Emily Chang - eHub Interviews

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eHub Interviews Dmitry Kuchin

Thanks to Dmitry Kuchin, creator of Reader2 and TagFacts for this email interview posted October 27, 2005.

eHub: What is your web application/service about?

Dmitry Kuchin: All of them - globally - are meant to make the life easier in specific areas. For example, MyProgs allows to find new useful programs in categories of your interest, Reader2 allows to find new interesting books in genres you prefer, and so on.
There are several web services:
- Reader2 - social list of books.
- MyProgs - social list of programs.
- TagFacts - social knowledge base.
- Bank of Ideas - social list of ideas, now - at the beginning - used mainly for my other projects’ support.
- More to come soon, but I prefer not to disclose detailed info yet.
All of them can be used also for different purposes, for example MyProgs can be used for storing your software list in case you need to reinstall your operating system, Reader2 can be used for showing to other people books that you recommend - all those ‘parallel’ uses are only helping to main purpose of my projects.

They are based on the same engine - Synergy 1001
It allows to keep social list of items, tag them, show tag clouds and sub-clouds (for example, by book author), use ‘namespaces’ for tags - authors are tags with namespace ‘author’, book statuses (to read, recommended book, disliked) are tags too - with namespace ‘status’ and so on. Item ratings, commenting items, find similar items (e.g. “what should I read next” for books), RSS feeds - global, by tag, by user and combinations, javascript exports, AJAX techniques used for suggesting names, tags, showing comments. Engine is optimized for search engines (SEO).

I also have a blog where I keep track after my sites’ creation and promotion. 

eHub: Why did you start this project?

Dmitry Kuchin: I missed services like those mentioned above. When I wrote MyProgs, I understood that I can use the same engine to work for other projects too.

eHub: How much time do you devote to its growth?  Do you have a day job?

Dmitry Kuchin: About 2-3 hours daily, more at weekends. I have fulltime job as C++ developer, working by contract now.

eHub: How large is your team and what are your backgrounds?

Dmitry Kuchin: My team is only me, although I already received help from my users, who helped me with nice design, proper HTML/CSS coding, search engines optimization, I am not even talking about how much useful feature requests I got - most important of them are already implemented, others wait for their time. My resume can be found here, summary:  Programming C++ for 9 years (working experience), mostly on Windows platform.  Writing hobby projects on C++ (for example, I’m one of lead developers of eMule Plus project) and nowadays, also on PHP/MySQL.

eHub: What is your design philosophy?

Dmitry Kuchin: Usefulness, usability and instant gratification.

eHub: What technologies are you currently using?

Dmitry Kuchin: Those websites are running on PHP 5 and MySQL 4.1 - I don’t need anything else right now, but if needed, I can write code in any modern programming language.
I also use AJAX techniques on site, basing on famous prototype.js library.

eHub: If your project is live, what are the most requested features from your users/community?

Dmitry Kuchin: Most requested features can be seen live.

eHub: Does your user base reside in a primary geographic location or is it distributed?

Dmitry Kuchin: User base is distributed, most of my projects are multilingual and have their interface translated to many languages already (by my users).

eHub: Where do you see the project heading in the next 6 months?  The next 2 years?

Dmitry Kuchin: I am improving usability and adding new features on my projects on a daily basis and if everything will be alright, I can ‘foresee’ that they will become even more usable than now, and APIs will allow to integrate them together with other good online and offline services - to make our life a little better.

eHub: What is the greatest challenge to your success?

Dmitry Kuchin: Find enough time to work on all the things that I planned for myself. In the future - if it turns to be a business - find another programmers, that will be at least as good and enthusiastic as I am. Joel Spolsky says - it’s hard enough.

eHub: What is the one thing you need to get to the next phase of the project?

Dmitry Kuchin: Find enough spare time to work on my projects :)

eHub: Do you have a business model?  If so, what is it?

Dmitry Kuchin: Those projects were built with intention to make our life better, I didn’t think too much about getting big money out of it, although if everything will go as is, I will receive some money from Google AdSense and Amazon Associates programs, not millons of dollars though, but at least enough to compensate my hosting expenses :)
P.S. I am looking forward for any good business opportunity.

eHub: If you’re able to disclose this information, how much traffic or usage do you see on an average day?

Dmitry Kuchin: Most active projects get about 500-1000 unique hits daily, it can be seen live here (http://stats.k78.info/).

eHub: What is the one thing you’re most proud of about the project?

Dmitry Kuchin: My users, their activity and willingness to help.

eHub: How would you describe the shift that’s occurring with the web right now to future generations?

Dmitry Kuchin: Information becomes to be more structured, less noise - allowing us to use the web efficiently as never before.

eHub: What site(s) do you visit everyday other than your own?

Dmitry Kuchin: I have almost 300 sites and blogs in my RSS reader and ‘visit’ them at least twice a day.

eHub: How many hours of sleep do you get a night?

Dmitry Kuchin: Unfortunately, I can’t function properly unless I sleep 7-8 hours at night - otherwise I would improve my projects even faster :)

Thanks to Dmitry Kuchin, creator of Reader2 and TagFacts for this email interview posted October 27, 2005.

Visit Reader2
Originally added to eHub on Oct 04, 05

» More eHub Interviews

eHub Interviews is a series with the creators of Web 2.0 applications and services by Emily Chang, author of eHub, designer, and co-founder and principal of Ideacodes, a strategic web consultancy in San Francisco that she co-founded with Max Kiesler.

Also see eHub Interviews in Japanese at CNET Japan