Craziest Internet Day Ever

I

launched a simple, one page website called I Can't Find My Phone. The idea is that if you've left your phone around your house and can't find it, just input the number into the website and it will call it for you. It was a site and a service that I wanted to use myself. It's not the only site out there that provides the service, but I was unhappy with how unattractive and littered with ads the other sites were. So I made my own. 

A few weeks ago I saw Frank Chimero speak at the SVA IXD department, and one of the many things I took away from his talk was the concept of creating and shipping. Essentially, instead of sitting on a project for weeks, tweaking it and never getting around to launching, create and ship. Create and Ship. Come back and iterate as needed, but just get it out there. That's something I've realized about personal projects, I tend to mess around with a photoshop document for longer than I need to. Sometimes a fresh install of ExpressionEngine is that push I need to finally finish the project.

So that's what I did, I designed and developed the site in six hours. Then I took it live. I sent it around to friends online and I got a great response, people seemed to really like it. That's great, I liked it too. Success! 

About a week after I launched the website, it was posted on the New York based design blog SwissMiss. What an honor it was to be included in that blog. After that, a few other sites picked up the story and posted it. My traffic went through the roof.

All this publicity was great, but there was a snag. Initially, I was paying two cents for each call that was made. I was OK with that, since I only had about 400 hits the entire first week. I thought the 50 dollars that I added to my Twilio account would last me a good six months. After the site was posted, my account was emptied within minutes. At one point, there were 28,000 calls backed up on the server and I was sitting, watching my bank account drain itself. Twilio was an enormous help in helping me keep the site up. But eventually I needed to take the service offline and figure something else out before I went broke. 

Later in the day, I was approached by Tropo and they suggested trying their phone API and we were able to work out a deal that got the site back online. 

A

 few lessons learned:

Scalability: I obviously had no idea that the site would become popular, but that is still no excuse for allowing the site to affect my bank account the way that it did. The next time I launch a site, I will be sure to have a plan on how it might expand if it gains popularity.

Priorities: There is definitely a place to put ads on this site and probably make some money off of it. But I'm sticking to my guns on this one. I created the site in the first place because every other site was so cluttered with ads that it was hard to figure out what the site was about. I would be interested in figuring out other ways to advertise through the service other than standard banner ads. But really, as long as the site can be self-sustaining, I'm OK with that. 

Trust: Not everyone used the service as it was intended to be used. There were reports of people getting called constantly from the site by spammers. Thanks to the good people at Tropo, there is now a limit to the number of calls you can make on the site, and you can now add your number to the do-not-call-list right on the site. I realized that no matter what you create, there are going to be people who abuse it and that it's important to plan for that. 

W

hen it's all said and done

It was a bit of a hectic day, but it worked out. I'd like to thank my co-workers who sat and watched me freak out as my bank account emptied itself and offered suggestions on how to handle the situation. Especially Yahel for lending a hand with the code. Tropo has been instrumental in keeping the service up and running, so a special thanks to them as well. I'm just glad that I was able to create something that I wanted to use and that other people found it helpful too.