The number one question we get asked is 'what are you doing right now?'. Everyone asks this and rightfully so, because no one aside from ourselves knows what we're truly up to.
For the past year and a bit we've been working on Clutterme. Clutterme was originally intended to be a place where you could save your links (easily) and do a Google Search. Pretty much Google.com but with editable whitespace.
Things got a bit complicated when we started to add friends, picture uploading etc. Clutterme transformed into a way to make a webpage. On October 1st, 2008 we decided to launch Clutterme with around half the features we envisioned.
Believe it or not, a lot of people like, love and use Clutterme. We've maintained a
steady flow of traffic over the past couple of months and we've done some minor updates here and there. Clutterme however is almost unchanged from the version we released in October.
So what have we been doing in the meantime? Well in mid October we decided to launch our first Facebook application. Yes, those very same things you (and I) loathe on Facebook. Applications have arguably ruined Facebook. We're complicit in the pillaging.
Our first application was called
Fbook President, which has since been renamed to ePresident. The winner of the first official Facebook election on December 31st, 2007 got caught up in the hype and thought he
WAS THE ACTUAL PRESIDENT OF FACEBOOK.
I'm not sure if he was being facetious or was just too overly enthusiastic but at some point 'the shit hit the fan'. Arash Darembarsh made
radio shows,
television appearances and even involved President Sarkozy's office all the while claiming he was the president of Facebook.
This of course is not true and when the hoax was revealed the blowback was
even louder (and funnier) than the actual event. Needless to say we had to change our app's name and remove all reference to Facebook within that application.
While this was happening we quietly and not so quietly launched 22 other applications, some of them are beauty applications and others, like our personal favourite
I'm With Stupid, are just for fun.
At one point our Facebook apps were pulling in a quarter million pageviews per day. If the traffic was anywhere other than Facebook we could have considered ourselves millionaires. Alas, in mid March the honeymoon ended and our traffic for the most part
crashed.
Our apps are still valued at a couple hundred or perhaps tens of thousands of dollars. Here's the
list of them for your perusal.
Aside from a few close personal relationships, WE HAD NO LIFE outside of our business during this time. It was horrible. One of the things I've now learned is that it's important to maintain personal friendships and relationships amidst work. You need to play.
In May 2008 we decided to start filing a patent on Clutterme. Making our patent took 4 solid weeks of work and the end result was a 100+ page provisional patent. One very valuable lesson we've learned during this time is that lawyers, given the chance, will screw you. It's up to you not to get screwed.
Aside from tidying up some lose ends on Clutterme and our Facebook apps June presented us with an opportunity for a fresh start. One of the lessons we've learned over the past 12 months is that the best way to make money is to have something to sell (duh).
We're quietly squirreling away, living off the remainder of our Facebook income with two strategic milestones which we hope to launch soon. Milestone #1 will help us get users and milestone #2 will involve getting money from our users.
The saga isn't over yet, this is our final gasp into making Clutterme webpage creator we've always envisioned it becoming.
Look for us also to be moving into our AMAZING OFFICE SPACE at Yonge and Eglinton and start off our 2nd year the the way our business was meant to be started.
To answer your other questions, yes we're making money, but are by no means rich.
Oh, and Facebook is changing the way user profiles appear on Facebook. This should get rid of the crappy application spam that litters user profile pages.
