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Apply HN: Pinboard – Make Y Combinator Great Again

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Re: Apply HN: Pinboard – Make Y Combinator Great Again

#51

Post by zimpenfish »

idlewords wrote: post #40
tedmiston wrote: post #34

I* am curious about your growth. Did signup conversion change when you switched from one-time fee to recurring? Do you have any current weird channels for user acquisition? I mean, besides those last few del.icio.us users... *as a Pinboard customer P.S. For anyone who hasn't seen, Pinboard's Twitter account is pretty amusing startup satire. https://twitter.com/Pinboard

I think conversion changed, but I don't know. I don't do a very good job at tracking it. My weird channels for acquisition are a variety of publicity stunts and Twitter drama. Something like IFTTT recently threatening to turn off their Pinboard channel is manna from heaven for me.

That was a heart-stopping day given how many Pinboard rules I have.

Re: Apply HN: Pinboard – Make Y Combinator Great Again

#52

Post by snowwrestler »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #45
snowwrestler wrote: post #23

"Do Things That Don't Scale" http://paulgraham.com/ds.html Since a hosted bookmarking service obviously scales well, that can't be the heart of the Pinboard value prop. What does Pinboard do that no one does, that seems totally nonscalable? How about @Pinboard? He's just one man, hand-crafting tweets about the SF tech industry in his spare time... it can't possible scale to every city and industry, can it? (Can it?)…

$5 million for the cafeteria Sounds right. It costs a lot to import enough Argentinian beef to feed your engineers two steaks a day. http://www.idlewords.com/2006/04/argentina_on_two_steaks_a_d...

This excellent essay is just further evidence I'm right: the future of Pinboard is writing.

Maybe the best thing Ycombinator could do for Pinboard is sell the bookmarking service and send Maciej around the world with a laptop and a publishing contract.

"Pinboard's Guide to Argentina"

"Pinboard's Guide to Antarctica"

"Pinboard's Guide to Silicon Valley (volumes I-X)"

Re: Apply HN: Pinboard – Make Y Combinator Great Again

#53

Post by uxp »

Alex3917 wrote: post #42
tptacek wrote: post #30

This is a funny thread, but if any of you are amused and hopeful about the idea of Pinboard becoming a YC company, and you don't already have a Pinboard account, go get one! I was a bookmarking skeptic before I signed up for Pinboard. In fact, I think I got my Pinboard account as repayment for a favor Erin and I did for Maciej. But now, I have no idea what I would do without it. Pinboard has more or less become a sea…

> Part of what makes Pinboard great is knowing it isn't going to break If you're not following him on Twitter, you really should be.

I've yet to determine if I can cancel my HBO subscription that I keep around for the show Silicon Valley and just read that account.

Re: Apply HN: Pinboard – Make Y Combinator Great Again

#55

Post by vs2370 »

i have a different take on this . I think buffer and pocket have done great work in this year. Obviously pinboard as well. I am not sure if I am the only one but I think the problem is bookmarking. On HCI terms, bookmarking is not intuitive to how human brains work. Instead we just go through events and the nature of events makes us AUTOMAGICALLY index them in our brain and when we wish to retrieve them our brain just uses that index.

On those lines I think it should be more like log everything that I hit on all my devices and make the search organized. Something similar using apriori algorithm was my school project and I used it a lot until now when I have slowly moved to pocket.

My 2 cents - "In short better to have a smart search and indexing instead of bookmarking "

Re: Apply HN: Pinboard – Make Y Combinator Great Again

#57

Post by wingerlang »

adn wrote: post #54
rmc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you mean del.icio.us ?

I honestly don't care about any startup (especially a dying one) enough to remember where the periods are supposed to go if there is more than one.

Is this "still" a startup? It must have been around for decades.

Re: Apply HN: Pinboard – Make Y Combinator Great Again

#58

Post by idlewords »

tim333 wrote: post #56
rmc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you mean del.icio.us ?

Both del.icio.us and delicio.us forward to http://www.delicious.com/ now

When I talked to them about buying the site, the Science Inc. people were very clear that they intend to keep the delicious.com domain for some (presumably awful) new project.

The current redirect is temporary.

Re: Apply HN: Pinboard – Make Y Combinator Great Again

#59

Post by kenko »

kevin wrote: post #21

I know you're ribbing us, but paying for a Pinboard account is like buying shares in Berkshire Hathaway. It's for true believers. I think there's always opportunity in concentrations of users like that. Of all the partners at YC, I ran the startup that was the most different from everyone else. And my approach might be more aligned with your values. If you were seriously interested, I'd be delighted to work with you.

How is buying shares in Berkshire Hathaway for "true believers"?

Re: Apply HN: Pinboard – Make Y Combinator Great Again

#60

Post by pascient »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #49
tombrossman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you attain this goal and the protest votes are in, signalling to YC that a (no longer) silent majority feel this way. Now they get the message that the community is "uneasy about the values of its founders and more broadly, Silicon Valley". What's next? I imagine reading posts by the community here does not play a huge role in day-to-day operations at the company, they still have day jobs and financial pres…

Every court needs its clown and I've been grateful to Maciej for being that clown for years. He's been the only one -- the only one -- that has consistently managed to make me feel less crazy and make Silicon Valley look a little bit more crazy. The startup scene hasn't been content with "paying the bills". They've been chasing demand even when that demand doesn't bring actual money along with it. It's completely nut…

> the _only_ one

The folks at Basecamp (formerly 37signals) have been pretty consistent too at criticizing the Silicon Valley rhetoric, and their company is undeniably profitable. They write at https://signalvnoise.com and I also recommend their books.

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