God, I love my subconscious...

[jducoeur]

Suffice it to say, CommYou's business plan quite suddenly gelled this morning. It's adapted from a bunch of things I've been thinking about for some months now; when I put the pieces together right, I discover that there's actually a series of products that, put together, have really *lovely* network effects.

(No, I'm not going to talk about the details publically quite yet. Suffice it to say, the existing social-conversation system is a crucial component, but the money comes from expanding our horizons a bit. If we can do it right, I think we can pull off the hat trick of providing real value to users, making real money, and not doing anything evil in the process.)

We'll see if it stands up to some reflection, and we'll see if we can pull it all off, but if I can get everything arranged right, I think this might actually work...

Comments

[bkdelong.livejournal.com]

I need to sit down and take a closer look at CommYou because I don't think I've quite "gotten it" yet. At quick glance it seems like a Web Forum so I think I'm completely missing the point.

[jducoeur]

No, you just only have a small piece of the picture at this point. About 25-30 stories are implemented so far, out of around 200. So far, it is largely LJ-ish. The Twitter-like stories start going in over the next couple of weeks. The real Forum features start coming together after that. And then we start to really refine the beast until it hums nicely...

[rosinavs.livejournal.com]

Yay, making money without evil! Personally, my favorite method on the internet so far is gmail's little one-line ads at the top of the inbox. I am far more likely to click on one of those with an interesting tagline than a larger ad. I hope you have stuff that actually will make you money without evil, because it would be nice if you made money at something you seem to greatly enjoy.

[jducoeur]

Personally, my favorite method on the internet so far is gmail's little one-line ads at the top of the inbox.

That's my favorite as well. Unfortunately, I don't *think* Google makes quite that format available to their clients, but hopefully they will do so. Certainly Gmail is my best example of advertising that doesn't suck: relevant (or sometimes irrelevant but a damned amusing guess), not *too* obtrusive nor *too* frequent. Current plan is that CommYou will be trying to follow that model for non-paid-members, insofar as we can...