effectively accessed easily and well. Why do I clarify that... here's an example, do you like experts exchange?

In some cases usability can be bad enough to create a situation where you prefer worse content with better presentation. Sure.

But those are edge cases. No matter how bad a theme of a blog is, on the other hand, it is always secondary to content. There is a journalist's site that I frequent where some of his articles display all paragraphs as a single line. I cut ant paste to TextEdit to read them. He rarely writes an article I don't want to read. Still an awesome site.

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