I've never made money from them, nor have any of them gained significant popularity (although pimpmysalary.com is actually receiving an entry every 3 mins. Or so - maybe that's my breakthrough success!!)
I had something vaguely like smsmyride (called regomail) that was web messaging between number plates (a 'rego', amongst Australians). Obviously, there is a massive chicken and egg problem.
"Obviously, there is a massive chicken and egg problem"
Yeah tell me about it! I got written up on lifehacker[1] and I received quite a few emails and comments (some on the page and some not) basically saying "but it won't work unless everyone signs up!!1".
The funny thing is that if everyone who said that to me had told their friends, the chicken/egg problem would probably have been sold.
My standard response when people tell me something I've built has a chicken/egg problem is "right, so how many people have YOU told about it?"
FWIW, I ditched regomail. It didn't even make enough to cover the domain renewal.
You could enter your rego to check for messages. To try and boost pick-up, for anyone checking an empty inbox, I auto-added a randomised and semi-believable message. Not sure if it helped much, but obviously not enough.
Slightly related, I also started building a little web site for people to track cars they'd owned and driven with a view to building relationships between past and new owners for the hell of it. "I wonder what happen to that '74 Civic I traded with that girl for three bottles of wine?" Domain drove.com.au was free when I checked. Took me half a day to build most of the site but by then the domain had been taken and so I bailed - stupid.
http://cueyoutube.com/
http://pimpmysalary.com/
I've never made money from them, nor have any of them gained significant popularity (although pimpmysalary.com is actually receiving an entry every 3 mins. Or so - maybe that's my breakthrough success!!)