Quote:
Originally Posted by Shelleehale
If you want some ideas or to brainstorm I would not necessarily do it on a board but post the need and then go offline and discuss.
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There-in lies an important truth and lesson of the boards. If you give away good ideas for free, the hoards will grab it and oversaturate it to a point where no one can make a penny. And it'll happen faster than you can possibly imagine.
I screw up from time to time, but I try never to screw up the same way twice. Way back circa 1997 I was a newb on the boards and thought it'd be a good idea to show the world just how clever I can be, I showed off one of my new site ideas that was an absolute traffic and sales machine. It was under a week before it was ripped off and all over the place right down to stealing the html design. Lazy bastards didn't even change the font or color scheme.
Now, I wont show anyone outside of the inner circle more than a couple of sites because I dont want people examining my traffic net. I treat this business same as I would any other. I protect trade secrets, I vigorously enforce copyrights, and I have even been known to file a patent or two. I give away very little info for free.
Does that hurt the value of the boards? Nope, you use it to look for would-be partners, and you learn to gleam valuable tidbits reading between the lines. And much like shows, they serve for inspiration if nothing else. I always come back from a show energized with all sorts of new ideas. You look at the pieces and figure out how to make them fit.
So few people in the business think in terms of things like marketing and branding. Too many people still hanging around looking to turn a quick buck with no regard to the future. Right or wrong, legal or illegal doesn't weigh into their decisions, only can I get away with it and make a buck. And we're in an industry that historically pays off on high risk high reward.
You refer to the college kids and how they move files and such. Now you're in my game. When I'm at my best, I'm well in touch with my surfer roots. And I am usually out on the bleeding edge trying to stay on top of the traffic wave instead of behind it. We were doing P2P with our own content before most people knew what it was. The numbers you could pull down, and probably still can, will melt your servers.
Anyone around me during that time has heard me bitch while I try to tune database servers, I was squeezing more transactions per second per server out of MySQL than even Yahoo and other huge implementations said was possible. The technical challenge was part of the fun. Problem is it is still a bear to monetize.