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Ask HN: Here is my current batch of ideas. In exchange, I ask for your feedback.

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Ask HN: Here is my current batch of ideas. In exchange, I ask for your feedback.

#1
I have a pool of unimplemented (or partially implemented) ideas laying around right now. I've decided to let them go into the wild in order to light a fire under myself to chase after which ever ones (if any) that I "miss" after I let go. Not claiming any of these are original, but I though there may be unique opportunities in some of them.

In sharing these, all I ask is that you provide feedback on them, even in the form of "I hate 1,2, don't care about 3, 5, 6, and I may be interested in 4."

1. An alternate twitter landing page (e.g. username.twitteridea.com) that each user can heavily style and customize. I'm shocked that Twitter customization is relegated to simple background images and color. Tweets are pulled via client-side javascript, so themes are simple html/css/js. As awful as MySpace skinning was, people clearly wanted it. Viral potential is large here. Main problem, people don't read a lot of tweets by visiting a user's profile. Revenue model a bit iffy.

2. A simplified system for conducting beta tests. Match up companies (thinking micro ISVs or small webapps here -- this is not an enterprise play) that need exposure + a diverse tester pool with people who like being early adopters. Allow testers to earn reputations and allow companies to filter candidates through quality thresholds. Now testers are incentivized to do a better job, so they can get into more "exclusive" betas. Plenty of room to add in social elements here too. I think someone must be doing this but I've yet to Google the right set of keywords to find them. The differentiator here is that it's an offering for testers too, not just companies. Almost creating a marketplace where the currency is reputation.

3. A hosted solution for referrals (non e-commerce - this is not an affiliate system). I posted about this here once at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1280478. Basic idea is to host a system/api that lets you build per-user referral codes, track those referrals, and then provide widgets to let you give users badges, show top referrers, things like that.

4. A guided daily diary. Inspired by Keen's Simple Diary. http://www.simplediary.com Pose simple questions to allow people to reflect on each day. Short and sweet, no feeling of obligation. Okay, that's just a rehash of the book itself. Now make it interesting by crowd-sourcing the guided questions or making them social (amongst your friends). Share entries etc. Favoriting answers. This needs more fleshing out. Big problems are: content until you solve crowd-sourcing, and how to monetize.

5. Private blogs/microsocial sites for families. Keep it fun and easy - think Tumblr. #1 use case is just sharing photos - email sucks for this, nor am I friending grandma on Facebook to share photos, and almost all blogging platforms I've seen besides Posterous do not offer a reasonable password protection system. But after photo sharing, I think family member activity streams could be fun, and you could integrate some location functionality so kids could "check in" easily without having to call/txt etc. There are a lot of ways it could go. I posted about this at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1385447. The offerings I can find - myfamily.com, familysays.com, and famiva.com are truly wretched. Seems like a huge opportunity here.

6. Site monitoring that goes beyond the simple "is it up"/ping/L7 health check junk. Gomez and Alertsite et al. are fine solutions but stupidly expensive. Just stupidly expensive. Seems like there is a gap you can slide into here between those two ends of the spectrum. Real admins measure their page latencies not just uptime. (Note: just found out about http://www.watchmouse.com today, which sort of moots this... seems to be just what I envisioned at the price point that I imagined could succeed.)

Re: Ask HN: Here is my current batch of ideas. In exchange, I ask for your feedback.

#2
#5 - I actually started developing this one, called KinCMS (stupid, but descriptive), but got a job before finishing it - and thus, never got back to it. I never let it go, either, and some of it's code formed the basis of Noostr recently. I guess I should get it working and launched, eh?

#6 - Again, something I had started and had working for my own servers a few years ago, but never expanded or monetized. I don't think I have my old source code anymore though...

Re: Ask HN: Here is my current batch of ideas. In exchange, I ask for your feedback.

#3
#2 Like it, but it feels somehow like it'd be a though one.

#4 I think vox.com does that. Whatever happened to vox btw? Is it just hanging in there, bringing in some ad revenue?

#5 I was thinking about this yesterday. Definitely a need. Photos + stories are huge, think family sitting around picture albums.

#6: yea, totally. I always thought site monitoring where you can send it events from your backend or js. Google analytics has events, but can't send it from backend (ie. signups, ...)

Re: Ask HN: Here is my current batch of ideas. In exchange, I ask for your feedback.

#5
ps #6: is there a reliable solution to track respone times (latency) over time? I want to enter, say, 10 urls, preferably some with a cookie (loggedin), and see from various locations how fast they are (including js, images, ...). I'd pay 10$/month for this. I don't need any other features, just good, easy and reliable latency/speed measuring, so that I can work on improving it and actually see results (or not).

Re: Ask HN: Here is my current batch of ideas. In exchange, I ask for your feedback.

#7
#5: the demand seems to be there. Assuming this is a freemium, then the challenge will be to acquire enough customers. You would assume that after the initial drop-off, the data gathered would be very valuable and people would want to keep paying... So after building the basic tech, it becomes a marketing play? I'd love to hear more thoughts on this, or perhaps good sites, because if I found a good one I'd use it. (Not sure what defines good here though.)

Re: Ask HN: Here is my current batch of ideas. In exchange, I ask for your feedback.

#8
Humble opinions:

1. Easy to implement, but I don't know if people would be interested in it. Another downside is that twitter can pull the rug under your feet at any time.

2. Interesting. I'm not sure if the benefits for testers are big enough.

3. I have no opinion on this; I don't like the referrals in general (except free "word of mouth") anyways.

4. nice but as with any social site it's hard to get the initial people and critical mass.

5. Hard to differentiate enough or see the real benefit when there are so many blogs/facebook/etc applications out there.

6. There are definitively lots of monitoring services of all kinds, prices (from zero) and features. It would be interesting to have one addressing a very particular niche one or at a particular feature set / price point as you said.

Re: Ask HN: Here is my current batch of ideas. In exchange, I ask for your feedback.

#9
#1 doesn't really solve a major problem for a lot of people.

I like #2. I've been thinking about something similar (Feedback for Startups - http://www.nilkanth.com/2010/05/21/6-ideas-off-my-chest/)

Simple Diary (#4) looks cool, but I'm not sure if it can do more than a hobby.

Family network (#5) sounds interesting. Facebook, and other family networks, are just bloated.

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