Potentially, However, since it's anonymity will continue to be an attractive proposition to a large criminal element it's mass appeal is unlikely in my opinion.
I came here to say startup.com, I'd add "Pseudo" as a very good one for a bust of the video streaming space. Silicon Valley pirates, although not entirely factual, is very good for the few who have yet to watch it.
I'll add that the crypto will one day be broken (even brute force will eventually work once CPU/GPU have progressed far enough). And when it is, there is no reason you couldn't just sit back cracking those wallets in secret before funneling the coins your way. A significant weakness of the anonymity of the network means no one really "owns" a wallet in the traditional sense. They are essentially communal.
You're right that sha256 will one day be in jeopardy, but there's no reason why the system can't update itself well before then. If sha256 is broken, all it takes is for people to update their clients and only start accepting sha3, etc.
Previously, breaking a crypto was nice, but not instantly and anonymously profitable as it is with Bitcoin. It will be interesting to see how it plays out when it happens.
In today's domain ecosystem, you're not going to easily find a name which is easy to spell, pronounce, remember AND is free (or affordable) to acquire as a domain name. The vast majority of non-technical users are just going to google for your company, so your example seems a little contrived.
The first part of the conversation would go more like this:
Hey, what's your new site?
grinnit with two n's. So grinn dot it.
However, there is definitely a problem when a search for "grin it" on google doesn't find your site. Moreover when a search for "grin it photos" or "grinit photos" is also unsuccessful. That's definitely a problem. If the spelling of your website isn't immediately obvious (a la reddit), you just need to ensure that users can still find your site.
I don't think it's a horrible name. Seeing it in print makes it instantly memorable which is always helpful, they just needed some additional work on seo for the typos of their name. Calling it "piss poor marketing" is disingenuous and unnecessarily inflammatory.
I think you're wrong. Yes, a lot of very good domains are taken, but you can spend as little as $200 in Flippa.com to get a decent one that people can at least remember.
If you think your brand is a trivial matter, then I'm sorry to hear that.
Look, Being an entrepreneur is not about lining up your ducks 100%, but it is about getting each element of your project as close to "pretty damn good" as possible. Don't let something as important as brand slip to the side guys. It IS important.
Not sure I understand your equation, but I think you're right. It's a happy photo if you GRIN IN IT. The goal was to have a name that's easy to say, short, and bring a smile (Grin). We actually had a list of 50+ names which we brought down to four contenders and checked in every language using Google Translate; we those put out to a survey. 58% of respondents preferred Grinnit.
You are correct and I reacted too defensively. Yes, marketing is absolutely critical, and perhaps there are better domain names that could have been chosen.
HOWEVER, name / domain was not at all the root cause of what we decided was ultimately the reason to stop pursuing this endeavor.
True, but you've just demonstrated that marketing / PR isn't your forte, and you come across a little brash in an Internet forum filled with entrepreneurs and VCs.
I disagree. These kinds of posts take a lot of courage to write, and then people jump in with all kinds of "well, you should have done ..." bullshit advice. People here on HN need to learn (and respect) when someone is asking for feedback vs when they're telling a story.
this person just closed his/her business and trying to help others. Then the commenter calls them "piss poor" - that's not "sensible." Perhaps there is a more mature way to respond, but that's still not cool. I feel for these guys. Call it a tie.
I mean literally cutting the data sent into two pieces and each piece entering a different database server in a different country. Then, when requested, pulling both pieces and sending them to users who patch them together with client side script...?
So, basically a RAID array? You'd have to have a fair amount of redundancy, to make sure that if your Dystopiastan server gets taken down, your servers in Freedomia and Libertania have enough data to continue serving your users. (And yet you can't have so much redundancy that a single country could rebuild your database if they take enough servers.)
Not to mention, latency issues would be a problem.
Haha, I can code like a machine, but design I just don't have a clue about. 3 weeks ago it would have all been Comic Sans. Yeah, that bad.
Any further tips on the design?
P.S. Clicking on the sign up button is all you need to do to use it. No password or anything required at all. The design once you're "in" is a little better :)
Thanks for the offer :) but I'll have to pass as the code just isn't well formatted for design. Example: no proper containers, in fact, if you check the source most pages don't even have html tags...I guess that's what I get for coding at 3am.
Has their been any word on a Bitcoin 2?