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Estimated reading time: I'm not going to lie, it's dense - but you can get to the end.
The beginning of the story #PèreCastor
It's 2012 and the goal is simple: to be the group that makes the most buzz (🤢 I hate that word). At the time, I was a student and a contest within the school put us in competition. If you're wondering, we didn't win that contest 💩 #FinDuSuspense. I know you're disappointed and maybe at this moment you're wondering if it's worth continuing to read this story that starts with a defeat. But hey we're talking about a project called VAINKEURZIt would be a shame to stop there, wouldn't it?
Anyway - for this contest, we don't really have any strong ideas... not really any ideas at all 😵💫
The ceremony is in 4 days and we'll have to present the Google Analytics stats in front of the whole amphitheater.
The pressure 📈 on the group. We're wondering what might create a buzz (I can't wait for the story to progress far enough so that I don't have to use that word again), and we end up thinking that if there's one thing that's gone down a storm in a short space of time, it's Facesmash 😳
If you're not familiar with it, it's basically a site developed by Zuckerberg where he put all the female students on his campus in random duels. On his site, you click on the prettiest girl in the duel, and then go on like that ad infinitum. All the votes generate an overall ranking, based on theELO algorithm (this is a serious algo, as it's used to classify chess and tennis players, and in many video games). Zuckerberg develops it in one night and the result? 🤯 Harvard's servers go down because there are too many people on his site. Later, he creates Facebook.
Oh yes, I forgot to mention that this spoil a bit the movie The Social Network 🙊
A V1 slammed to the ground 🙃
So we started with this idea. But very quickly, we said to ourselves that if we were already copying the concept, we'd have to bring some originality, be more subtle, cooler... and so we chose to do a tournament: "Who's your favorite 🔞 actress?" At this point in the story you're completely free to despise us all you want. Even I feel like hurting myself 🤕
Well great, we're going to try to be the group with the most visitors with a site where you vote for your favorite porn actress 🤘 I launch into the development of the site with the challenge of doing faster than Mark and I succeed - I code the site in 30 minutes 💥
You're wondering how this is possible?
Choice n°1: I'm a better developer than the creator of Facebook
Choice n°2 : the code was free on the internet #copiercoller
Anyway, at this point, we put the site online and let loose a few tweets. At the same time, we decide to do Tops on other subjects, like here with Rap 👉
A few days later, the results were in: 15,000 visitors in just a few days and, above all, a retweet - well, the retweet:
Katsuni thanks us. It's enough to make the darling proud, but is there any way to keep her safe with this project?
Die 3 times 💀💀💀
2012 - 2013 : After this contest, we continue to create Tops on other subjects (favorite Youtubers, Rap contenders...), we choose VAINKEURZ as our end-of-year project but we end up dropping it and the project dies a first time. Don't ask me why it was too long ago 🥵
2014 - 2017 : I launched a digital agency 👨💻 and was joined by 1️⃣ of the other 2️⃣ members of the group. Sound unique mission is to develop V2. I don't know if it's better or not to say our first names, but when in doubt, he's Jérémy and I'm Guillaume - nice to meet you 🤝. During those 3 years, we made just about every mistake that can 🔫 a project and so unsurprisingly VAINKEURZ was dead for the second time.
Guillaume, if you were going to write a novel, why don't you list these famous mistakes for us 🤔
Looking back, I'd say that the main problem was that we were always waiting to improve the site before communicating. So, since we could always do better and always do more - well, we had a hyper-developed site but with 0️⃣ users. This meant no user feedback and less and less motivation. In fact, we didn't know who or what we were working for on this project..
2019 : I'm making myself a promise 😶 I'm going to concentrate on the agency and forget all those projects that wasted a lot of my time and quite a bit of money. This time, VAINKEURZ is dead for good 🥺
To The Moon 🚀
The year is 2021 and it's confining. I want to dev but customer projects aren't very exciting. 🤔 Hey, why don't I try redoing the code for VAINKEURZ ! I'll have a blast, and what's more, I'll get to this V3 pretty quickly, which is much cleaner 😎. By the way, if you're into dissection and programming you can poke around here - you're welcome to contribute code 🤗
I'm convinced that this project has potential
The good resolutions: 👉 first, we'll stop trying to make a site for the whole world - too bad for my auntie who'll wait before making a Top kittens again - Which is the cutest?
So we're concentrating on subjects that we're passionate about above all else 🥰
For the choice of features to develop first and the choice of Tops to create, we've set up a Discord so that it comes from you. We'll be waiting for you 🍻
If you've read everything this far, respect already 🙌 and I think we can both agree thatit's high time to conclude.
In all this blather, I said at one point that the project was dead because we didn't know who or what we were developing it for.
Now I'm sure the project has a future, because I have the answer to both these questions.
👉 For whom?
For you (😭 pfiou it's too beautiful what I write). If it's for you, we have to make sure you like it. That means listening to you and incorporating your feedback. The result is that VAINKEURZ will develop in the right direction, as suggested by its members.
👉 For what?
For an incredible experience 🧪. Starting with a few lines of code while cross-legged on my sofa 🧘♀️ (I'm a mito - not flexible enough to cross my legs), then asking my cousin to refine the algo #BacSMathSpé, my best buddy to create Tops... Today, there are a dozen of us working on the project, mainly to: design, develop and communicate. We'd love to see other winners join us! to push the concept as far as possible.
What will be left of it in 1,000 years?
We don't know what VAINKEURZ will be like in the next few years. We're going to develop the concept week by week with all those who appreciate it enough to want to participate or use it like ChoopChoop to rank WoW extensions on Youtube.