Updates and Promotion

We’ve put a bunch of major updates on line, that should help to improve the FameThrower experience.

• Highlighting support; Mouse-over images on the front page and highlights give access to more information
• Info Pages: Now every celebrity can access detailed click data and peruse their peers.
• Upgrading: One can now increase their fame as much as they want. Just head to the info page and go from there.

This means that we’ve now fully entered the promotional stage. We’re taking our shot, using news aggregators, email and hopefully gaining foothold within the blogosphere.

As always, any help or advice on this subject would be greatly appreciated!

Laundry List

The last couple of days here at FameThrower have been so intense that we now dub them “The Era of Slight Musk”. In an attempt to improve productivity we took the drastic measures of not showering, changing or moving from our seats. While it has paid off with some headway on our secret algorithm we feel that we may have decreased our life spans and/or driven our friends and family away.

But, we would also like to report that we have decided to do our laundry and we think that our work environment will be a better place for it.

We would also like to thank those who sent bubbly, it was a great motivator because we have strict reservations about uncouth champagne drinking. We have not yet popped your bubbly, but it is currently chilling. **wink wink**

Super Secret

Our Super Secret algorithm is almost done and it may blow your socks off (ours are long gone). Once our algorithm is complete it will allow us to put the finishing touches on the rest of the site, and what’s more important than that? Then we’ll cut the ribbon and christen this baby. If you’d like to make a donation of some bubbly, feel free… we’ll put it to good use!

Why take the stairs when you can ride the elevator?

 

 

 

a graphical representation of the FameThrower process

Slight Delays in a Good Way

We’re happy to report that progress is going better than expected, sadly this means that we may not be able to launch tomorrow morning. We are upgrading our servers to be prepared for more traffic and we’re working with lawyers to iron out some of our terms and conditions, because we don’t want to get sued!

This means that we won’t know when we are going to launch until right before it happens so make sure to stay tuned in to our progress. It will be this week, but it could literally anytime. On the up side, we’ll be launching with more features to enhance your FameThrower experience than we would had if we were to open to the public tomorrow morning. So bring out your dancing shoes and get ready for a good time.
It looks like we’ve decided which charity we’re going to give to but we’ll probably hold onto that tid bit of information until we go live!

Pay close attention, as we will be updating with more infomation soon!

We’re almost out of coffee!

Just kidding, we just pulled some strings and we’re getting a few skids of Colombia’s finest tomorrow, assuming this weather holds up. Testing has started on some portions of the site and so far we’re pretty happy with how things are moving along. Once the whole framework is in place and secure we’ll start ramping up on some of the design ideas that we’ve had. Think subtle Web 2.0 to the extreme, with a dash of old-school flare. It’s going to look something like this only with more of a kick to it.
We still need more suggestions for which charity we should give half of our profits to! If you have any send them to us at helpus@famethrower.com or post them in the comments. In any case, we plan on deciding by Saturday night, so we’ll probably put up a list of our current considerations tomorrow.

Taglines

We don’t want to ruin the ‘big’ surprise but we just couldn’t wait to give everyone a taste of what famethrower is going to be, so we thought we’d share some of the taglines we’ve come up thus far:

• Self-esteem… starting at $1!
• Fame yourself!
• Don’t be lame, get fame!
• …Because its easier than making a video blog!
• Don’t know what to get Dad for his birthday? Why not throw him some fame!

Don’t worry it will all become clear soon!

Splash Page Ready.

Alright.  It’s been 24 hours since we came up with this genius idea.  Here’s a quick recap of what we’ve gotten done:  logo, design, hosting, email, basic project in subversion repository, numerous brainstorming sessions, convincing a friend in California to cancel all his plans this weekend, and putting up a quick splash page.

Here’s what we need to get done: a ton of development, deciding what charity to give to (suggestions welcome!), and some sort of promotion (help welcome here too).

Here’s to gettin’ it done.  Email us letters of encouragement and we’ll love you forever.

Giving Back, Moving Forward

We know that our company is a little bit silly so we figured that we should probably put it to good use. After some careful thought we’ve decided that we are going to donate 50% of all of our profits to a charity.

We haven’t yet decided which charity we should give to, although we are adding that decision to the top of the “big board”. If you have any suggestions let us know!

That reminds me, if you have any questions or comments in general feel free to contact us and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

Promotion at Mach Speed

We made it through that lightning storm, worked for a few hours and finally got some sleep.

We woke up with a flash of new ideas about ways to improve the site and we’re working our way through them currently. In a few hours we should have a splash site up at famethrower and we should hopefully have some of our organization algorithms taken care of by the end of the day. Then we just implement rinse and repeat.

We need to decide what the best form of promotion is going to be… we want things to ramp up quickly and we think that it’s possible if we can get our idea in front of the right people. Should we try to promote the blog, the splash site or should we wait for the whole thing to be done? Let us know what you think!

I’ll leave you with a question famethrower will answer: What would you do for fame?

Got Hosting, Almost Done with Logo

Things are going pretty well so far.

We just checked hosting off the to-do list.

We’re designing the logo and we’re close to being done with it. After that, we’ll use the logo as a basis for how to stylize the rest of the site and then we’ll have to start working on the backend.

We also have to figure out the best way to do payments: should we use paypal, google checkout or something else. I guess time will tell.

Ahh, the rush of crazy ideas — it’s the ultimate high.