People build sites that are very good all the time, often 'the best site for X by a mile', but they don't make it to the top because of poor SEO or marketing. Just because they are a good product doesn't mean they get to the top. RapGenius should be no different.

And what about the majority of people who simply want their lyrics, instead of all those messy annotations? The other sites give me that and that's why they've been at the top for the past decade.

i dont see how they can beat azlyrics and metrolyrics in SEO. I've been using them for over a decade

You would be surprised at the volume of true organic links a site like rap genius could generate due to the fact it's actually link-able.

RapGenius is cool, people share it. Azlyrics is not cool. (In my best Justin Timberlake voice)

You're very spot on here. I wrote a post a year ago on RapGenius and their SEO: http://moz.com/blog/how-i-would-do-seo-for-rap-genius

I have recommended RapGenius. I have not recommended any other site.

This is why I don't attend hackathons anymore. At the bigger events, there's always bound to be controversy, cheaters, questionable criteria, etc.

Perhaps you are attending hackathons for the wrong reason? I didn't personally attend, but I'm sure anyone who went in order to build an interesting indea with smart hackers probably had a decent time.

Allegations of cheating are serious, but they shouldn't affect your enjoyment of the event unless your main purpose was the win the prize.

For the wrong reason? What's with all these smartie pants on hackernews? A big hackathon always has some sort of incentive, and aiming for that is wrong?

I don't know about you, but I enjoy winning, and I've won hackathons before. If I just wanted to build something with my hacker friends, I can do it any weekend I want.

someone misused mongodb, and now they're blaming mongodb for it.

A social network will have a lot of relations -- so you should use a relational database.

Other web apps may not need as many relations (most mobile apps), in which mongodb is a superior solution

you keep using that word "relations". i do not think it means what you think it means.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_algebra

right on. a large of big companies don't have things like automated testing

Or they do, but only in a small niche where a progressive manager made it a priority and hasn't yet earned consensus among his or her peers. The same things goes re: NIH at most large companies. It's not that the homegrown tool is better, but if it's the difference between spending $250k on dev and $100k/yr on maintenance and improvements versus $1.5m on licensing, $500k on implementation and change management and another $250k/yr ongoing... those things get a lot of scrutiny. Especially when they're not driving the profit. As a couple of examples, let's look at homegrown HR systems vs things like Workday. Workday is loads better and they are constantly adding new features, but it is always easy to excuse a homegrown HR system because of innumerable edge cases in localized employment law, or ties to tiny payroll systems in third world countries that you've already built but no one else has, or .... Netsuite is having the same adoption challenges vs Oracle & SAP, too. It's not that the big guys are objectively better, necessarily, but that they've been around long enough and have a huge enough consulting arm (and external partners) to have seen almost every possible business scenario globally. There's a lot of value there, and it often leads to short sighted and myopic decisions.

I don't actually know that this is true, but I suspect the vast majority of programmers work for large, non-software-product companies, and most of them spend their time primarily on KTLO work, not any kind of innovation or profit creation.

your response just proved dalton's point about MBAs thinking they're higher beings

Not really. It just shows that people tend to be insulted when someone else says they provide negative utility.

Big news, huh?

and stop "hacking" everything

Never.

You're missing the point of what it is to be a hacker.

Making lots of money with web applications, apparently (or trying to, anyway).

Real hacking is non-commercial.

You're right. The term itself isn't bad, but it's misused very frequently.

I think OP means this: https://www.google.com/search?q=top+10+hacks

this is old, but it's great. my favorite one

"hacking" this, "hacking" that. the word is being way overused. just because you came up with a solution you think is good for you doesn't mean you 'hacked' anything.

I too am getting annoyed by that expression.

It would be more interesting if he could talk about how to take advantage of a bubble

Maybe "Hollywood Accounting"?

Create some fake startups which take in the cheap capital. Funnel it to a safe haven by making the fake startups buy overpriced services from safe-haven-company. Once the bubble busts the should be a lot of cash in the safe haven to buy now undervalued assets and maybe even work hire the now unemployed engineers.

That's easy. Keep plenty of liquidity, buy undervalued assets post-crash.

That's one strategy. Plenty of liquidity means (literally) that you're rich. So your strategy is 1) be rich 2) buy undervalued assets post-crash.

Your strategy is okay. For those set of assumptions I suggest you remove the second step, which might significantly reduce your being rich. So, 1) Keep plenty of liquidty. Buy nothing pre- or post-crash.

This has a very high probability of keeping you rich.

Now on to us mere mortals. In bubble times did you know you can actually start a company with like a few hundred dollars, start delivering product and getting users, and get investment to accelerate the process?

That way, you can build a company with cheap capital even if you're not already "plenty liquid", as you might put it.

Exactly. People seem to think that you make money by riding a bubble to the top, then jumping off when the timing is right at its peak. Turns out that is a great way to lose money (nobody jumps off fast enough). The real money is made cleaning up after a disaster.

Short Facebook.

Shorting stocks during a bubble is a great way to learn about bounded upside and unbounded downside. I guess in some sense a valuable learning experience is "taking advantage."

Nah Facebook is old and mature, not bubble material. Short the exciting and new Tesla!

EDIT: Let me rephrase. I think it's silly to call Facebook "old and mature" when it IPO'd 18 months ago. It makes it sound like you would have had a shorting strategy for it some time ago, perhaps 18 months ago - which might have failed miserably - but now would sweep that under the rug, pretending to have never had it.

Of course, we can all be clairvoyant if we sweep our losses (FB is up 27% versus IPO opening price) under the rug. Shorting as a strategy works wonders if you ignore when it doesn't.

Feeling edgy? I think someone is holding a bit too much TSLA.

My investment strategy is low cost index funds. I'm not about to start playing in that casino.