All actually good startup ideas are bad ideas when they are started. Everybody thought twitter was retarded, and nobody had any idea social networking was even going to be a thing when facebook launched. If you only work on things that people agree seem like a good idea, you are probably the 5th team that is working on it, and you probably started about 3 years too late.
This actually ends up giving many real successful startup ideas or just good ideas. It also gives a lot of bad ones, but here are some I noticed:
OKCupid, for music. (Pandora)
Github, but for knowledge. (Wikipedia)
Hacker News, but for knowledge (Stack Overflow, Stack Exchange)
FourSquare, but for photography (is that Instagram?)
and a bunch that are more of a stretch.
So, here are some ideas it had that I think are are actually good:
OKCupid, but for shopping (better, hyper personalized product recommendations).
LinkedIn, but for beer (more like "it's Just lunch" for professional relationships, set up one on one beers and such, foster mentor relationships, etc).
Github, but for fashion (imagine something like paper dolls, where users can mix and match shirts, pants, accessories and share the combinations with each other, and then purchase complete outfits).
I have to disagree a bit with the idea that no-one thought social networking was going to be big. Were you not around for Friendster? Amongst my college friends it was huge. The problem was that it didn't scale. I logged on frequently until logging-on became too painful. It was the first site I used to reconnect with lost friends, and that was valuable to me.
Apparently Google also saw the value in Friendster, as they offered $30 million for the company, which Friendster turned down.
I'm not sure that being late to the game is as bad as many people would like to believe either. Implementation is king. I yahooed before I ever googled, had many email accounts before gmail, talked on my computer before skype, and on and on.
I agree with you though about Twitter. Total surprise.
Agree about social networking -- it was around in early forms, soon after the web launched: PlanetAll.com (1996; acq by Amazon for $100mm in 1998) and SixDegrees.com (1997; acq for $125mm in 2000).
Before that, my friends were on LiveJournal and after Friendster was a little site called MySpace.
I've been trying to separate startups into ones you could do customer discovery for before you build the app and ones where you have to see it to get it. I think Facebook falls in the first category and Twitter falls in the second category but I'm not exactly sure why.
Agree completely that implementation is key. Look at all the open source voting sites. Anyone can start one but Reddit is popular. Why? The way they do things.
Those are creative ideas. Someone might point out that Pandora pre-dates OKCupid, and Wikipedia existed long before GitHub. I'm actually curious about "GitHub" but for "Fashion". Right now, I don't see a feature in common between any of "like X but for Y" pairs except for the presumption that Y will be as popular as X or the use of algorithms. In other words, "Microsoft but for Bagels" sounds the same way to me.
I too would caution against ridiculing some of these
mashups (or whatever you want to call this site's output)
too loudly. I've seen but never used twitter or facebook. To me they are retarded. Still, I have fond memories of my generation's net news and future generations will think similar of todays social fashions.
I suspect the question isn't whether or not the ideas this site creates are good but rather when the time will be right for them.
> All actually good startup ideas are bad ideas when they are started.
Hmmm. I've just created a website for an event happening next year, that around 16 million people in the UK will probably take part in. http://www.euroelection.co.uk/
This actually ends up giving many real successful startup ideas or just good ideas. It also gives a lot of bad ones, but here are some I noticed:
OKCupid, for music. (Pandora) Github, but for knowledge. (Wikipedia) Hacker News, but for knowledge (Stack Overflow, Stack Exchange) FourSquare, but for photography (is that Instagram?) and a bunch that are more of a stretch.
So, here are some ideas it had that I think are are actually good:
OKCupid, but for shopping (better, hyper personalized product recommendations).
LinkedIn, but for beer (more like "it's Just lunch" for professional relationships, set up one on one beers and such, foster mentor relationships, etc).
Github, but for fashion (imagine something like paper dolls, where users can mix and match shirts, pants, accessories and share the combinations with each other, and then purchase complete outfits).