Tag: startups

I think I will make this on my own.

I saw the virtues of Ning last summer. But I soon realized that I was on the wrong side of what they were doing. I was interested in using their platform to write my own web app, assuming it was the equivalent of what Google App Engine is today.

But I was having trouble getting started. I could barely get anything to work at all. Here's as far as I got on my first Digg/Reddit clone. (Vortices was try #2 and a success!) At first I figured it was just my own ineptitude, but there were also excess obstacles halting my progress. There were large problems with the API documentation. If you can't explain how the code works, then no one will be able to use it. With all their millions in funding they choose to neglect the most important tool for developers? Large sections were out of date. They kept moving the docs to a different URI.

Then the truth hit me like something with fatal momentum. Ning wasn't for programmers at all! The first clue was the documentation URI. It wasn't clearly linked to, instead you could find it in a couple of obscure places. To this day, you have to click 3 links to get to it, and the first one is at the bottom. The URI for the documentation changed twice in the span of a few months, so my bookmarks were useless. Another clue: at least half of the example apps were broken. Many eventually end up reading docs eventually for specifics and subtle details, but the easiest way to get started is to jump into some demos...unless they don't work. This may be a bit unfair, as Ning was obviously experiencing some large changes in their API at the time, and I hope for their sake that things are much more stable now. But I was too much of a noob to bootstrap my Ning-ja skills (and grew impatient waiting for change), so I was did the only rational thing, move on.

Sure, one could technically wrangle with it and make a perfectly fine web app, but why unnecessarily tear one's hair out with Ning? Instead, one can get into App Engine, AppJet, Heroku, or whatever with much more ease. Hosted platforms such as these work from the start, with up-to-date documentation, working examples, and a real community fostered by a real focus on developers. Even AppJet, with a user base I could count on both hands, had their whole act together from launch day.

Not that there's anything wrong with not focusing on developers--It is arguably a more legitimate strategy. I like to call it a social network in a can. But this SNIC is not to be confused with a viable cloud platform. Now, this could change, and with all of Ning's resources, I see no reason why they can't come up to speed. Maybe this was their plan all along. First attract the average Joes and save the programmers for later. It's a toss-up from all that can be seen. If someone is close to Mr. Andreessen, maybe you'd care to enlighten us of his intentions. But for the time being, Ning is nothing more than the fragmented MySpace. Sure it will have tons of users and ad revenue, but a hosted CMS is nothing to get excited about. It's the kind of feature easily tacked on to any existing site.

Part of what makes wikipedia great is its clean layout. MetaNotes takes the cleanness out of the equation and makes every box flash orange.

Seemingly a copy of Ashley Qualls's (WhateverLife)[http://whateverlife.com], which has been a huge success.

Maybe a full-time startup is riskier than I thought, considering all of the money to be had as a normal employee. What do you think? Bold entrepreneur or loyal employee? This list had a good point:

Old: Climb the coprorate ladder, learn the ropes, then start a company.

New: Start a company to get out of climbing the corporate ladder.

I should totally do this.