Last week, I caught up with Ali Eslami, a recent Informatics graduate who created Keepmeout.com – a website that prevents you from checking facebook, your gmail, and any other website too often.
This is the pitch: You tell keepmeout which website you are addicted to, and what interval you should only allow yourself to check it and it provides a little link which you could use to bookmark. If you’re like me, and use the bookmark bar extensively, this tool becomes invaluable.
Ali first came up with the idea while coding in the infamous North Lab in Appleton Tower L5 [if you’re an Informatics student/alum, you’ll know the one] where he noticed that quite a few people were on Facebook in the labs. Since it’s hard to discipline yourself to not procrastinate check social networking sites, he came up with the idea of using bookmarks to warn you about going on certain websites too often.
So on a train journey from Oxford to Edinburgh, he managed to go through a Django tutorial, teach himself how to program in it while building KMO. When he got back up to Scotland, he realised that the website needed a designer’s touch. He called a friend – Khodor Fawaz – to help him with the branding and plan the marketing strategy for the KMO.
They came up with the design and the name and 2 weeks later, launched through a marketing campaign involving Blogs, Facebook, Emails to friends and Posters around the Inf labs. Most importantly, Ali noted the role of blogs in driving traffic to the site. His approach was to send each blog a brief description of KMO, along with a screenshot and contact details.
This strategy worked well. KMO was featured by Lifehacker [a personal favourite] and a number of smaller blogs. Not only this, but it was also tweeted around the world. The blogs (LH in particular) and Twitter drove traffic and raised awareness of KMO, but the biggest drive was from KMO being posted onto StumbleUpon.
Whilst the website got modest hit rates (Ali writes about here), he insists that the point of the exercise was to learn about social media marketing and effective methods of promoting a new web app. His advice was to submit to StumbleUpon and Digg; making sure you have a Twitter account from the start and doing your homework on the sources for the blogs you want featured.
Ali is going to be starting a PhD in machine learning with Chris Williams in Sept, and is currently working on a “secret” project. The teaser is that it will be a new take on private and anonymous discussions. It should be launched in the next few weeks so stayed tuned!
StartupCafe 
Could he make a similar site for the whole internet?
“You were just faffing on the internet two minutes ago. Don’t you think you should do some work now?”
I wish it was that easy. I find that I start off by opening the web browser to do something productive, then end up with reading IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2549). I don’t know how it happened, but it just did …
I think there’s a firefox plugin called MeeTimer which allows you to specify particular sites so that you can track how much you’ve procrastinated. Time management is a huge issue and it’s made me think about writing an article on it … hm …
I have fun with, cause I discovered exactly what I was looking
for. You’ve ended my 4 day long hunt! God Bless you man. Have a
nice day. Bye
We are a gaggle of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community.
Your site provided us with valuable information to work on. You have
done a formidable task and our entire group might be grateful to you.
Thanks a lot for this website, can blissfully say we are in possession of a steam shower of our own and we like it so much
Great web site, previously been looking forever and a
day for ideas on the perfect rattan furniture pieces for our home and in our patio.
This website truly helpedgreat blog some great info here
Rather, this is to make you more aware of what you are facing and becoming more aware means you may also become more comfortable with them
before undergoing the procedure. Some of the popular cosmetic surgery procedures
– notably the head lift – are popular attributable to aging skin circumstances accelerated by experience of the sun.
Some proper money movement and a breakaway from the Dolphins could
land the tackle in an offense far better suited for his talents.
Wonderful web site, been exploring forever and a day
for ideas on the very best rattan furnishings for our home and in our patio.
This site really helpedgreat blog some great info here
I go to see day-to-day a few websites and blogs to read articles, except this blog presents quality based content.
I couldn’t resist commenting. Exceptionally well written!
Come across this fabulous site and decided to buy a steam shower and never glanced back again, magnificent resources on this site
cant say thanks enough