Holy TechCrunch Batman!
Well, we were hoping for a ’soft’ launch but TechCrunch, as apparently avid readers of Barenaked App, had other ideas. Here’s what they said about Amigo:
“Simple but elegant”
“…much of Web 2.0 is about moving beyond email for communication with constituents - but a person can’t live on kool aid alone and Amigo is an interesting development.”
“All in all, it’s a nice clean, simple system that was developed in a transparent way by some people who are active participants in the Web 2.0 community.”
We’re overjoyed! Amigo is running steady, we’re on the front page of TechCrunch and the Summit in San Francisco is just around the corner.
My congratulations to everyone involved.
Comment by Daniel Bower — September 6, 2006 @ 9:03 am
Good job! It’ll be interesting to see how it develops.
Comment by John Topley — September 6, 2006 @ 10:36 am
Wow, congratulations! You deserve the good press – Enjoy it!
Comment by Brandon Eley — September 6, 2006 @ 11:46 am
You guys always work hard (and play hard) so I’ve been looking forward to seeing Amigo up and running… now I’m looking forward to seeing Amigo (and my amigos) be successful!
Comment by Ryan Shelton — September 6, 2006 @ 11:56 am
congratulations guys do we get to knw now how you deal with click fraud?
Adi
Comment by Adi — September 7, 2006 @ 9:28 am
Good stuff Ryan and Gill! I’m really impressed, sounds like a brilliant idea and you should be pretty successful with it.
I’ve been inspired by your barenakedapp blog, so i’ve started a similar blog around the building of my own web app for personal budgets… http://smoothbudget.blogspot.com
Maybe this could be a trend? Blog openly about how you made your app, to both give back to the community (advice, tips), whilst generating a bit of hype for yourself?
Sounds like you guys didn’t put a foot wrong. Hopefully the first month goes all smooth, after that it should be all plain sailing!
Comment by Chris Hulbert — September 7, 2006 @ 12:10 pm
Well done guys, looks like a great app!
Comment by Ben Bishop — September 8, 2006 @ 2:33 pm
Ok if ppc fraud isnt an issue thn here is another business plan for all
1. sign up select and ad send it to free yahoo lists
2. hire people back in china and pay them to click
3. use software to generate automated clicks
4. click yourself
5. take the heyamigo url put it under adwords for absurd 5 cent per click keywords
i am just sad no one here would respond to a legitimate question or maybe its just a place where enough ass lickers come to praise you so no one has to reply to questions that cause a itch in the brain
asked once asked twice asking again do you guys track and credit advertisers for fraud clicks?
Comment by Adi — September 9, 2006 @ 7:04 pm
feel free to avoid this question till it gets lost again in the sea of losers prasing atleast ill knw for sure i am wasting my time and its not by chance you guys missed my question again
Comment by Adi — September 9, 2006 @ 7:06 pm
Adi - you’re sounding pretty upset there, try to relax a bit.
The reason I haven’t responded is because we’re getting ready for The Future of Web Apps in a few days.
Yes, we’re taking click fraud very seriously. I can’t tell you how we’re combating it, or that would undermine the solution.
Comment by Ryan Carson — September 9, 2006 @ 9:32 pm
Guys, intention wasnt to offend. But to know.
Since its bug testing season ill just do some clickfraud testing jst registered recently
Comment by Adi — September 11, 2006 @ 9:55 am
Is there anyone actually advertising yet? I’m signed up but it just says no ads available. I can’t see anyway to see what ads are currently on the systems so I’ve no way of knowing whether I’m listed correctly or not.
Comment by Simon — September 11, 2006 @ 10:32 am
Yes there are people advertising! Our Carson Workshops newsletter has been matched with 4 ads already but we haven’t used them yet.
We’ll probably make some changes to the way the system alerts you to ads available. It’s not ideal at the moment but we’re working on it.
Adi - thanks for testing - every bit helps!
Comment by Gill — September 11, 2006 @ 4:35 pm
Love amigo! Great concept, great design! What ever happened with the trademark?
Comment by Joe — September 15, 2006 @ 2:42 am
I realise you guys are busy, etc. This is nice but doesn’t add up as anything significant. You’ve built an email ad-matching system which many have tried and tested over several years, and the only thing better is … the interface to check stats!?
The other key problem - run-time filling of ads is also not solved - you ask people to get advert copy text an instant before sending the email - isn’t this a tad hit and miss?
I don’t see why an advertiser would pay $0.50 for an untargeted click from an email newsletter when she can buy a precisely targeted Google Adwords click for $0.10. Just wondering about the fundamental thinking here - is there any, other than making your quick buck?
As a publisher, I’m not complaining since the rates are high, but unless you only plan for people you know to advertise, how will this scale to people you don’t know? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
Cheers
Amit
Comment by Amit — September 21, 2006 @ 2:29 pm
I’m not sure how you measure significance. We’re already bringing in decent revenue from Amigo - so the concept must be working.
That’s an inherent problem with newsletters, they aren’t sent/rendered/received in a real-time environmnet. Given this large constraint, we think Amigo is an elegant solution. You’re free to disagree though :)
However, there are billions of emails sent out to newsletters. We only need a little chunk of this market to do very well.
The reason is simple: The email newsletter market is untapped. There isn’t anyway to advertise to this huge market. Plus, not everyone knows about, feels comfortable with, or likes using Google Adwords.
Comment by Ryan Carson — September 21, 2006 @ 2:55 pm
Hi Ryan
I send an automated list every day. Any way of including an automatic ad? Perhaps a web service call from my server to retrieve ad text?
Amit
Comment by Amit — September 22, 2006 @ 7:19 am
How ironic that DropBox, the name you guys originally wanted to use for DropSend
http://www.barenakedapp.com/the-name/dropbox-vs-dropsend
Was reserved by PayPal, the company powering HeyAmigo.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/22/exclusive-mysterious-paypal-secure-storage/
Comment by Wayne — September 22, 2006 @ 1:31 pm
You guys should buy zookoda and include an automated amigo to it. This way people could presumably preview their ad, make it HTML, etc. It would solve many problems. But I guess you don’t really have the needed funds.
Comment by Guillaume — September 25, 2006 @ 7:57 am