I think the reason investors are so excited is that the users are. Experienced investors have seen this pattern before. Occasionally a startup will hit a previously undiscovered spot in the periodic table and just take off. The end result is almost always good, unless the startup commits suicide like Friendster or gets offed like Napster.
Yes, its seems that the simple visual freedom of expression in combination with the young fun loving community is attracting lots of users within this age range who are looking for a new outlet to uniquely express themselves with their peers. DailyBooth is definitely on a roll right now and has great potential to be the next Twitter.
Yeah, there was another post talking about how important context is. The basic functionality of DailyBooth isn't that different, but the communities are almost nothing alike -- except, of course, for the memes that originated on 4chan.
I just went back and looked at their application to figure out how we realized they were good. Their answers were very clear and concise; they obviously understood their users well. Plus they had both done interesting stuff before.
The article said 6.5 million uniques. The URL you gave claims 150k. I have always been confused by the various rankings but that seems a big difference.
Do a search for naked Friday. It's already happening on the site now. But the big problem is it's pedobear central. Most of these kids are too young. Sounds like a big problem they better nip in the bud now.
Hot? Or not? They do not seem to understand RSS feeds. Feeds are not linked to in meta tags nor anywhere on the page. When I inquired by email, the guy responded with a bunch of false URLs. I managed to fix the typos and find the true feeds, but it didn't even use media RSS, so the feeds were useless anyway.
If they become or are very successful, at least I don't have to tell myself "damn, why did I not act on that idea". Definitely a market I don't understand and to be honest, don't really care for. However, if they can make it big, more power to them!
Don't feel bad. Even super angel Ron Conway didn't "get" or invest in Facebook early on. It took Facebook a long time to reach profitability, but they still made it!
Percentage growth comparisons between companies of different sizes are meaningless. When you're small you can 'outgrow' anything substantially larger than you with ease. It only starts to count when you're of equal size, reasonably big and outgrowing your competitors by a significant margin.
Any startup will grow 1000's of % in the first couple of years, that's the easy part, you get that growth for free. After all 10 * 500 users is 5000 users, 1000% growth. But it doesn't mean much.
I think this represents a wave shift in the social identity landscape - certain types of users want to share everything, and make that public. Sites like Facebook with their 'walled garden' photos are missing out on a great opportunity. I'm glad to hear about DailyBooth as it's a YCombinator participant. We're applying to participate in their next session.
One way they can start monetizing now is by partnering with our company, PicWash.com. They can add a link on their toolbar for users to get their photo retouched by our professional graphic designers. It's a revenue share model that can help get a new stream of revenue on their books. There are lots of other more traditional revenue models that can be done as well (advertising, freemium, etc).
I upvoted you. Although it was self promoting are we not seeing the forest for the trees? HN is run by a startup promoter and it all about startups and promoting startups and monitizing startups.
To me your idea is perfectly legit. Although I see dailybooth as another site that pollutes the internet with more "pay attention to me" content, I think a partnership with a site like your might be the only way to make money off this rubbish.
thanks Kevin. I was specifically answering the question about monetization... The ratings system on here is tough but I must say it's fun reading the stories and comments. You guys have a lot of interesting things to say.
