It’s been too long since we redesigned this blog. Years and years. It’s time for a complete redesign. We thought it would be a good idea to eat our own dogfood and choose a firm from Sortfolio to do the redesign.

Here’s how it works

On March 8th we’ll choose a firm listed on Sortfolio to redesign Signal vs. Noise (this blog). The firm will be a paid Pro listing, we will not consider free listings for this project. If you want to be considered, please upgrade your listing to Pro.

Budget, time frame, and scope

The budget for the redesign will be $8500. The time frame will be 30 days from start to final delivery of HTML/CSS templates. We’ll do the integration with our back end systems. The scope will be redesigning the overall look and feel, the main page including all the different post styles (long-form article, video embed, quote, link, etc), a post page with and without comments, the archive page, and possibly one more page yet to be determined.

We’d like the new design to accurately represent the 37signals aesthetic and brand, but we’re open to exploring alternate directions too as long as they are consistent with what we stand for. We can talk more about this with the firm we choose.

Interested? Here’s how to apply

We only want to consider firms that want the job. So here’s how it’ll work. If you are a Sortfolio Pro member (you have a paid listing), and you want to have a shot at the project, send us a tweet in the following format:

Hey @37signals, we want to redesign SvN. http://sortfolio.com/YOUR-SORTFOLIO-URL-HERE #sortfoliosvn

Your tweet must be in this format to be considered. We’ll review your work and get in touch if we have any further questions. We may also contact firms who haven’t tweeted if we think they may be a good match.

We’re excited to see how this works out.

In this article, David Pogue mentions Netflix’ neat technique for letting viewers fast forward streaming movies.

Remember, these videos are streamed to your TV (in other words, played from the Internet as you watch), so fast-forwarding and rewinding is a problem. The part of the movie you’d want to fast-forward to hasn’t arrived at your house yet.

Netflix pioneered the clever workaround: when you press the right-arrow key, little thumbnails of coming scenes flash by, representing 10-second intervals.  You wait about 15 seconds for Netflix to resume playback at the new spot.

Here’s a look at the UI in action as you scroll to the right:

Time: 22:08 | 02/16/2010 | Download MP3

Like this episode? Please share it with your friends:

 

Jason and David answer your questions
We recently asked, “What topics would you like to see us address?” And you answered with a bunch of good ideas. In this episode, Jason and David run down the list and answer in rapid fire style.

Related links and previous episodes available at 37signals.com/podcast. Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS.

REWORK is in stores March 9, 2010. Pre-order today from Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, Indie Bound, and 800-CEO-READ.

You can also watch the first REWORK trailer.

Joel has decided to chase venture capital for StackOverflow, but I can’t exactly figure out why. He lists six benefits that just don’t compute under even light scrutiny:

1. The Answers market is in a land grab mode
Unlike eBay, where there’s a general market for goods and you get huge network effects from having a critical mass of buyers and sellers, StackOverflow is all about niches. People who are searching for “how to make sql server not go slow?” aren’t likely to bleed over to “how to make swedish meatballs?”.

This means that you’ll have to fight for every niche. Similar to how general forums would have to fight for every niche. Just because you have a forum site that’s big for gamers, you won’t have much of an edge attracting foodies.

Finally, it’s not like this is a new idea with no other entrants. Look at Yahoo Answers for a site that’s still up with a similar model and look at Google Answers for another that couldn’t be turned into a worthwhile business and closed.

2. Stack Overflow is like Starbucks
It really isn’t. Starbucks can use capital efficiently because they have big capital expenditures securing land, building out stores, and purchasing coffee machines. Where’s the capital intensity part of starting another answers site? Adding another server? Coming up with a new design?

It doesn’t seem like Stack Overflow can efficiently use big money for anything but advertising itself. Which is kinda funny when the whole business is about getting page views to sell for ad crumbs. It also rings very much like dot-com. Remember when all you had to do was get eyeballs? Oh, it’s free? Who cares, let’s make it up on volume!

3. Stack Overflow wants to get on Techcrunch
If you’re listing the publicity of “Stack Overflow raises $10M in Series A by Fancy Schmancy VC” as the 3rd pro for taking money, you’re bound to be in trouble. The Techcrunch post you’re going to get from this is going to scroll off the front page in 4 hours and nobody who’s actually going to use your service is going to care.

Do you think people looking for an answer to “how do I get the three gold rings in zelda?” is going to give a hoot who’s money you’re burning to provide that forum? Or even that the advertisers you’re hoping to attract is going to look at anything else than CPM and demographics for a clue on whether to invest? No.

