ShowHype

Tonight we opened up a site that we’ve been working on for the past couple of months: ShowHype, the web’s best place to find news and video about entertainment. When we considered possible vertical extensions of Ballhype, celebrity gossip and entertainment news made the most sense because

When we launched Ballhype, we had strong ties to some top sports bloggers, and were acquainted with many more. We also had the benefit of two months of closed beta testing to build relationships with a core group of users. There is no doubt that our success has been due in large part to their support. With ShowHype, we don’t have a huge network of entertainment bloggers who are ready to sound the trumpets.

Where Ballhype came flying out of the gate due to a great deal of initial publicity, then found its footing over the next couple of weeks, ultimately growing at an average of 50% each month, I predict ShowHype will have a smaller launch and take a couple of months to get the same level of acceptance among entertainment bloggers.

Of course, one big advantage with this launch is that we have a community of users who are used to voting and commenting on stories. The question is how many of them do we get to follow us to Hollywood?

Posted by Erin 14.Oct.07 Milestones, ShowHype Read more Comment (1)

Add these to our Holiday gift basket list

Today we set another new record for traffic on Ballhype. The fun part about this business is that you never know what the next day’s big story is going to be. We certainly didn’t expect Miss South Carolina’s eloquent response to a question on the sad state of the American education system (solution: more maps) to be the number one story for most of the day. In the sports world today, no single national story grabbed everyone’s attention like a dog fighting or referee scandal, but site activity in general is picking up quite a bit as we head into football season and people return from their summer vacations.

So thank you Miss South Carolina, Nani, Babalu, and Brett Myers. You’ve made our day.

Posted by Erin 27.Aug.07 Milestones Read more Comments (0)

Wow, that was cool.

About 28 hours ago, we did the non-nuclear equivalent of turning both keys at the same time: we each put a finger on the enter key and pressed it to launch the public version of Ballhype. Immediately we scrambled to get announcement emails ready to send to users and friends and bloggers. And then waited for the first review to get posted… and finally, yes!

Happily, Mr. Arrington liked the site and better yet, predicted that other sports fans would too. Over the next few hours, we got more great coverage which made all of this work worthwhile. We wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the pace picked up even more to the point where Jason and I were talking back and forth and IMing and emailing links and site stats sometimes all at the same time. When we figured the east coast wasn’t up yet and reasonable people on the west coast had finally called it a night, we took a short break for sleep. I slept, Jason got up again after an hour.

Today was more of the same - adrenaline rushes kept us going. I had been worried that our babysitter being out of town would make dealing with launch impossible, but actually I think it was good to be forced to take breaks and sing songs, build lego towers, and read 5 variations on truck books.

It’s very fun to see more people on Ballhype and hear from them. The automated welcome message comes from my account so I generally get a lot of messages from users, which is great. So far we’ve gotten a couple of offers of help, a request for a Ballhype tshirt (we don’t have any), links of new blogs to add, and a lot of great feedback that will shape the roadmap.

Thanks to everyone who helped spread the word today. We know that we now have to live up to your expectations and those of our users - and we will.

Posted by Erin 03.Apr.07 Milestones, Publicity Read more Comments (0)

Big Night - We Launched!

Tonight at about 8:30pm, we launched the public version of Ballhype. The pace of the last few weeks has been frenetic. There was so much we wanted to get done, and although my jaws hurt from the teeth grinding that is now occurring at all hours, the real weight of this release has been borne almost completely by Jason.

The two biggies that have kept us up at night (in addition to the ever-growing launch task list):

  1. Will they come? We believe in Ballhype - in fact, our toddler has taken to yelling “Here we go Ballhype, here we go Ballhype!” at random moments. But we’re on the edge of our seat with nervous anticipation about this launch and how it will be received by fans, as well as by sports and tech bloggers and journalists.
  2. Will the site hold up if they do? We moved to new servers and did extensive load testing, but there’s always that nagging worry…

Working around the clock takes its toll physically and emotionally, of course, and Jason has been fighting a cold for a while now, but we’re so stinkin’ excited that nothing seems to bother us these days.

One big reason why despite being a two-person company sharing office space the size of a walk-in closet (literally - this office was originally a walk-in closet), we don’t feel like we’re working in a vacuum, is that we have an amazing group of people on our advisory board. They are incredibly generous with their time and expertise, and in the past few weeks they have come through in an impressive way: suggesting great ideas for Ballhype features, submitting some of the best (and funniest) stories on Ballhype, and getting the word out to influencers in their networks. If nothing else comes from this whole Ballhype thing, we will feel privileged to know and work with this group of sports guys and gal.

Posted by Erin 01.Apr.07 Milestones Read more Comments (10)

The First Demo

On Thursday, we got a chance to demonstrate Ballhype for a couple hundred people at the first year party for Yahoo’s user interface library. It was a good time–much more low-key than the last Yahoo event I attended, though. One of the more interesting demos was from Jeremy Gillick, who presented a YUI extension that produces some cool effects in a very clean way.

We’re still in closed beta, so it was the first real public exposure for the application, and from a technical perspective, it was a great forum. We use YUI extensively throughout the site to handle AJAX requests, auto-complete fields, drag and drop customization, calendars, tabs, and more. It’s a great library with great documentation, and I love the fact that it includes *almost* everything I need (a WYSIWYG editor is my only outstanding request).

In a panic, we printed up some temporary business cards at Kinko’s the night before the event. They ended up looking like the kind of thing you’d cut out of the side of a cereal box. As it turned out, we really didn’t need them. The demo went over reasonably well, and we got several beta invitation requests the next day, which is a good sign that the name is at least sticky.

Posted by Jason 24.Feb.07 Milestones, Publicity Read more Comment (1)

Yes, We’re Crazy

From many perspectives, it’s a dubious time for us to be starting a new business. Erin was in a great situation at Intuit–doing interesting work for a team and company that was willing to accommodate a part-time schedule. I had the best job of my career–working with a strong team and exciting technology at Biz360. We have two young babies, a sizable mortgage, and college funds that need, well, funding.

But in other ways, it’s the perfect time. There’s a market need that we think we can address (more on that later), we have some industry goodwill, and we aren’t getting any younger. Plus, thanks to excellent frameworks like Django and YUI, building applications requires a much smaller investment these days compared to even two or three years ago.

In the end, though, we really had no choice. Once we realized that the venture was a possibility, we couldn’t stop thinking about it. I couldn’t be more excited about it. There will be a lot of long hours ahead (there have already been plenty of long hours), and there is no guarantee of success, but I’m confident that the journey will be worthwhile regardless.

We’ll try to find time to jot down some thoughts and experiences here for the benefit of our families, colleagues, and any other interested observers. If you have any feedback, don’t hesitate to share that as well.

Posted by Jason 31.Jan.07 Milestones Read more Comments (0)