Oh man, this Kickstarter is hilarious. While GethN7's instant reaction was disgust, my first reaction was "I wonder if I can pay a grand to get ATT featured on TVT's front page?" Seriously, ten bills would be cheap for *that* kind of publicity.
But let's get back to the hilarity. Basically, they want to get rid of the wiki. No, really. They'd be replacing it with a model that was not page-based, but relation-based, where the network would automatically generate itself. And something like that basically means writing the software itself -- and developing a brand new UI for user-generated content, and integrating existing content into the new plan. And to achieve this plan, they will hire one programmer for 50k$ for one year. Oh wait, they're paying for more hardware too, so say 45k$ for the year.
So that programmer doesn't exist. I mean, I remember the BS I had to do to set up a wiki with the existing content, and that took more than a year. I couldn't do their proposal in that amount of time -- and a sufficiently good enough programmer who could do it will not work for $45 thousand a year. Or $90k. We're in the six-figure range minimum, if it's even possible. And it's not like they can offer stock options as a future prospect -- TVT is not a startup, and I don't see how it could grow to more than double it's existing user base. There's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
They could maybe monetize their existing users more effectively, but there's only so many otaku are willing to spend for weird crap. But the existing revenue stream, internet advertisting, is not really robust enough to support multiple paid staff. Which I guess is why we're back to begging the users to donate cash for pie-in-the-sky goals, the untapped revenue stream.
So am I thinking of donating a large amount? Yep! Do I think they'll achieve their kickstarter goals? Not a chance in hell.
-- ∇×V
But let's get back to the hilarity. Basically, they want to get rid of the wiki. No, really. They'd be replacing it with a model that was not page-based, but relation-based, where the network would automatically generate itself. And something like that basically means writing the software itself -- and developing a brand new UI for user-generated content, and integrating existing content into the new plan. And to achieve this plan, they will hire one programmer for 50k$ for one year. Oh wait, they're paying for more hardware too, so say 45k$ for the year.
So that programmer doesn't exist. I mean, I remember the BS I had to do to set up a wiki with the existing content, and that took more than a year. I couldn't do their proposal in that amount of time -- and a sufficiently good enough programmer who could do it will not work for $45 thousand a year. Or $90k. We're in the six-figure range minimum, if it's even possible. And it's not like they can offer stock options as a future prospect -- TVT is not a startup, and I don't see how it could grow to more than double it's existing user base. There's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
They could maybe monetize their existing users more effectively, but there's only so many otaku are willing to spend for weird crap. But the existing revenue stream, internet advertisting, is not really robust enough to support multiple paid staff. Which I guess is why we're back to begging the users to donate cash for pie-in-the-sky goals, the untapped revenue stream.
So am I thinking of donating a large amount? Yep! Do I think they'll achieve their kickstarter goals? Not a chance in hell.
-- ∇×V