4. The investor will give you advice, connections, and introductions
They may, but most of the introductions your typical investor is going to give you is how to get you out in 3-5 years. You can find a lot of advice in many places. Rarely is the quality of the advice associated with having money involved of largely superior quality.

And if you end up building something of considerable value, then the connections and introductions will come all by themselves. You usually have to work to fight them off with a stick when things are going great. And getting an intro to Mr. Very Important Person before you have anything of material value is usually not going to give you much anyway.

5. Taking money means big exit or IPO
I’d argue the opposite. When you take money, your exit is bound to be smaller unless you’re playing the Web 2.0 lottery game (where a few lucky contestants gets bought for sums completely uncorrelated to business fundamentals). Taking money means giving up equity, which means there’ll be less left over if you happen to build something that’s valuable enough for others to buy.

And I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the IPO markets aren’t all that interested in eyeball companies without the numbers to back them up any more. Doesn’t matter how many letters of the alphabet you’ve used for series whatever funding before you got there.

If you can build a great, profitable business, you’ll have all the options to sell or go IPO. Taking VC only complicates that.

6. Taking VC will make your company successful
This one is funny. So if you’re not looking to take VC and play the Web 2.0 lottery or aim for an early exit, you’re just in it for “personal aggrandizement”. If you take the money, you just want the best for your business. Spot the disconnect here.

Now even given all this, there’s actually still an argument for why Joel should take the money. It’ll probably lower the chances of Stack Overflow ultimately succeeding as a long-term sustainable business, but if he has eyed that he has a hot property right now, it’ll be a good time to take some money off the table.

A fool and his money will soon be departed applies equally to venture capitalists as it does to everyone else. If Joel and co. can negotiate a deal with Sand Hill road to give them a nice payout as part of the deal, this might well be even better than trying to shop around Stack Overflow for a sale that it’s probably premature for.

Much better to take a small slice of the proceeds from a “if this just get 1% of the billion dollar advertising market” than to take the slice from “how much money did you make for the past 12 months?” of a strictly look-at-the-books sale.

Go cherries, go!

You’re an online dating site. You’re going up against much bigger competitors, like Match.com, PlentyOfFish and eHarmony. You could spend big bucks on advertising and marketing. But what you’ve tried in those areas didn’t really work.

But what if you start promoting by teaching? You’ve got a treasure trove of data. What if you take a Freakonomics-esque approach to all that info and use it to answer questions and reveal surprising twists?

That’s exactly what dating site OkCupid has done at its blog with posts like The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures, How Your Race Affects The Messages You Get, and Exactly What To Say In A First Message.

By turning its by-product (all that data) into something useful, OkCupid is getting on more and more radars. That post debunking the conventional wisdom about profile pictures brought more than 750,000 visitors to the site and garnered 10,000 new member sign-ups, according to the company.

This article explains more:

The blog, which OkCupid started in October, has helped get the company’s name out on other blogs and social networks…Since OkCupid started its blog, the number of active site members has grown by roughly 10 percent, to 1.1 million, according to the company.

“We’ve been up for six years,” Mr. Yagan said. “We’ve only had the blog for six months. It’s a big deal for us.”

Great lesson there. What has your business taught you that’s interesting, noteworthy, or surprising? Share it with the world and get people talking.

REWORK Q&A with Jason at 800 CEO READ.com. Questions include: What are some of the ways that “big” can work against a company and their ideas? How and when does productivity best happen? And this one:

How is spam more than just an email issue?

Spam is a way of thinking. It’s an impersonal, imprecise, inexact approach. You’re merely throwing something against the wall to see if it sticks. You’re harassing thousands of people hoping that a couple will respond.

Press releases are spam. Each one is a generic pitch for coverage sent out to hundreds of journalists you don’t know hoping that one will write about you.

Resumés are spam when someone shotguns out hundreds at a time to potential employers. They don’t care about landing your job, they just care about landing any job.

Spam is basically a half-ass way of getting someone’s attention. It’s insulting, really.

A much better route: Be personal. Call someone. Or write a note. If you read a story about a similar company or product, contact the journalist who wrote it and pitch them with some passion. If you want a job, write an amazing cover letter that explains why you’d love to work there.

Don’t rely on the shotgun approach of spam though. If you invest nothing in your interactions, you probably won’t get much back.

Also, kind words from 800 CEO Read’s Jon Mueller about the book:

This isn’t just a book about changing your business, it’s about changing how you think about business, and is, perhaps, one of the most important books you’ll read this year.

Pre-order REWORK. (In stores March 9, 2010.)