Who am I to question the Dropbox CEO, but... Even if the solution is new, if you're solving a real problem that people have (and if you're not, what's wrong?), can't you use the search terms around that? E.g., "how to recover lost files", or "increase disk space", or "share files", or whatnot... Just get people at the point at which they're experiencing the pain you're addressing... No?
can't you use the search terms around that? E.g., "how to recover lost files", or "increase disk space", or "share files", or whatnot... Just get people at the point at which they're experiencing the pain you're addressing
I think the problem is that those searchers are likely just looking for free online tutorials, not a paid solution. They got plenty of clicks, but few sales. I ran into the same problem with my outsourcing company. Small businesses with 5-10 employees aren't searching for outsourcing on Google, big multinational companies are. But I don't have a 1000 seat call center, just a dozen guys who can do web design, data entry, etc. It turns out my target market was best reached through word of mouth among small business owners, not through Adwords.
Search ads are a double edged sword. They are good because you can advertise and deliver people exactly what they are looking for, but offer them something different and the conversion rate will plummet and Google will penalize you
I'll strike a somewhat contrarian view: having children doesn't really have to change who you are. You can still enjoy most of the things you enjoy, except you get to bring your children into it, and enjoy it on a new, cool level. We enjoy art & opera, so we take our kids to museums and concerts (we started taking our oldest at 3, our youngest is not ready for opera yet, but can do small concerts). We love linguistics, history, science, so we love sharing these things with our children (etymology is a particular hit with our 5-yr-old). Bonus point: if you're interested in cognitive psychology, you'll get the greatest kick out of observing your children's attempts at modeling the world & language. You like travel? Take your kids with you. Love to read? Share your favorites with kids. I remember how my father always used to re-tell us his favorite books (sci-fi stuff, jules verne, etc). We watch Daily Show each night with our kids (when we go to vote with them, they know stuff, it's wicked cool :) I still spend all my free time doing startups (yes, yes, there's lots less of it, but still). The first year+ was a bit hard (early years fall disproportionately hard on the women as milk-producing & comfort-giving machines, hah), and I must take lots of forced vacations (daycare closed, school closed, child is sick), but... What I'm trying to say, take it easy, and don't worry too much about it. For one, you can't really predict what'll happen anyway, you've got to live through it. As an old Arabic saying goes, "What can the horse tell you about the road he hasn't traveled?" :)
Ok, I'll add my anecdote too. Hacking != Having a personal computer. I started programming on my 3rd grade (required-to-have) programmable calculator (that had 10 steps & comparison to 0 only). Then, my father showed me Pascal on his computer at work (and programmers in the 1980s Soviet Union did not upper middle class make; plumbers made more), and I started programming on paper, and bringing in my paper programs to my father's work to "check". Then, the school I went to was a special math school (merit, not privilege) and they got computers (the only school computers in our city then) in my 4th grade. When we came to the United States, we were on welfare, so, no personal computer till I was in college. And yet, the schools had computers, you know. Granted, old macs, but computers.
The reason the "anecdote" is relevant is that the article doesn't state any probabilities or historical context here, it's just "If A, then B". There were plenty of periods in America when that couldn't have been true even for most people. E.g., in 1970s, if you were hacking, it didn't mean privilege, just luck in having access somehow. If you're learning to hack _now_ as a child... Come on, pretty much anyone can get access to some type of device now, even if it's just in the library.
As a busy-busy-busy parent, I find Facebook to be pretty easy & fast way to share photos with family. I had my own script a while back, but Facebook just completely took over that: it's easy to do, almost everyone who may want to see the photos is there (and it's easy to add an email of the few who aren't on FB), you can add captions or you can skip it, it looks reasonably well... And mind you, free.
Ditto on dpcan's comment: it's the sorting & tagging that are much higher portion of the hassle. Especially since with kids, you take tooooooooooons of photos, even of the same moment, in which case you really-really need to sort if you want anyone to ever look at the photos.
I can't see on the site how you've solved those problems, it certainly doesn't look that way.
But are there really all that many undergrad programs that prepare people to go straight into the associated careers? Why hold CS to a different standard? Maybe we just should have a programming school a la medical school :)
Schools should have separate programs for students who want to pursue academic research and who want to work in the industry. Recently graduated with a CS degree, I found that most school courses didn't help much me to land on a job. It's really the internships (which was part of my program) I did during my school years helped me most to land on a job.
Because highly successful people are not necessarily those who can teach (and also, are 'human teachers' anyway). Teaching is inspiration, empathy, enthusiasm, wit, patience. You could be a Nobel Prize laureate and have none of these, and you'd make a perfect snooze-worthy drone (witness some highly decorated profs at some top universities). I'm going to assume you don't have any children because I think otherwise you would see how much a difference person's personality has on the child's ability to learn.
Granted, many teachers suck. In the U.S. we don't have a system that rewards good teaching.
Also granted, the ability of the current technology to bring amazing (human!) teachers to the masses is great and growing. But, teaching is a two-way street, and you can't have much of that with 1 to 1 million ratio.
Also don't dismiss significant used books market. I hardly ever buy books over $5. Right now, digital books are priced like brand new books, and you can't resell them. There's some price discrimination in terms of how much time elapsed since release and popularity, but, given that I can buy a brand new book on eBay a few hours after it was published (or earlier), destruction of such market would be quite painful for many people. And so far I haven't seen even an inkling of a solution to this issue in any of digital goods categories.
Many people have said similar things before and nothing happened, neither to the web nor to their reputation. I think it's because it's one of those things that seems to be a good idea in a certain light, or at least based on good intentions.
