Don Wilson thoughts and ideals of an internet magnate

To be honest, I have at least 20 projects that I can spend all of my time on. The hard part of my life is figuring out what project/idea I should devote most of my time.

The project that has peaked most of my interest lately is TagItFunny, a digg-like site that allows users to post links, videos, images, jokes/stories, et al. There is a lot of rewriting that I must go through if I want to optimize it enough for it to be useful to me again. I started work on it before I started learning Smarty templating and how useful Smarty’s cache features can be. It was before I saw Snap, the primary source for the automated screenshots, pulled the plug on a service. It was before I realised that I should work on things that I really believe in and can grow into something useful to it’s users instead of forcing content-based sites down users like I’ve done in the past.

Waiting on a project and luckily coming up on the previously mentioned news piece regarding Snap and gaining more knowledge has allowed an actual future for the project. I could’ve walked in blindly, continued what I’ve been doing in the past, and run into too many problems that might have caused my exit.

Whether or not I actually pursue TagItFunny (the name is going to get a definite change) is for the future to decide.

All you really need to create something that will take down a beast is a talented entrepreneur, a smart guy or two on your team, and enough horsepower to keep your stake in the competition alive.

What I’m talking about, specifically, is taking a competitor, someone the size of Facebook or IMDB, down to their knees by providing more privacy and more ability to interact with their friends in innovative ways. When I mean a smart guy or two, or more specifically in my case, are people who know how to control highly dynamic and efficient database manageability, as well as another server optomization guy. With the skills that I have as a PHP developer and service builder, a team like that could easily, given the space for rapid growth early on (server bandwidth, processing power, storage), one could take on a giant like Facebook within months.

The only problem that is in my way at this moment is the lack of ability to devote my entire attention to such a project, as I’m focusing on building up income again. I wonder, however, if I were born into a family with tremendous wealth, would I have the ability, nay the desire to go after something like this? I wouldn’t think so, and for that I am the most thankful. I am able to prove myself when some cannot. Since I’ve been given the ability to do such a thing, I believe I’m going to chase it as hard as possible.

In the mean time, for inspiration on my goal, I’ve been reading an eBook that I purchased a few days ago, called Inside Facebook. The story is about the first senior engineer to land into the then tiny Thefacebook, watch it prosper to over many, many millions of pageviews a day, who he runs into in the process, and suggestions for things to take into account when starting your own startup. Very inspirational for someone in my shoes. I would’ve died to work there when he did and to watch something explode wildly with popularity. I haven’t gotten to the part as to why he eventually left within little over a year, if that even is in the book. I’m about 25 pages in and I’m already throughly enjoying it. I’d recommend it to anyone looking to start any kind of large goal such as Facebook or the like, or if you’d just like to hear what it’s like to work in the starting stages of a prosperous company.

Anyway, back to my original statement regarding taking them down within a few months. I absolutely know something like that couldn’t realistically happen within a few months, but that’s always been in the back of my mind. Perhaps it’s the knowledge that I have most of the skills available to take on such a challenge and at least present a viable candidate to take on a big guy.