I've been thinking awhile that i might make a similar post to this one at some stage. Not being a programmer and beginning a startup that requires programmers without one at hand already is quite difficult. That being said I personally would never do a pure software startup. However of late i've come up with plenty of good business models that have a software element but also requires skills that I have outside of what they try to teach in a commerce degree. With that situation it seems a more equal partnership and also allows a greater sharing of the main company functions, something that helps down the road. I would suggest you look at doing a startup where you can really contribute to the actual creation of the product/service.
The other thing about writing these pleas for help/founder is that you've got to show a little leg. "Software as a Service business" is hardly going to bring the hordes knocking down your doors. Even if you don't want to give your ideas away at least narrow down the areas of your interest because your much more likely to attract someone good if they already share that interest.
Thanks for your reply and your thoughts on startup business models.
The reason why I didn't go into detail about some of my ideas, is that I'm still flexible about the idea and the direction. I'm not looking to hire a developer, I'm looking for a co-founder. I have a whole bunch of ideas based around all sorts of pain I've had setting up a small company, and I've built systems to alleviate much of this pain. But maybe the co-founder is passionate about something else that also fits in with what I'm doing. Thats why I'd like to discuss ideas over Skype and/or email.
I'm not looking for hordes either - I'd be very happy with one person who is on my wavelength and has the programming experience where I have the complementary business skill set, contacts, and experience.
One interesting difference i see between Facebook & Twitter is that i've never seen someone being peer pressured into signing up to Twitter whereas i see it constantly occur for facebook. I too share the 15 year olds position, i signed up to twitter but hardly anyone i know in real life uses it and i'm not interested in celebrities.
From the relatively external POV (I don't care for facebook), this is just the 3rd round of the social pressure thing, the first two being friendster and myspace. Facebook is the first one that has really also dragged in older generations, but that's not enough to prevent it from ending up like the others. Sure, there's no obvious single replacement on the horizon, but the networks have switched platforms en masse twice before and there's no reason to believe they can't again.
In fact, now that all generations are getting acclimated to the concept of social networking, some of those new people will almost certainly start looking beyond facebook, and with interoperable web services this could result in at least a good chunk of the social web increasingly using focused components rather than one monolithic system.
This probably doesn't surprise anyone but their current business model is terrible. Why would anyone click on a text based ad which distracts them from the video they want to watch. I don't see why anyone would voluntarily do that. At some point google is going to have to bite the bullet and have video ads. Even if they are on after a video is shown they would be far more effective and desirable for advertisers.
I'm with Facebook on this one, users to some degree trust that their Facebook information isn't freely available on the web. Thats an integral part of their business model that the communication is only with friends. As most people find communication with friends to be more important than communication with others on the web i believe that facebooks business model is far superior to twitters and so there is no reason to change it.
As far as business models are concerned, having data that is open is more likely to lead to better web monetization like contextual ads. The ability to have inbound links from referral sites and Google is important for ads.
I might just be cynical but i reckon that they are having problems getting people to click on their ads. The redesigns seem to be attempts to fix that problem.
