Why being invited to try Circle made me think about a whole load of other stuff

https://gist.github.com/robert-b-clarke/7872713

by red_anorak • 13 years ago

54 21 13 years ago

gist.github.com

woah• 13 years ago

Why did you decide to call it LampNote? Seems pretty hard for someone to guess what the app is about with that name.

kbenson• 13 years ago

LampNote initially started life as a hackday project using data provided by Manchester City Council. The data available for the hackday included planning notices which, in the UK, are still publicised by sticking pieces of paper onto lampposts.

Maybe it's an easier correlation to someone in the UK?

richthegeek• 13 years ago

As a Mancunian, not at all. The name means nothing to me on the surface!

mynegation• 13 years ago

The race to register something more understandable like cafecorkboard.com in 3.. 2..1..

iamwil• 13 years ago

You know. How people post local notices on a lamp post? For like, missing cats. You see it often on college campuses.

Maybe it could have been called cafecorkboard.com like the other post here, or telephonepolenotes.com

red_anorak4• 13 years ago

Yes, it's a reference to notices posted onto lampposts. A lot of people said they loved the name.

I did wonder how well it would travel, whether or not people from outside the UK stuck notices on lampposts, if they called them lampposts etc.

halostatue• 13 years ago

Here in North America, these sorts of signs are attached to any pole that can handle them, but powerline poles are favourites because they're wood (and therefore staple-friendly). Toronto has community posting boards that have started going up (put up by our beneficent advertisers, Astral Media, who would love to get out of that obligation and just advertise more).

frogpelt• 13 years ago

While a name like Circle has obvious and immediate meaning to everyone who sees it, I guess?

I haven't really discovered that many connections between start up names and their purpose.

bsirkia3• 13 years ago

Really interesting read, it's a weird feeling to 1) to see a very similar startup in the same space make "evil" choices you turned down and 2) frustratingly see them be more successful than you. I'm working on a startup in Vermont, which has a similar amount of startup acclaim as Huddersfield, competing in a space where there's about 2 million Y-Combinator-backed, ex-Googler, triple Stanford-Harvard-MIT dropout founded Silicon Valley startups with tons of money that want to build something viral that at least pulls a ton of user's data.

I would be interested to hear more of your takeaways, like what you would do differently and if you think you do have a shot at going against those well-funded giants.

red_anorak4• 13 years ago

Things I would do differently... I think my product is too clearly the work of an idealistic technical person, and is slightly dated in the way it just expects people to join in because it will be useful if everyone used it. It's completely different from Circle in every way, not just when it comes to things that can be considered "evil". For example I've purposefully made choices like "it shouldn't need a dedicated mobile app", or "users shouldn't have to register to see content" from a purely functional perspective.

I did always view the idea as quite risky and I probably wouldn't have gone for it as a "pure startup". In this case I felt it was ok to do it as it could bump start my web dev business.

Good luck with your venture. I don't think being in Huddersfield is ultimately the reason why people haven't taken to LampNote. It was just difficult to get any local hype initially, and that certainly slowed me down

bsirkia3• 13 years ago

Thanks for the reply. I think that all makes sense and it sounds like you've gained some great perspective from the experience. Good luck on your next venture, and definitely stay idealistic.

sakai• 13 years ago

Aside: Vermonter here (though currently working in SF). Would love to hear more about what you're working on if you're willing to share your email.

And best of luck with it!

bsirkia3• 13 years ago

definitely, I'm at brian@rocketlistings.com, looking forward to hearing from you.

OafTobark• 13 years ago

I think the biggest problem I am reading here is the author making a bunch of assumptions about what the app does or doesn't do without even trying it out at all.

bazzargh• 13 years ago

This morning I spoke to someone who had installed it; it had SMSd everyone in her contacts, and she was understandably not too happy. It's not just an assumption that they're misusing permissions.

You are asking the author to assume that apps that ask for broad permissions are trustworthy. There have been far too many counterexamples for that position to be tenable.

yesimahuman• 13 years ago

First of all, unless you are in SF or another tech city, I wouldn't even try relying on your local city in order to build your company. You have to think about the internet as your startup scene, and focus on having a good presence there (twitter, etc.). I think trying to be too local with an internet product is a mistake for most companies.

To some extent the social space is riddled with a lack of ethics, mainly because it's effective and users are fickle. But there are a lot of other spaces where you don't have to make such tradeoffs and can still build a business. Maybe those would be a better fit for how you want to run your company?

Unfortunately, ethics kind of go out the door when you've got major investors that you want to provide a positive return to. Imagine the pressure for Circle to provide a return, and then imagine whether you'd even want to have that kind of pressure on you every day (and they've been around for a while and aren't huge yet, so I'm guessing it's by no means an easy ride for them either).

red_anorak4• 13 years ago

Some fair points. I didn't necessarily feel that I was dependent on the local media and tech scene, it was a more the case that they I felt they weren't doing their job. Even if they just wrote a blog post saying "this guy's an idiot, what he's doing will never work" it would have got a few people talking and generated a decent inbound link. Also "hyperlocal" (yuk - the H word) stuff is easier to grow if you can get a concentration of users close to each other.

mlisbit• 13 years ago

Funny, I've actually installed Circle the other day, after receiving multiple requests from friends over facebook - and hated it. Initial problem was, the options of logging in where through Facebook, twitter, or email - but the email option said it would take up to 24 hours to approve... really? and it didn't seem functional - so i had to choose between twitter or Facebook. The user interface kept jumping from one style to another between login options, making it look non-legitimate. It also got my location wrong, with no option to change it (I'm on the border between two cities) showing me events that where too far. I was so frustrated with it, I un-installed it within 10 minutes - so I still think theres a market for an app like this, Circle is doing it wrong.

unlimited_power• 13 years ago

Am the only one who always confuses this with Circle (http://www.circle.com/), a bitcoin-based competitor to Square (presumably).

trhaynes• 13 years ago

Also see the "The Circle", a recently-published dystopian novel by Dave Eggers about a social network of the same name.

The story/plot/characters are meh, but I give it 5 stars for provoking thoughts about hyper-connectedness, net neutrality, surveillance, over-sharing on social networks, the ubiquity of technology, etc.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Circle-Dave-Eggers/dp/0385351399

Why being invited to try Circle made me think about a whole load of other stuff

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