Plenty of Fish
My friends and I are always talking about web-based businesses that people are able to start, grow organically, and need little hand holding. Check out From 10 Hours a Week, $10 Million a Year in the New York Times.
Granted, the thing I find funniest in this article is how unconcerned he is with user experience. Sure, his site is doing really well and people apparently like it but it is just this kind of response that leaves the door open for someone to beat him.
Spending time at Plenty of Fish is a visually painful experience. Wherever a row of members’ photos is displayed, which is most pages, many of the faces are elongated or scrunched because Mr. Frind has not taken the trouble to write the software code that would automatically resize frames or crop photos to prevent distortion. When I asked him why he had not addressed the problem, he said it was a “trivial” issue that did not bother users.
And that my friends is the power of the free market. His choice not to address it, his user’s choice to stay until they find a better solution, and someone else’s option to come along and dethrone him. Maybe I should have gone with, “that’s the circle of life (on the web).”