Itay Dreyfus

Even subscriber counts were originally capped at 2,000. You couldn’t even pay to raise the limit.

So, small is good but doesn’t scale and can be overwhelmed by changes, and big is powerful, but ugly.

To clarify, my definition of design goes beyond aesthetic qualities and into areas of maintenance, cost, profitability, speed, and purpose.

One mistake I often used to make at Justin.tv was offering a potpourri of business models (virtual goods, product placement, chat ads, contests, etc..). I was embarrassed to say Justin.tv would monetize with advertising when clearly that was the only answer. Own the simple business model.

Online, we need to make the big feel smaller, in the right ways. The challenge to start small from something that is currently controlled by Facebook and Google, is very hard. But people are doing it. Look at The Correspondent, or Open Culture, or Brain Pickings, or thousands of other small projects that have good communities around them. We need... See more