^^^Nice way to seize the moment. Interesting website concept. Just a suggestion for the homepage: since the top header is so tall, how about moving the play song links from the bottom of each song-artwork to be a universal play symbol (arrow) overtop the artwork, maybe increasing from translucent to full opacity upon hovering, noting contrast issues with relevant artwork. NOTE: at my 1080p pc monitor and font size settings I dont even see the song title 'above the screen's fold', so you may even want to think about that as well, maybe the same solution as the playbutton using overlay and opacity settings. It is a cool header bg though so dont mess with that, except maybe moving the search box onto it since having it below eats vertical space from the song listings as well.

Last point/question: I'm assuming the $1600 headphone giveaway is for the musicians, not listeners. Good growth tactic but maybe make it more clear OR offer something to listeners as well. I don't know much about the song development process market but maybe implement or communicate something about whats expected/gained from listeners for improving the music (assuming you actually want to help musicians rather than eat their souls lol)

EDIT: minor ui change to song pages: move everything on the separate login page as an embedded form on song pages (above the comments). No need to ask me to click and hope you've integrated with my favorite 3rd party.

EDIT2; Startup based advice: you might want to look into the business model of that site that advertised on thepiratebay using popups autoplaying (fairly decent) music videos of indie artists competing for a prize. Cant remember the name or find it on google, maybe it shutdown? Had a one wordish name derivied from video, definitely started with a V

THANKS for sharing this. Wouldn't have discovered it otherwise and definitely a positive refresher with new points beyond his TED talk.

For anyone still sitting-on/queuing/water-latering Lessig's main TED talk on money in politics, as a vidder I created a remix of it to help improve engagement and intensity, using soundtracks by Zack Hemsey and a few video clips from other sources for support:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB-vGYR8S58 I never really shared it beyond the organizers behind Lessig so I hope someone more useful than the avg youtuber can benefit from it here...

I don't think its so much about adding interests as it is offering random but related articles to what someone views. Not everyone always checks the related articles section- and that section is not always very comprehensive. It'd be a good start to use that section though, and compensate by eliminating pages you've already visited.

I really like your idea, although the implementation still needs the actual recommendation engine. Wikipedia could really benefit from more related articles being listed/organized.

Good point. Also everyone in this thread, even the OP, failed to realize the main difference/point with the site: it's about LOCAL entrepreneurship and building your LOCAL community, something Brad has been writing about. http://www.startuprev.com/about

Although, they did do a crap job at emphasizing 'LOCAL' on the site besides using the once in the sidebar description.

This could be really powerful if users could put up actual $$$ for feature requests so the site actually performs more like kickstarter. This would also help the quality of requests.

Once the company completes the feature satisfactorily they get the cash. Or perhaps even a situation where they can grab the cash to start the feature- but this is obviously higher risk- like kickstarter- but the risk could be managed and even help the feature development process.

PS- With this in mind, importing feature requests from other sites could help growth. IE: People see a GREAT feature THEY want and are willing to put in $5... as compared to coming to the site to submit their ideas. Another idea: Use ad revenue from site to 'seed' a user's initial ability to donate $$$. Perhaps require CC input in order to contribute this 'free money', thereby making it easier to give real money. I know the free money would have to be incredibly small, but sometimes little acts of giving something for free can really change a system. Just some thoughts...

> if users could put up actual $$$ for feature requests so the site actually performs more like kickstarter. This would also help the quality of requests.

Agreed, but I'd expect few people would put in money up front to fund something that no one's promising to make. It's hard to give it a hard date like Kickstarter since it's not the people doing who create the posts.

The best way I can think of going about it is having people say how much they're willing to pay (but no money changes hands), allowing someone to say they're going to implement and idea, and then it turns into a kickstarter project and emails all of the people who said they'd pay so they can enter their credit card details.

That way there's no risk for the backers (until they know someone wants to fulfill their dreams) or creator's (functions just like kickstarter for them -- except someone is giving them an initial list of interested parties). The websites whole purpose becomes facilitating new ideas.

To cut down on spam, you could charge people a dollar per vote (or microtransactions) and then promise creators a cut of that if they successfully "kickstart" a project (or convert a sufficient number of voting backers).

* To be clear: I'm not talking about using kickstarter -- then you'd lose all your revenue.

Edit: I expected pvsh to be about "I want this thing" instead of feature requests for specific products. It seems weird to me for Corporations to request bounties on features, but I still like the idea as a way to connect user's wants with entrepreneurs.

Must have a huge margin! It will sell if they promote it right, which it looks like they are doing. I can see buying this for a friend as a gift. I can also see it becoming a nice bathroom light at night, as I hate waking myself up with bright lights.

That's actually an awesome idea (bathroom light) if the bulb has good longevity.

Very interesting, sounds similar to Amy Cuddy talking about body language affecting our mind/behavior. http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes...

Will you post more (the thesis) when it becomes available?

This reminds me of something... As someone who LOVED rollercoaster tycoon, please please please consider object/character movement, such as NPC's that move and do stuff. Like puke on the ground after roller coasters =) Also other players who are in control of a character (like Sims game) would be fun to highlight and watch interact with NPC's.

Yeah, while it's fun to scroll around and see what stories people are trying to tell through this medium, it'd be really cool to have some actors moving around in the world. Riders on the roller coasters (which seem to be among the most fun things to build in any building game; even when the tools don't make it easy to do so), people roaming around exploring (and occasionsally being chopped up by the chainsaw guy or eaten by the scary smoke monster thing, or turned into a newt when walking over a black magic altar, etc.) would make this absolutely magical to just watch and play with. Not to say it's not cool today, as it is, just that if the dinosaurs roared and flung cars, it'd be a mild form of ecstasy.

Exactly, it looks great as it is right now. Where's waldo like. But I'm a video guy and motion would make this world epic.

It'd be REALLY cool if someone could turn this into a screensaver, where it progressively pans and zooms in/out. Then when you're mind is just about to be blown at full-zoom-in, it should rotate like a boss and slap a new perspective of life into your life.

The pain with finding user pains is organizing. Everybody will talk/search things differently. Pains can also be slightly different but on the same topic. Then theres the marketing problem, finding enough users in a certain topic/pain to justify the pain. Consider how biased the content on quora is (relative to availability of content, not the content quality itself).