One person took a few hours and about a hundred dollars to build a credibly effective music search engine, and why that experience demonstrated how addressing problems will be a better use of time than building the next Google.
As the eponymous Red of RedFerret.net observed, “How hard is it to make a simple web application today?” As it turned out, not real hard at all.
Those efforts comprised about four to five hours of time, half of which appears to have been spent on crafting a logo and a page, and around a hundred dollars. Meet Groupzz, a meta music search engine.
We filled the lead-lined writing room with the sweet strains of Cliff-era Metallica, to the “delight” of WebProWorld admin and co-worker Raf Robinson across the hallway. ‘Ride The Lightning’ and ‘Master of Puppets’, streamed nicely through the Groupzz player. The proof of concept site sped through our searches and found hundreds of options for each.
Here’s how Groupzz came into being, according to RedFerret.net:
Step 1 – Spend half an hour searching, locate a $99.00 script on Sitepoint (there’s probably free around, but I’m in a hurry see?)
Step 2 – Spend a couple of hours creating and tweaking a simple logo and page (yeah, so I’m not the world’s best designer, OK?)
Step 3 – Locate a free hosting supplier at webmaster-networks.com
Step 4 – Upload the whole shooting match via FTP and test
Step 5 – Point an unused $9.95 a year domain of mine at the server
Step 6 – Sign up for Shopping Ads, and embed the advert codes
Step 7 – Promote on the Red Ferret Journal…and profit!! Or not!!
“Unless your idea is unbelievably different, and more importantly, useful or hugely entertaining to a major section of a target population, you probably won’t gain traffic fast enough to make it work before someone else comes along and does it cheaper, faster, easier, or just plain better,” said Red.
“Please stop trying to create yet another MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Google or whatever.”
