Hey,<p>I was just going to pay my monthly bill on PG&E. For some reason the "Pay" button doesn't work in Firefox 3. Of all the functions on that websites the "Pay-button" is likely to be the most important one. Sad they had to fuck that up.<p>So, here is my idea in response. Build a service called "Websites that suck". It could be a firefox plugin or just a website. People can sign in and report sites that constantly suck or break. It can be a very simple tools where thousands of users together figure out which sites that REALLY suck.<p>Once a month a report is created, very similar to Technorati's "State of the blogsphere" that lists the websites that suck the most and how the top 50 has changed month by month.<p>What do you guys think? Big opportunity for a startup. Say I work for PG&E and 10,000 people report every month that our website suck but I don't know why. I then buy all the comments from the startup for say $1000/month. It's a cheap way of getting rid of bad PR.<p>Gustaf
I think this has legs. Could be positioned and designed something along the lines of <a href="http://www.shoulddothis.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.shoulddothis.com/</a> or even <a href="http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/" rel="nofollow">http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/</a> (but this service would be 'doesthissitesuckorisitjustme.com). It's not 'extortion' to companies subscribing. It's valuable and a cheap form of research. Has to be presented 'nicely' of course!
Another way to think about this: take the "site x doesn't work with browser y" bugs out of all the different browser bugzillas and give them a more coherent home. This will help mitigate the martian headsets problem (<a href="http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html" rel="nofollow">http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html</a>)<p>Heh, browserzilla.com is available.
How about a website where corporations can submit information on unreasonable-sucky users/customers. They could then share that data and deny you service based on your unreasonable expectations (like compatibility with BETA software used by <1% of the population) and proven history of alarmist posts on elitist websites like Hacker News.<p>I'd build that.
Good luck, but if PG&E et. al ever get caught paying to unransom published comments they'll face a worse PR nightmare than mere reports of bad javascript.
Stupidest idea I've heard in a long time.<p><i>Extortion, outwresting, or exaction is a criminal offense, which occurs when a person either unlawfully obtains money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution through coercion or intimidation or threatens a person, entity, or institution with physical or reputational harm unless he is paid money or property.</i><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion</a>
<a href="http://search.wikia.com/wiki/Search_Wikia" rel="nofollow">http://search.wikia.com/wiki/Search_Wikia</a><p>I don't know how it's coming but wikia search should be able to allow users to modify whether search returns are good and valuable.