MediaCrush – A website for serving media super fast • Hacker News Board

Re: MediaCrush – A website for serving media super fast

#11

Post by Sir_Cmpwn » Thu, Nov 21, 2013, 5:42 AM UTC

mankash666 wrote: post #10

Wonderful work. How do you plan to sustain the site when it gets too big to fund privately. Is this a for-profit venture?

This isn't for-profit. It's actually not even technically a startup. I'm paying for the servers out of my own pocket. We've got a big pipe and lots of storage, so we'll last a while.

Ideally, we'll eventually be in a position to run ads internally instead of relying on adsense, and then we can hopefully make a little better money off of that. We also get a surprising number of donations [1] that help keep us going.

By the way, does anyone know anything about marketing? That's one thing we aren't good at. We've gotten very little press coverage. We tell people "if you like it, tell your friends" and that's gotten us this far.

[1] https://mediacru.sh/donate

Re: MediaCrush – A website for serving media super fast

#12

Post by graue » Thu, Nov 21, 2013, 5:48 AM UTC

Hmm... did this site get served a secret warrant last week? Or did they just forget to update their warrant canary?

https://mediacru.sh/transparency/warrant-canary.txt

(Note: the date 08/11 is written European style meaning November 8th, as you can see if you go up a directory.)

Re: MediaCrush – A website for serving media super fast

#13

Post by Sir_Cmpwn » Thu, Nov 21, 2013, 5:51 AM UTC

graue wrote: post #12

Hmm... did this site get served a secret warrant last week? Or did they just forget to update their warrant canary? https://mediacru.sh/transparency/warrant-canary.txt (Note: the date 08/11 is written European style meaning November 8th, as you can see if you go up a directory.)

Ack! My other half is responsible for the warrant canary. He keeps forgetting it. We may as well not even have it. It doesn't mean much without a signature, but I assure you that we have never been served a warrant.

Re: MediaCrush – A website for serving media super fast

#14

Post by mankash666 » Thu, Nov 21, 2013, 5:52 AM UTC

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #11

mankash666 wrote: post #10

Wonderful work. How do you plan to sustain the site when it gets too big to fund privately. Is this a for-profit venture?

This isn't for-profit. It's actually not even technically a startup. I'm paying for the servers out of my own pocket. We've got a big pipe and lots of storage, so we'll last a while. Ideally, we'll eventually be in a position to run ads internally instead of relying on adsense, and then we can hopefully make a little better money off of that. We also get a surprising number of donations [1] that help keep us going. B…

I'm no expert, but here are my two cents: 1> Spread the word manually on HN, 4chan and the like 2> Add basic social media presence (twitter, FB ..). This will let you communicate with your fans/early adopters, and let them talk to you too. 3> When the audience in #2 is big enough, launch on kickstarter et al. 4> IF you have a successful kickstarter campaign, the media will cover you, given the big pain points you solve

What I do not know is how you will sustain when you get BIG. The "donate" method works well for someone like Wikipedia, BUT your traffic/costs are generally higher given that most of it pertains to media, as against text for wikipedia

Re: MediaCrush – A website for serving media super fast

#15

Post by laureny » Thu, Nov 21, 2013, 5:57 AM UTC

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #13

graue wrote: post #12

Hmm... did this site get served a secret warrant last week? Or did they just forget to update their warrant canary? https://mediacru.sh/transparency/warrant-canary.txt (Note: the date 08/11 is written European style meaning November 8th, as you can see if you go up a directory.)

Ack! My other half is responsible for the warrant canary. He keeps forgetting it. We may as well not even have it. It doesn't mean much without a signature, but I assure you that we have never been served a warrant.

Nice try, NSA.

Re: MediaCrush – A website for serving media super fast

#16

Post by Sir_Cmpwn » Thu, Nov 21, 2013, 5:58 AM UTC

mankash666 wrote: post #14

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't for-profit. It's actually not even technically a startup. I'm paying for the servers out of my own pocket. We've got a big pipe and lots of storage, so we'll last a while. Ideally, we'll eventually be in a position to run ads internally instead of relying on adsense, and then we can hopefully make a little better money off of that. We also get a surprising number of donations [1] that help keep us going. B…

I'm no expert, but here are my two cents: 1> Spread the word manually on HN, 4chan and the like 2> Add basic social media presence (twitter, FB ..). This will let you communicate with your fans/early adopters, and let them talk to you too. 3> When the audience in #2 is big enough, launch on kickstarter et al. 4> IF you have a successful kickstarter campaign, the media will cover you, given the big pain points you sol…

Regarding 2, we have @mediacru_sh [1] and a subreddit [2]. Not many folk follow that, though. We have a problem with Facebook, though. Considering that all the devs are very pro-privacy [3], none of us have one!

As for Kickstarter, I'm not sure what we'd be raising money for or giving to contributors as a thank you. We are pretty featureful as it stands now, and I'm very against the idea of making people pay for certain features.

[1] https://twitter.com/mediacru_sh

[2] https://pay.reddit.com/r/mediacrush

[3] https://blog.mediacru.sh/2013/07/19/MediaCrush-for-nerds.htm...