Richard K Miller

I’m a big fan of del.icio.us, so I was glad to find a podcast with its creator Joshua Schachter. Here are notes:

• Solve a problem that you’re passionate about; don’t go looking for just any problem or you’ll be beat by someone who is passionate about it
• Know what to say “no” to — don’t worry about scaling before it’s time — you probably won’t know where the bottlenecks are until the rubber hits the road — don’t worry about every feature; instead, get something built and release it.
• Develop a sense of morals — how you treat users, how you treat data — respect them, let them have their data, let them even pack up and go home if they want
• An API can attract the cutting-edge types, the “priesthood” of the web. An API lets data come and go easily.
• Spam is attention theft. It’s also a problem with social apps.
• When building a social app, remember that it must be useful to the 1st user, not just the subsequent users
• Set metrics and watch your app — whether users are sticking around, what user behaviors are, how users use the app — set up alerts to wake you up in the middle of the night if something breaks
• Give users as much functionality as possible without logging in. Let them try it; reading about it isn’t enough.
• If you can’t afford usability studies, do “ghetto testing” — go to Starbucks and buy people lattes for trying your app

From the Carson Workshops Summit. More to come from here.

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