Launched fav.or.it

February 27th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under
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It has been an epic struggle but finally we have launched fav.or.it, still in closed beta but it is live and people are using it as I type this post. We are probably two months later than originally planned but we have managed to squeeze in every feature we could think of and then some! Even with the small team that we have I think we have worked miracles, PHP and the Zend Framework have both made this possible and in using them I have every confidence that we will be able to scale this up to millions (hopefully) of users.

Now it is launched I may be able to return to normal blogging behaviour rather than working 14 hour days coding all the time. I have certainly learnt a lot in building this and I am sure I have still lots more to learn but I hope I can pass on some of the things we have done right and lots that we have done wrong and you maybe will be able to learn from those lessons.

If you have not come across fav.or.it before go check it out and read the blog that has lots of details on what it is.

My thanks to my wife Helen for being so amazingly supportive especially as we have a 1 month old baby girl who is taking up so much of her time and she still finds time to keep me going as well! And also to Amelia (our daughter) who’s funny faces now keep me amused every day. And lastly to all of my wonderful readers who have kept reading even when I have rambled on, written bad posts, or any other mistakes I may have made, having such a active readership who always leave amusing/interesting/clever comments is always a wonder to me.

Although we have a massive pre-registration list to get through I will send invites to anyone who leaves a comment on this post. Make sure to leave me an email address to send too (don’t leave them in plain format otherwise the spammers will eat you alive).

There Are 52 Responses So Far. »

  1. Comment by Chris Jackson on 27 February 2008:

    I have been waiting for fav.or.it to go live for a while. Excited…. Im also glad to hear that PHP and Zend are used on the server side - Rails be Gone…

    Id like an invite. Thanks

  2. Comment by Georgi on 27 February 2008:

    Ooh great, been waiting for this so I can test it, please add me to your beta.

  3. Comment by Fernando on 27 February 2008:

    It’s been a long way to this point…
    I think we ‘ll see it succeed pretty soon.
    Congratulations!

  4. Comment by Fernando on 27 February 2008:

    By the way, I’m expecting the beta invitation from that old Digg fav.or.it post…

  5. Comment by Henry on 27 February 2008:

    I’ve been anxiously awaiting the launch ever since reading / watching about your interviews w/ Scoble. I think I’ve pre-registered but must be far down on the list…any chance I could get an invite now? I’d appreciate it. Keep up the good work.

  6. Comment by Rick on 27 February 2008:

    Would love to try out fav.or.it. Like the concept.

    BTW, I would love to find out if Zend Framework has any hidden scalability issues (make that *need* to find out…), I hope you’ll keep us posted on that.

    (an invite to rickmb at xs4all would be very welcome…)

  7. Comment by Mats on 27 February 2008:

    Congratulations, been following your posts through planet-php for a while, good to see that you’ve finally went live!

  8. Comment by Antti Holvikari on 27 February 2008:

    Congrats! fav.or.it looks really interesting.

  9. Comment by Chuck Burgess on 27 February 2008:

    I’d like to try it out :)

  10. Comment by naj on 27 February 2008:

    Fortunately i’m not a cat because i’m very curious right now. Can’t wait to try (fav.or.)it out.

  11. Comment by Naveen on 28 February 2008:

    Fav.or.it looks interesting.I would definitely like to try out. I would like and invite. my email is naveenlokanath_at_rediffmail_dot_com

  12. Comment by Bruce Weirdan on 28 February 2008:

    Looks interesting… could I have an invite? =)

    weirdan [at] gmail [dot] com

  13. Comment by edsao on 28 February 2008:

    OK!. fav.or.it looks fantastic and could be a mighty rival to GoogleReader.

    Thanks for the invitation, Nick.

  14. Comment by Corvida on 28 February 2008:

    Woohoo! The answer to my prayers. Hopefully I can still get an invite.

    zentrice {a t} g mail {d ot} c om

  15. Comment by andre on 28 February 2008:

    Please invite me.

  16. Comment by Meraj Khattak on 28 February 2008:

    Congratulation on launching fav.or.it

    It looks quite interesting and I wish it success.

  17. Comment by Lars on 28 February 2008:

    I’d like to have a look.

  18. Comment by Stuart Herbert on 28 February 2008:

    Congratulations! I hope you are successful with it; the UK needs more high-profile success stories like this!

  19. Comment by Tom DS on 28 February 2008:

    Can I have an invite please? Sounds like you have worked really hard on this, so it’s bound to be great :P

  20. Comment by John Wards on 28 February 2008:

    Can I play? I just moved all my Firefox RSS feeds to google reader yesterday so this would be a good time to compare I suppose!

    jwards [at] whiteoctober.co.uk

  21. Comment by James Heaver on 28 February 2008:

    Its great that you’ve finally launched. It looks like such an exciting product I can’t wait to get my invite.

    angusprune [hat] gmail [dart] com

  22. Comment by Jeff VC on 28 February 2008:

    Congratulations. I’ve been wanting to give it a try since seeing your presentation at MiniBar several months ago.

