Fotothing's Fotothing

yeah for fothothing!!! where's the cake?

..Congratulation..

happy birthday, la la la
great job! beautiful photos! lots of fun!!

An amazing start, Dom. We're witnessing the birth of a great site here. Congratulations! Fotothing is top item on my website today. Hope you get some signups from it!

Congratulations goes to you, Dom. By creating a clean, direct site and listening to what we're interested in and and figuring how to put it into practice, you've given us an insight into how things could get done!

What amazes me is how unresponsive other sites can be as far as change. I know that with, say 724,684 Fotologgers, making a structural change takes more time, but when too often SOMEthing is broken (f/f, comments, photos, groups) you've shown it can't require THAT many resources.

Happy first month! :)

Wait. I forgot to ask a coupla questions.

1. Could you explain the "15,000 unique users?"

2. Is it too early to tell or can you make any money from the Goooooogle Ads? (which i think are tasteful, btw).

Great about the ads generating revenues, Dom! That's wonderful news. To be honest, i have only clicked once to any of them and it was a valid one that interested me. Is it unethical to click there every once in a while just to, um, help stimulate the ad campaign or does that even help?

And the other. I'm sorry, in the ways of stand-alone computers i'm fine. Networking and the Internet are a bit confusing. Do you think that means that 14,800 people are watching our photos go by? (15,000 unique hits minus 200 registered members). I'm showing my ignorance, i'm sure, but i really don't know what it means. Sorry.

[SOAPBOX]
oh, and all citizens of the United States - PLEASE VOTE (for Kerry/Edwards would be my preference, but even if you must vote for Bush, PLEASE DO IT).

Though this year my be atypical, usually the number of people who vote (read: care about the democracy), have been less than 50%. In Japan it's almost 90%.
[/SOAPBOX]

I'm so glad Zen didn't understand - I wouldn't have been brave enough to admit it - but I AM brave enough to say, thanks for this site, Dom, it has taught me so much already and given me a great deal of pleasure - all in the space of one little month.

yay. happy birthday!

> The ads are currently generating enough revenue to pay for the server. As the site grows, traffic will grow and revenue SHOULD grow with it.

Great news. Roll on the profits!

Well, now that's kind of interesting... (and maybe this isn't the place to discuss this, but that never stopped me from opening my mouth before)

So, Fotothing notwithstanding, the best business model for a site that wants to generate revenues via gooooogle ads (or other kind of pay-per-click scheme) is to attract people to a site where they THINK they'll be interested in learning/seeing something, but discover that they're not getting the answer and become bored. Preferably people who use the ads to 'click away' or continue their surfing. (Thus generating the revs)

I guess the pseudo-porn sites are structured like that. Anytime i've thought maybe i'd look into some visual titilation of that kind, i seem to be going to sites that are lists of other porn sites that lead to other lists. I'm always teased and don't have the patience of more than 5 clicks to actually get to the porn.

Hmmmm... (Am i then considered a 'premature clicker'?)

Seems that some music/lyric and clip-art/font sites are like that. Whenever i'm looking for those i get to something i THINK is going to be what i'm looking for, but i end up looking at 'rated' lists of sites where my info might be.

It seems to me that's becoming the nature of infomration on the internet. It becomes profitable (share the wealth) if, thru context-sensitive ads the information isn't in one place, but spread thruout the internet so that everybody gets a piece.

I'm sure what attracts people to this site originally is our gorgeous photos, but rather than not getting the right visuals, they just become bored after 20 or so shots and move on.

So, strangely, with our money and consumer click-thru power, we are actually helping to foster an internet that is larger than the sum of human knowledge because a lot of it is repeated and it's spread out all over the place. Ok, maybe that's an exaggeration.

But the truth is, if one website gave me a complete epiphany and i became enlightened as a result of it, chances are i would go outside and 'be' rather than spend my time on the silly internet looking for something undefined. I would stop generating click-thrus. That wouldn't serve capitalism AT ALL!

And darn it, why aren't many of those 15,000 people becoming members? Can't they see how COOL this is???

Anyway, sorry for the intrusion of my mental ramblings. Carry on all!

On my site I definitely notice that the boring pages get more Google ad revenue. I think it's a fundamental flaw in their model.

Hey Happy Birthday FT!

Unfortunately the election didn't go so well... for the candidates I voted for. It is, however, estimated that over 60% of the registered voters actually voted this year... that's quite an accomplishment!

wow! A whole month old! YAY!

creeping up on 250 users! slow and steady wins the race! this site is definitely a winner - i'm enjoying it anyway ;)

i agrre with jef and it will be great to have a tag system for the images, like flickr.

A great site. Enjoy reading the comments of other photo buffs.