This reminds me of why Color flopped. When people hear you've raised a titanic sum of money prelaunch, especially from a VC firm like Sequoia, the expectations for your product are exponentially higher than if you raise a decent A round from angels and small VC firms. Color was a base hit when everyone expected a grand slam. From that moment on, they face an overwhelmingly tough task convincing people their first impressions were wrong.
> The most epic website launch of all time... The Facebook Competitor may reign supreme,,,, uh oh Zuckerberg
",,,,"? Why do people struggle with their language so much? I mean, all you need to do is get a sentence right, and I'm guessing they'd seen an ellipsis before.
I guess there's another lesson here - don't let anyone you don't know do promotional work on your behalf. "Anthony" apparently let someone do some promotional efforts for socialpog thinking "what harm can it do?" and then found out it can do a lot of harm. He probably spent money with for that promotional effort too, which makes this all the more tragic.
I can relate to Anthony. He seems like a nice guy who fell in love with an idea and let blind ambition get the best of him. When I was new to online entrepreneurship, I did things just as stupid, but they (thankfully) got far less attention.
Hopefully he learns from this and pushes forward with new and better projects.
It comes up for me - half the time. The other half is a 500 error.
Also, their homepage is a screen requiring me to login. What? Why? I don't know anything about you, SocialPog - how about a page that explains what you are before asking me to invest.
I never really understood why people lie about their site in order to gain users. I mean, you can't fool them for very long, so your opportunity for whatever you plan is has to be very quick.
The only thing I can think is that they expect to earn a lot of money real quick to help fund development... But I really can't see that working.
If my intentions were money driven I could have thrown up ads or offers to try and convert (or just a simple lander with one signup offer). 42,200+ unique views yesterday would make most marketers very happy. Those weren't my intentions at any point.
This is a reason why (to some extent) you should let users dictate your marketing for you. What I mean by that is to avoid touting yourself as this mega awesome site and just sort of go with the flow. Your users, if they exist, will take care of getting the word out. Doing things like this is cheap and not representative of a company that's interested in their own success. Also, the whole "Facebook" killer thing? Why has it become common practice for new social networks to have to "kill" their competitors? If they were truly intelligent, they'd develop some feature as the core of their service that Facebook lacks and then put that at the forefront. This, though, isn't helpful and doesn't draw any interest toward the product.
I run a web BBS, and we had to deal with my competitor spamming imageboards. It didn't do him much good (because he's finally gone), but he gained infamy because of the incident, thus ruining his real life and causing him much debt.
This is "Anthony". Lesson learned absolutely. Not a whole lot to say except for gigantic mistake on my part. Let this be a lesson to all new webmasters. Shortcuts as JD has written are bad ideas. Respect is earned, and I in know way deserve it.
The article JD wrote was absolutely amazing. While reading I was just shaking my head at my self.
[+] [-] daimyoyo|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robin_reala|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StavrosK|14 years ago|reply
> The most epic website launch of all time... The Facebook Competitor may reign supreme,,,, uh oh Zuckerberg
",,,,"? Why do people struggle with their language so much? I mean, all you need to do is get a sentence right, and I'm guessing they'd seen an ellipsis before.
[+] [-] jdbentley|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] losethos|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kristofferR|14 years ago|reply
And guess what, they're using Facebook Connect https://twitter.com/#!/kevinrose/statuses/80809855933353984
[+] [-] mgkimsal|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdbentley|14 years ago|reply
Hopefully he learns from this and pushes forward with new and better projects.
[+] [-] andrewcooke|14 years ago|reply
at the bottom of the page (the blog design guy link) the site owner appears, apologising. it seems like comments are from about 6 hours ago.
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|14 years ago|reply
Also, their homepage is a screen requiring me to login. What? Why? I don't know anything about you, SocialPog - how about a page that explains what you are before asking me to invest.
Also, why is this required? http://i.imgur.com/avHf3.png And what happened here? http://i.imgur.com/Ou3Uv.png And why do I have to sign in using someone else's system to chat? http://i.imgur.com/td9zr.png
[+] [-] wccrawford|14 years ago|reply
The only thing I can think is that they expect to earn a lot of money real quick to help fund development... But I really can't see that working.
[+] [-] amay0001|14 years ago|reply
If my intentions were money driven I could have thrown up ads or offers to try and convert (or just a simple lander with one signup offer). 42,200+ unique views yesterday would make most marketers very happy. Those weren't my intentions at any point.
[+] [-] astine|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rglover|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amay0001|14 years ago|reply
Couldn't agree with your comments more. Marketing and target audience was a bad idea from the beginning.
[+] [-] ltamake|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amay0001|14 years ago|reply
This is "Anthony". Lesson learned absolutely. Not a whole lot to say except for gigantic mistake on my part. Let this be a lesson to all new webmasters. Shortcuts as JD has written are bad ideas. Respect is earned, and I in know way deserve it.
The article JD wrote was absolutely amazing. While reading I was just shaking my head at my self.
[+] [-] thestranger|14 years ago|reply