Leave the naysayers behind as they look for the next big thing. When you focus so much on the negative aspects of anything it becomes difficult to see the positives. I believe the future of a business like this is a strong appeal to niche market.

Go MakeFive!

Most of the negative comments are actually saying something, it’s just that they are being rude pricks. This is a neat little idea, but I sincerely hope they do not plan on making an abundance of money from it. Sure, they might get a little ad revenue stream in here and there—hell, they might even have a few months that exceed their expectations—but, the idea is not strong. It doesn’t matter how much passion, belief, and love they put into it—it’s not nearly strong enough to become a business. AND: that is why it is being pitched, is it not? I know the owners go to bed at night wondering if they are doing the right thing—if the “right thing” is planning some sort of success off it—lads, place your bets elsewhere. It won’t be the “runaway” success that about 9 people are hoping for, laying awake in bed at night, dreaming about.

The site owner should refrain from defending every last negative comment. We all understand where his head is at with this, but come on – you can reply to every single bash on a public forum with such instant knee-jerk reaction. You “pitched” on TC, you have to accept some of the nastiness dished.

In summary, MakeFive is not the best “business” concept with regards to a web application. It just is not. It is much, much, much to niche an application to be commercially viable. It will stay, plateaued at some level, as the months pass by, the economy will continue to sag, and the owners will inevitably move on to something else.

Truth.

if it’s trying to be a fun, casual website, it might gain traction.

Either way, I can’t say I hate the idea. It just won’t be huge, that’s all. It seems like the founder already owns another money-making business. If he’s just trying to have fun with another site, it’s harmless, I guess.

If you dont like the site dont visit. Why leave so many negative comments?

It’s amazing how negative the readers are on this site.

Eric I wish you guys the best of luck and I will be using the service.

Some of you will likely find this strange, but I suppose it comes from our background in running a small agency. We’re not as interested in a quick payout as we are in building great stuff. Plus, given the economic climate out there, I’d rather be building, than chasing funding.

First off, I’d like to note that the funny part with things like Google and Facebook is that you never really know if they’re going to work. I don’t think anyone really does. (Otherwise, VC success ratios would be much higher.) The fact is; it’s a gamble. We make ours safer by maintaining a low burn-rate (MakeFive was built by three people) and working hard. This allows us to iterate, improve, and react to what our users are asking for.

I don’t know if MakeFive will be a big thing; that being said, we’ve run the numbers, and it seems pretty reasonable for it to become a viable revenue source for us.

The general principle of MakeFive is really simple. It’s just a voting system with a broad number of potential uses. Some, like you I suspect, won’t enjoy it, but others really do. The beauty of the web, is that it’s big enough that we don’t have to appeal to everyone. So, while our users will make lists of things that interest them, you can continue to spend your day desperately looking for work on monster.com, while taking masturbation breaks with visits to fleshbot. We’ve all got our thing, even if this isn’t yours buddy.

I think we are about as “real” in what we’re doing as anyone could be. We’re using our own money to build, not that of friends, family or angels, but in fact our own cash. We have a small, but very keen membership, and we aren’t desperate for funding. smashLAB (our agency) already pulls in enough to keep us working on projects like this (and our new little experiment: http://www.undrln.com).

If we never get a penny of funding, we’ll still be in business. It’s fun, and we’re getting some pretty impressive feedback from users.

I’ll be honest. The tone of your post made me feel like not even responding. You seem sort of bitter, and I can’t really understand why. Nevertheless, we’re running a solid little business. It seemed a shame to not at least counter your thin remarks with some real feedback.

Ya the concept looks quite spineless. But u never know it may be a huge success. More naive ideas have become successful, like Twitter.

Just keep working to evolve ur idea guys.

the best way to make money is to create a search database for reviews of top 5 of everything and use google adsense or commission based model to complement searches on its site.

Top5 is basically a consumer review site where people vote on what is the best of everything.

People can search for things like break up songs, best beer, spring break, xbox 360, sextoys, etc. And will get lists showing the top 5 choices that consumers liked. (Top 5 shooters for xbox 360, top 5 beers for october, etc). It will be Top5’s job to match the items on the lists with advertisements or a link to where to buy such an item.

Like a list of best break up songs. FU Dana for breaking up with me. Anyways people can search for this and get this
http://www.make...-break-up-songs

top5 needs google ads for these songs or create a platform similar to adsense for their database that will allow business to match up their advertisements with items on their top 5 lists and top 5 gets % of all sales made by users clicking through advertisments and purchasing.

It will be top 5’s job first to get as much traffic on the site as possible so more content can be created on its database and then market value of the search capabilities on the site.