This is awesome! Thanks for posting!

Thank you!

I started one of my hobby projects (http://gibsonindex.org/) because media and government organizations were handling cyberattack reporting/prosecution so poorly, but it quickly grew tiresome. So many hacks in 2014, the mind boggles.

This post definitely offers some solid insight into the perils of reporting these types of incidents, and it's written a whole lot better than my stuff could hope to be.

I might just have to turn my site into a site that lists guitars. :-)

See if there's one feature that you can target and polish better than their version. That can be your spearhead selling point.

Edit: Just editing to comment on how full of "derp" this comment is. Reading comprehension fail on the original post - sorry! :/

There are other ways to be different. Be friendlier (or edgier). Be more mobile. Be faster (see: Pinboard versus other bookmarking services). Be exclusive. Be more expensive.

...

The last one is a hard sell, obviously, but said sale is much more valuable.

There's something else that can do that:

Revenue.

But perhaps this is the wrong forum in which to point that out ;-)

I've worked on something for four years, then went to market it and saw that it had already existed for a decade.

But, of course, I already knew that I was not unique.

The reason I spent so much time on it is because I have a small but active community of users who like it very much. I am not confident I can monetize it (it's a chatboard service), so I may ditch my "chatboard as a service" plans, but I will continue to work on it.

Maybe I should forge ahead with the CaaS plan anyway, just to see if I can get any takers? A handful of paying customers would be better than none, after all.

"monetizing the platform" is probably the main reason it's always on. Heheh.

If you were a Microsoft shareholder is that a bad thing? And I use the word "were" with confidence knowing that the stock hasn't moved in ten years...

I don't need marijuana for any of those things. Lucky me?

The next big field is going to be Potatoes, son.

(But in all seriousness, the reason you see low-hanging-fruit being picked is because everyone is still trying to figure out how best to employ the internet - you're seeing microeconomies rising and falling at a rapid pace, innovation both thriving and being stifled - there's a lot of flux at the moment. When everything clicks into place, it's possible that everyone will need to be an entrepreneur in their own way.)

Yay for Victoria/Vancouver Island shout-out - but I'm not sure that this is true in all corners of the world ... And definitely invest in better pockets, sheesh! :)

I agree that Victoria is particularly friendly, but I wouldn't write off the rest of the world automatically. I lost a cell phone in Victoria that never got returned. I lost my wallet in Toronto and it was. There are good people all over the world.

With that being said, you do have a far greater chance of having your phone returned if it's unlocked. If it's locked and you don't have personal info on the home screen, then there's a 0% chance of it finding it's way home.