Shit rentals and the value of a social media following
A friend shared an article recently that detailed how “Tiktoker” Jodie van den Berg, had launched a database website that allowed previous renters of “shit rentals” to share their experience for future tenants. Article here
It’s not an overly complicated implementation – making use of a third party (AirTables) DBaaS while and fields for people to populate. Impressively, the creator is a lawyer by trade and so it’s super cool to see a functional service working to fill a real need from him.
It’s really emphasised to me that in the building of real practical solutions, all you really need to have it start contributing to the solution is:
- Design that allows reliable, simple usage.
- A following/network to launch the product to.
- Additionally, the simpler the execution, the more reliable the solution (there are less edge cases to consider, potentials to multi-component errors etc.)
The engineering side of it mostly has to do with scaling, which can be contextually a smaller concern, especially if the desire is only to have a proof of concept model.
I’ve never really been one to enjoy or make much use of social media. Yet, I’ve never dismissed it’s value in today’s environment – maybe I should start posting content on instagram or youtube … definitely not TikTok though.