  23. Comment by Pete Williams on 28 February 2008:

    Congratulations on the launch! I’d love to have a play!

    pete.williams82 át gmail

  24. Comment by Emil Ivanov on 28 February 2008:

    Congratulations! (for the site and the baby :) I would love to give it a shot.

    emil [dot] vladev [at] gmail [dot] com

  25. Comment by Ben on 28 February 2008:

    Wicked I’ve been waiting to find out if it’s good enough to break my google reader addiction. I would love an invite:

    benpjohnson |SPAMBEGONE| {at} gmail [dot] com

  26. Comment by Fernando on 28 February 2008:

    Digg it!
    http://digg.com/tech_news/fav_or_it_Goes_Public_Beta

  27. Comment by Myo on 28 February 2008:

    Exciting indeed. :)

    Invite pls mthein gmail dot com

  28. Comment by Mike on 28 February 2008:

    I’d like to try it!

    mk [dot] smth1 [at] gmail [dot] com

  29. Comment by JB on 28 February 2008:

    I would love to try it too
    jbworld.central [youknowwhAT] gmail [dot] com

  30. Comment by Joanna on 28 February 2008:

    I’ve been looking forward to the fav.or.it launch since last year. I’d love to have a chance to use the neat features. Thanks!

  31. Comment by Pádraic Brady on 28 February 2008:

    Finally got it launched! ;) Best of luck with it - can’t wait to try it out! If you don’t know my own email address it’s my name with a period between first and last, followed by the yahoo.com domain (we can forget about the fada on the á ;))

  32. Comment by Jon on 28 February 2008:

    Can you get me an invite? Thanks so much! Good luck with subsequent releases, this looks like it will be a formidable opponent to Google Reader.

  33. Comment by Adrien F. on 28 February 2008:

    Hi, at last an alternative to Google Reader and Bloglines !
    Could you send me an invite to

    adrien DOT friggeri [a] vyol DOT net

    Thanks !

  34. Comment by Richard Ellender on 29 February 2008:

    I can’t wait!

    richard [at] ozwebfx [dot] com

    Thanks.

  35. Comment by DrSlump on 1 March 2008:

    Congratulations for the release.

    drslump @ pollinimini . net

  36. Comment by Ansha J on 1 March 2008:

    The ideas behind fav.or.it look so well executed. I’d love to have a try!

    anjoyu [a] gmail [dot] com

  37. Comment by Derek Gallo on 2 March 2008:

    Congrats! I have been following this for a while and think this will be a great application. I would love to beta test it.

    derek at nfistudios dot com

  38. Comment by till on 2 March 2008:

    An invite would be awesome. :)

  39. Comment by starace on 2 March 2008:

    I am happy to see your efforts paying off. It would be my pleasure to test.

    jstarace at gmail dot com

  40. Comment by Shawn K on 3 March 2008:

    I am really looking forward to using fav.or.it, but first, I have to find an invite.

    Twitter @thattalldude

  41. Comment by Vinu on 4 March 2008:

    Looking forward to an invite to try out fav.or.it. Thanks.
    vinuthomas (at) gmail (dot] com

  42. Comment by brraband on 5 March 2008:

    Read about Fav.or.it on webware.com feed, which compares it favorably to Google Reader - which is the only reader I have used. I would love to see for myself what you have created! Please send an invite to me at: braband[at]gmail[dot]com Thanks!

  43. Comment by Jeremy on 5 March 2008:

    I loved an invite !

    jerem.selier [[[]]] gmail

  44. Comment by kaelog on 5 March 2008:

    It’s looks great.

    I wish an invitation.

  45. Comment by mike on 7 March 2008:

    Looking good! Will be interesting to see how it ramps up with all of intertia you seem to be accumulating. ;)

  46. Comment by Ranjhith on 10 March 2008:

    Seems like my perennial problem with blogs be solved with Favorit. Allow me to test it.

  47. Comment by Greg Souris on 10 March 2008:

    Hi,

    This looks interesting and I would love to try it.

    gsouris at gmail dot com

    Cheers

  48. Comment by Francisco Vargas on 19 March 2008:

    could I have an invite? =)
    haripako @ gmail.com
    thank you

  49. Comment by Justin Patrin on 22 March 2008:

    I’d be inetersted in testing this out.

  50. Comment by Thorsten on 2 April 2008:

    Hey Nick,

    been following your screencasts on fav.or.it, awesome stuff! The river of news approach will be new for me since I am so used to the single feed paradigm, looking forward to slicing like crazy though.

    Would love to get an invite :)

  51. Comment by Christian Farleu on 7 April 2008:

    I would love to get an Invite.

    Thanks in advance.

  52. Comment by Mathew Ingram on 7 April 2008:

    I’d be interested in trying it out if there are any spare invites lying around, Nick.

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