I actually have proof you signed up for Edmodo in October or November of last year, so you new about Edmodo almost a year ago. The classroom micro-blogging space may be big enough for two but we are more motivated than ever to own the educational micro-blogging space which we are already doing a very good job at it. I'm just letting the Hacker News users the similarities between your service and ours and ours is free unlike yours and we have a business model too :) We put our money where our mouth is and making the Education community a better place by offering the best free micro-blogging we can for individual teachers.
If you want to get into proof, here is proof that I got the inspiration for Eduset exactly a year earlier than I signed up for Edmodo: http://grab.by/5A5
Also, it is painful for me to see you painting me as a villain here. Why are you implying that I'm not "putting my money where my mouth is", that I'm not also trying to make the education community a better place? As I said above, you are planning to launch paid features, so please don't try to make it seem like I am doing teachers a disservice by charging a small amount.
By charging for your service, you're actually rather protecting your users — a free service is much more likely to suddenly disappear from the face of the web when it's too far into the red. And certainly, that wouldn't be appreciated by those users who have come to rely on the service. Maybe you should even put that into your marketing copy: it not being free is a feature.
Jeff, I understand that you're passionate about Edmodo, just as I'm passionate about Eduset. And it's very true that all startups are derivative to a certain extent. However, I have to correct you: you did say I stole your idea. Here's your tweet from September 2nd:
I agree, silly rants like this is absurd and really doesn't do any good and is not productive. Execution is key. I'm little passionate about my startup and that is why I replied. I never said he stole our idea. I said "almost" exact replica. Facebook borrows from twitter, eduset borrows from pownce, we borrow from twitter, facebook, friendfeed.
Yes, we can co-exist as healthy competitors. I'm usually not one for silly rants, my passion has gotten the better of me tonight. Edmodo, Eduset, and The Education Community as a whole is better served by us putting our energies into execution of our startups.
Based on what you've written here, as an outsider: Your audience is not the HN audience. What people think of you here in terms of copying is completely irrelevant. (Also, copying is fine. Everybody copies, sometimes entire business ideas.) Your customers, who I assume are school administrators and teachers don't care which came first or who copies who. If you look at school admins, they probably don't even care about features, to win them over you need a good salesmen. Also, X always pointing out how he came first and his is better then Y is just good marketing, because whenever people see Y they also see X and are more likely to compare the two. Saying X is better is hardly evil, it's just marketing. (Remember the Apple vs. PC ads? Remember the news about how Microsoft wants to build stores right next to Apple stores? You're living it.) In the end I think you will need to sell packages to schools to make real money, and in that case it's not even going to be about features but about a good salesman with connections. That's what you get for making a product aimed at the goverment. Cheers.
I agree; its not the idea that makes the product (or service) but rather the execution. Jeff should simply concentrate his time on bettering his own venture. Consider a similar venture nothing short of flattery.
I wish both Eduset.com and Edmodo.com the best of luck with their ventures - let the execution begin.
