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Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

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Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#1
Hello,

I made this little web app - iwl.me, which is just a box with a button. You give it some text, it analyzes it and tells you what famous writer you write like (I won't go into algorithmic discussion for now), and gives you a badge for blog and a link for sharing on Twitter/Facebook/Buzz. It's up for 3 days now, here are stats:

   2nd day - 12,000 uniques
   3rd day - 100,000 uniques
It's spreading just like a perfect meme should :-) E.g. http://search.twitter.com/search?q=iwl.me

My question is, what should I do with it:

a) for monetary gain (It already achieved the SEO effect I planned, not sure what to do now).

b) for a good cause. I'm already thrilled to notice that people discover and re-discover writers and say "Oh, I write like [writer], I must read more of his works." What can I do to get more of this effect?

What do you think? I'm open to ideas or deals. Thank you!

PS Technical details: it's running on a single Rackspace Cloud instance with 512 MB RAM, Apache+web.py.

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#3
How about then giving the user a list of works by that author via amazon? If the users really do want to read more of that writer's stuff, this might be a good way to get some affiliate business. You could possibly even point to specific works that they "write like". You might also take a look at the goodreads api (http://www.goodreads.com/api) for some possible social networking aspects? Maybe you could show people reading things they write like via goodreads or something along those lines.

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#4
How about recommendations like "people who write like Bukowski enjoys Burgess"? Of course the author names are links to your affiliate program.

BTW, the banner at the bottom of your site is taking ages to load.

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#5
post #3

How about then giving the user a list of works by that author via amazon? If the users really do want to read more of that writer's stuff, this might be a good way to get some affiliate business. You could possibly even point to specific works that they "write like". You might also take a look at the goodreads api ( http://www.goodreads.com/api ) for some possible social networking aspects? Maybe you could show peopl…

I thought about Amazon affiliate program, but I'm outside the US, and it's a huge hassle to deal with checks here.

Thanks for suggestions!

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#6
post #4

How about recommendations like "people who write like Bukowski enjoys Burgess"? Of course the author names are links to your affiliate program. BTW, the banner at the bottom of your site is taking ages to load.

BTW, the banner at the bottom of your site is taking ages to load.

Hmm, it's hosted on Rackspace Files CDN.

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#7
Many of my FB friends are writers, this thing has spread like wildfire through them today. But the thing is it's a flash in the pan effect. It'll do huge for a very short period of time with no revisits. If you monetize, do it RIGHT NOW. Tomorrow is too late. Almost literally.

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#8

Many of my FB friends are writers, this thing has spread like wildfire through them today. But the thing is it's a flash in the pan effect. It'll do huge for a very short period of time with no revisits. If you monetize, do it RIGHT NOW. Tomorrow is too late. Almost literally.

I agree, just like almost every meme, it's short-lived.
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