At NumberPlus (which, like we mentioned, is ‘under construction’), we work on data and algorithms. We have a small team (Srini, Vinay and Krishna) focusing on what we call ‘Experiments’. ‘The Spotting Network’ was conceptualized by the Experiments team, as a network of content and community sites that strive to keep the ‘human’ element alive in a world driven by data and algorithms(!). The basic idea was to get a set of “Interesting Stuff, Every Day!” content – with the unique proposition being an element of observation/analysis (fairly simple analysis in most cases) on top of the data – that would make it ‘interesting’.

The first concept we launched as part of ‘The Spotting Network’ was Statspotting – “Interesting Statistics, Every Day!”. We are also building one on Charts – Chartspotting – “Interesting Charts, Every Day!” which as you can see, is in its early stages. We have a few more “Interesting Stuff, Every Day!” concepts – but you get the idea.

Firespotting began with this simple question: “Is there a way to validate your product idea without actually building an MVP or a prototype”. Since we were regulars on HN, we immediately knew that if we could get a community of like-minded people (many of whom have first-hand experience in startups) look at a product idea, the discussions would not just handle the validation aspect, it could help the person improve the idea, moving it that much closer to a product-market fit. What we needed was a place similar to HN, where people could discuss ideas. So we thought – why don’t we just make a HN clone, for ideas? And here is the best part – it would be a perfect fit to our theme as well – “Firespotting – Interesting Ideas, Every Day!”.

So we googled our way into building a HN clone on Amazon EC2 – thankfully PG and crew had made the basic HN Source code open source, and the arc language had a very helpful community as well – and we had a version of Firespotting up and running – a couple of months back. We got some friends to post some ideas, and we posted this on HN as well – we got some upvotes, but not that many.

Meantime, we noticed that the people who liked Firespotting liked it so much, that they had started participating actively in the community, and in the process, had raised the quality of submissions and discussions to a new level – closer to a point where we were beginning to wonder if this could potentially be ‘A Hacker News For Ideas’. That thought resulted in the HN submission that started it all: A Hacker News For Ideas (firespotting.com)

We were delighted to see that many folks in the HN community loved the idea, and it quickly got upvoted to the HN homepage. And all of a sudden, we had a flood of high-quality discussions on Firespotting – and it all happened so quickly that we had little time to react.

It was a very humbling experience to feel the power of the HN community – literally overnight, Firespotting had turned into a hub of high-quality ideas – the contributions and discussions are absolutely phenomenal. We don’t know if Peter Thiel would be proud, but he wouldn’t be disappointed.

Firespotting owes its existence to the HN Community. We at NumberPlus will do all we can, to ensure that Firespotting continues to deserve the title that it had the privilege to be born with – ‘A Hacker News For Ideas’.

Thank You HN!

For Interesting Statistics Everyday, Find Statspotting on Facebook and Follow Statspotting on Twitter

The post A Baptism By Fire: Firespotting And The HN Community appeared first on Statspotting!.

The GeoCities deal: “Yahoo, upon completion of the merger, will exchange about 10.6 million shares of Yahoo common stock for approximately 31.4 million shares of GeoCities common stock. Yahoo will also convert about 8.9 million GeoCities stock options into approximately 3 million Yahoo stock options.” (Source)

The Tumblr Deal: “Total consideration is approximately $1.1 billion, substantially all of which is payable in cash.” (Source)

Are we the only ones thinking “Why is Yahoo buying a monetization challenge for $1.1 billion?”

You might also be interested in ‘Buy Me Marissa’: T-Shirt Design For Teenagers

For Interesting Statistics Everyday, Find Statspotting on Facebook and Follow Statspotting on Twitter

The post GeoCities Was All Monopoly Money – This Time It Is Real Money appeared first on Statspotting!.

Wow.

For Interesting Statistics Everyday, Find Statspotting on Facebook and Follow Statspotting on Twitter

The post Student Loans In The U.S Is More Than China’s Total External Debt appeared first on Statspotting!.

We don’t know if that is good or bad – but “sell in may and go away” returns about 10 million plus results on Google.

For Interesting Statistics Everyday, Find Statspotting on Facebook and Follow Statspotting on Twitter

The post Wall Street Statistics: Of The 20 Weeks This Year, Just 4 Have Been Negative appeared first on Statspotting!.

There is this go-private deal thing going on, but when it is all over, the firm has some serious catching up to do. Starting with its core business.

For Interesting Statistics Everyday, Find Statspotting on Facebook and Follow Statspotting on Twitter

The post Nobody Wants PCs Any More: Dell’s Earnings Fall 79 Percent appeared first on Statspotting!.

Remember, the whole app store thing did not exist before July 10 2008. This has been quite a discovery for the Cupertino giant.

For Interesting Statistics Everyday, Find Statspotting on Facebook and Follow Statspotting on Twitter

The post App Store Statistics: Apple Hits 50 Billion App Downloads appeared first on Statspotting!.

How do we digest this stat? See if this helps: the iPhone 5 sold some 8 million units just during the launch weekend (Source)

Here at Statspotting, we have been making the case for picking iOS to build apps – that case is getting weaker by the day.

For Interesting Statistics Everyday, Find Statspotting on Facebook and Follow Statspotting on Twitter

The post Galaxy S4 Statistics: Fastest Selling Samsung Smartphone Ever appeared first on Statspotting!.

We had spotted this stat recently that every fifth person in Singapore has a linkedin account – place this in the same bucket. How do you digest this stat? Remember this one – Bangalore is the City with the highest number of Google Plus users – if you just go by numbers, India is a market that would soon be ‘second largest after the US’ in most things that just needs you to be connected.

For Interesting Statistics Everyday, Find Statspotting on Facebook and Follow Statspotting on Twitter

The post LinkedIn Statistics: India Is Its Second Largest Market After The US appeared first on Statspotting!.

1. Talk to a potential hire: “I need to sell him on the idea that this would be a great move for his career”

2. Ask your boss for an unplanned vacation: ” I need to sell him on the idea that this is something I cannot avoid, but I will more than make up for my absence once I am back”

3. Write to a blogger to cover your app: “I need to sell him on the idea that this content would fit into his site, and would get blog stand out of the crowd”

4. Talk to your boss about a raise: “I need to sell him on the idea that this is the right thing to do”

What changes when you do this? You get into a sales mode – and your arguments will be structured in such a way that “No” as a response is just not acceptable.

And Yes, what you are thinking is right – this blog post is a result of “Sell the reader on the idea that trying this approach will work wonders for him”. Try it to believe it.

For Interesting Statistics Everyday, Find Statspotting on Facebook and Follow Statspotting on Twitter

The post ‘Sell Him On The Idea That’ .. appeared first on Statspotting!.

Let us put that number in perspective – Instagram has some 100 Million users now. No, we are not implying anything – just a stat to get the magnitude right. China’s CamCard has some 10 million monthly active users (50 million is the total number). And here is what will surprise you: about half of them are outside of China.

For Interesting Statistics Everyday, Find Statspotting on Facebook and Follow Statspotting on Twitter

The post 50 Million Users: CamCard, A Card-Scanning App Dominates In Asia appeared first on Statspotting!.