Paul Graham, founder of YCombinator, speaks at Startup School 08 about how to create a successful startup.

So I was browsing Microsoft's Video Site MSN Video and I noticed a little something in the Video Description.

Oh yes! Digg Buttons. Apparently, Microsoft finally understand the power of the leading Social News Site and has jumped on board to ride the wave.

Good job Microsoft!

For those Microsoft Developers out ther, it is often interesting to read case studies of when certain scaling out techniques were needed for other websites. Also useful to know is when they had to take the steps. This can help a lot with planning.

Realistically, these tips are general enough to be applied to any architecture.

One of the largest if not largest installation of Microsoft technologies is MySpace (for better or worse). Here are some articles about their scale out.

Inside MySpace - What steps they took at what number of users. Also what problems they faced.

Ebay also runs IIS, but doesn't seem to really use ASP.Net

Flixster is the leading social network for movie lovers. In recent news, Flixster seems to be busy shopping itself around to various suitors. The latest being suitor is IAC, but IAC decided that they should go their separate ways. One must start to ask itself about Flixster’s position? 

From an advertising perspective, it has a very targeted audience people who like movies. Therefore, common knowledge states that it can theoretically charge advertisers a prettier penny to get the advertiser’s word out and generate buzz. After all, niche websites generate higher CPMs than a generic website. However, one may ask, “Will advertisers pay?”

Is it worthwhile for a production company to get the word out about your movie in a community of movie goers? There are very few new movies playing at a time, so it is probably a rare case that movie aficionados don’t already know about your latest hit movie (or miss movie). Money may be better spent targeting a more general audience like MySpace to build excitement and awareness. Since Flixster hasn’t really become an entertainment destination site, where they could advertise the hottest movie in the music section and the hottest new music in the movies section, they might not get the higher CPM benefits of having a niche segmentation. They’ve essentially become too focused.

Another core problem presents itself. There are only really a handful of movies that come out every year that are worth watching. I know this, because I use Flixster to find movies for me to add to my Blockbuster queue, but there just aren’t that many movies it turns out.  Having this situation hinders the new activity that can really be generated and is needed to sustain a social network. If there is nothing new, what’s the point of coming back?

So around the start of 2007, we launched a new deal’s site as a learning experience. DealComet. Before we dish out the reviews on other websites, it is probably a good idea to do some self introspection, so why not start by reviewing some of our own properties.

The Summary

Deal Comet was spawned in the midst of the whole Web 2.0 user generated hoopla. The idea was to create a geographically segregated user generated deal sites where people could submit deals that they found. This means you could submit deals that were only for the US, or deals only for your city, etc. That local burrito shop offering a really cool special? That happy hour at your local bar is awesome? Submit it. 

I suppose the monetization strategy was to slap adsense on it, and hope for the best. There was also some thought of having a rev share program, but traffic never picked up enough for that to really make sense.

A bunch of minds just coming together with a bunch of laptops creating really cool things. 

This is why I love blogging about this industry.     

This video strikes a little too close to home for some of us. Worth the watch