Monday, July 7, 2008

A new kind of (Mini) Venture Capital

A couple of days ago, Jeremiah Owyang visited this blog and commented, "Friendfeed Integration - Brilliant".

The fact is, I had nothing (or very little) to do with it.

About a month or so ago, Louis Gray posted a note to Friendfeed.

"How much do I have to pay someone to create a Friendfeed integration script that works with Blogger".  There was already one for WordPress, but no Blogger.

It was a good approach.  With LOTS of brilliant coders (young and 'older') on Friendfeed.
Shortly thereafter, Hutch Carpenter matched the offer.

It didn't take too long before Pat Hawks was working on it (I think he probably would have done it anyway, but there's nothing like a couple of bucks to motivate an ambitious young mind!).

Watching the threads go by, it was pretty apparent that everyone wanted the 'likes' included, and, a lot of people were watching.

After a couple of revisions, and an  ongoing discussion on his website, Pat delivered.

The adoption rate was almost instantaneous.

Many had already realized they were getting more comments on Friendfeed than on their own blogs.  In fact, Hutch has a discussion ongoing today about this.

I implemented the code here a couple of weeks ago.  It worked ... but it wasn't perfect.  The 'fix' was simple (but I didn't know it).

Pat visited the site and used Disqus to send me the 'fix' (Note: I didn't ask him.  He's obviously proud of what he did and wants it to look right everywhere it appears).

So we have Private Equity, Venture Capital and now, what I'm going to dub, 'Enablers'.

It's a great idea in this context.  It worked once and it can work again.

Why not think about what you need and try it.  You may be helping to support a student?

(Don't ask Louis.  He'd probably do it ... but he just had twins! :).

Welcome to User Generated Financing!

Whose next?