Web Things Considered

Remember when they launched in November after their strategic shift from Riya to Like? I don’t quite understand why they were so quick to change, but people make decisions I don’t understand all the time. It appears the decision has not paid off. I read that they raised enough to last through 2009 and go through 3 iterations. If the Riya was #1 and Like is #2, I’d bet they’re thinking about that 3rd iteration by now, especially considering how silent the CEO blog has been since the beginning of the year.

I have a hard time buying this explanation:

Today Riya is using the organic traffic to see how changes improve monetization, repeat usage, etc. The business is in “fine-tune” mode. Every change improves the lifetime value of every user and the marginal profit contribution of every dollar to be spent on marketing. We haven’t poured gasoline in the engine to accelerate the traffic. We are tuning the user experience as measured by the economics of the business.

Did Google, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, or any of the recent viral growth success stories have to “pour gasoline” by spending money on marketing? But, who knows, and at least I learned something useful about measuring. It’s not to say it won’t succeed, but given the money and hype put into it, it seems rather shaky.

Not really a web thing, but this is engineering/usability/design related.

There’s this crazy idea floating around that Oregonians don’t know how to drive. You hear it mentioned every once in a while, usually by someone from the busy roads of California. I admit I have seen my fair share of people going 65 in the left lane on I-5, driving along in ignorant bliss, as the lineup behind them is preparing to run them off the road. But, usually this is an occasional annoyance.

However, I’m starting to come to the conclusion that we Oregonians do indeed do not how to drive. Every day when I drive home from work, I prepare myself for the psychological torment of the Scholls Ferry merge. I work in Beaverton and live in Sherwood, so the quickest route there is to take Scholls Ferry to Roy Rogers (no, not named after THAT Roy Rogers). Scholls Ferry is bad enough with its stoplights every two car lengths, but then we hit the merge. The great traffic engineers of the city of Beaverton designed this splendid system of roads that will go along in two lanes and then merge into 1 lane about 3 feet after a stoplight. Walker Road (by Nike campus) has a lot of these as well. No, it’s not really 3 feet, but that’s pretty much how they’re treated since only the hooligans or the newbies cut ahead of the backup in the left lane by driving up the right line and merging in after the light as everyone in the left lane tries their hardest to not let them merge, cursing them vehemently.

But, are they really hooligans? Or, are they the smart ones, and the other 99% of the drivers in the left lane are the idiots. When I first encountered these things, I always patiently waited my turn and fumed at those who tried to beat the system. But, now, I’ve realized that I can cut a good 5 minutes or so off of my commute by driving up the right lane and save my sanity. It’s at the risk of inciting road-rage, I know.

The way I see it, these layouts are designed to prevent just the backup they cause by letting more cars through the lights, and letting them merge. There’s also some purpose to allow cars that are turning right before the merge to bypass the congestion, but I think the bigger issue is reducing congestion by letting more cars through. So, due to the societal norm of waiting your turn, the system backfires and the congestion remains, serving very little improvement over a single lane system.

Not a very usable design, huh? How should this be fixed so people feel free to use the right lane? Or am I cheating and need to get back in line?

I’ve been avoiding Twitter like the plague, figuring if I got hooked it would be a major productivity dagger, even more so than reading/writing blogs. Jason asked if I was on Twitter yesterday, and I responded “nope and don’t plan too.” However, the thought occurred to me last night, maybe I can do something slightly different with Twitter.

I decided to start a Twitter feed for the building of NetworthIQ. Kinda like bare naked app did by blogging about the building of Amigo and what Steve Poland is doing now at Ringside Startup, only mine will be “microblogging” allowing me to make quick entries instead of long blog posts.

For some background, NetworthIQ is a bootstrapped, side-project, .NET, personal finance web app/service that launched in the summer of 2005. It currently is nearing 8000 registered users and I’ve recently re-committed myself to focusing my spare time to making it better and helping it fulfill its potential. Two new features (tips and blogs) have been launched recently and I’ve got some more cool stuff in the works.

If you’re interested in the business of web apps, or the technology of web apps (not necessarily limited to .NET, I will explore many issues) I invite you to follow the feed and participate in the discussion as I go along.

Tags: twitter

I was just reading the Radar post about Google Maps new support for GeoRSS and wanted to take it for a little spin. I know that Platial supports GeoRSS, so I decided to take the Web 2.0 HQ Feed (which is where new startups are mapped, since I coudn’t keep up on the Web 2.0 Innovation Map), and plug it into Google maps.

Here’s the result:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=http://www.platial.com/rss/map/1768

Platial also lets you create maps from GeoRSS, so the new Google feature doesn’t really do anything new or better, it does however make it a bit easier since I just have to enter a URL for the feed (no account required). Plus I always like playing with Google Maps and its API features and this gives me reason to learn a bit more about GeoRSS.

The OregonStartups site is beginning to come into the modern age. Up until now, the biggest value of the site is their weekly email newsletter, which includes the most extensive local business event calendar that I’ve come across. They now publish the calendar to Google Calendar which can be subscribed to, making it super easy to know what’s going on around town.

There are also a couple of blogs now (main and news), which for me anyway, is a much easier way to get information these days.

Both new features are welcome additions to the site and turns it into a must have resource for local entrepreneurs.