All the "but there are a lot of competitors" caveats got tiresome.
Just go ahead and say "they haven't done enough to stand out" or "it doesn't have much you couldn't get any number of other places" or even "there's not enough new here." I assume that's what those comments really mean.
"... The question is, will the innovation demonstrated be enough to attract users? ..."
Thats where the markets come in. Markets efficiently decide the wheat from the chaff, good from the bad. The beaut thing about the yc approach is that minimal capital will be expended. Live or die, the development, marketing, launch and uptake is efficient.
My winners are Anywhere.fm and Dropbox. The minute anywhere goes mobile they will truly change the way we listen to music or anything audio. If you think about it one day people will laugh about the Ipod. I never really grasp the concept of putting all your songs in a box. It is like carrying all your savings in a briefcase rather than a debit card. Anywhere will soon ( i hope) start streaming your tunes using edge, gprs or wifi enabled phones. wacth out Jobs.
I don't get anywhere.fm. Isn't this what mp3.com tried to do and got sued out of existense for? I.e., you verified what CD's you owned with them and then you could listen to the CD anywhere.
The difference is that with anywhere.fm you upload your actual music files, instead of them playing back a single copy to everyone. So if anywhere.fm is illegal, the iPod would be too.
But they are storing a copy of your files. Wouldn't copyright law forbid any copying as such? Like I couldn't put a copy of a song I had on my friends computer even if I said "only play this when I'm here". Or is that example not analogous?
(I'm sure this is a dumb question, I don't know much about copyright law.)
The difference with online backups is that it's dedicated to music. No one wants to share their online backup account, but they might share or even sell their Anywhere.fm account. The legit use for the service is probably legally safe, but things can get gray quickly.
They should definitely requite all new uploads and store entirely separate copies of everyone's music. Doing optimization based on a file's checksum, like you'd do for a straight backup service, would be harder to explain to a judge.
They should very quickly implement a mechanism for locking accounts that get too many logins from different IP ranges in a short period of time. It shouldn't be too difficult to make it annoying for naughty users without impacting legit users. Staying on top of abuse and not letting their site get overrun like Veoh is key.
The difference with a backup hard drive is that it's dedicated to music. No one wants to share their backup hard drive, but they might share or even sell their MP3 player. The legit use for the MP3 player is probably legally safe, but things can get gray quickly.
Since this particular MP3 player can only hold MP3s, not arbitrary files, they should be required to implement a self distruct feature, even though a device that could store MP3s and files shouldn't need one.
Interesting that this latest group includes a photo-editing service: won't it compete with a similar company (slipshot, IIRC) which was funded earlier?
Just go ahead and say "they haven't done enough to stand out" or "it doesn't have much you couldn't get any number of other places" or even "there's not enough new here." I assume that's what those comments really mean.