Thank you to everyone who chimed in on this conversation. Apparently, the right person noticed. My suspended YouTube account has been reinstated. If you want to check out the web series, now you can. http://cwatf.com/

What was the explanation? Pardon my cynicism, but without furnishing even a screenshot of the suspension notice I have no way to decide whether Youtube was at fault or whether this is a marketing stunt. I find it hard to believe you have never received a single warning about anything prior to them using the nuclear option against you, given the well-documented existence of their DMCA grievance process and suchlike.

I received the below email at 10:10pm yesterday (1/16/13), which was the first time YouTube has communicated with me.

--

Hi there,

After a review of your account, we have confirmed that your YouTube account is not in violation of our Terms of Service. As such, we have unsuspended your account. This means your account is once again active and operational.

If you forgot your password, please visit this link to reset it: (link)

Sincerely, The YouTube Team

--

Certainly not a stunt. I don't even know how I'd go about suspending my own YouTube account, which I was only able to access for the first time in over a week after receiving this email.

It sounds more like someone falsely claimed you had hacked the account or so, if they shut it down with no communication at all.

Thanks. In terms of marketing the show, I've been pointing everyone to CWATF.com/xxxxxx, so to get back up-and-running, I would just need to upload the video files to a different video platform and re-embed per URL.

I do regret not backing up each video to another platform while I went. The reason was because I wanted to aggregate all traffic to a single platform, in the case that I started to run ads. I guess I could have uploaded them privately on another platform, only to open up publicly should something like this happen.

Great, so just reupload your greatest hits and most recent ones to Vimeo (or whoever) and update redirects from CWATF.com. I think your competitors complained to Google using the right terminology. I had similar experience with Google.

The conclusion I saw for myself is to "use platform, but do not rely your business to platform".

In my experience producing web video content (especially if you plan on eventually selling ads against it), it's best to aggregate it on one platform. And traffic and visibility-wise, YouTube is the place to do it.

I hate to see anyone build a business based on one platform. I haven't looked at your content, but I'm pretty sure the biggest web video producer I know of (Leo Laporte/TWiT.tv) would disagree with your comment. Gain audience any way you can before trying to monetize.

We're in the process of relaunching our platform, which is why we've temporarily blockaded signups. The sentiment engine described in the blog post will be used on our new version.

When we relaunch in a few weeks, there will be a more affordable option than $999 / month.

I've used the free version of AM Charts. They look nice and work well.

http://amcharts.com/

Exactly.

I wrote it, and was actually surprised it popped up on Hacker News. What I was trying to articulate is that treating an operation as an entrepreneur, or in this case a startup, is a method of individualizing the business process.

Business has many 'rules' attached to it, many which aren't necessary to personal or financial success. Entrepreneurs can avoid these rules, and that process can become addicting.

Sorry it wasn't clear, and thanks for the comment.

"Addiction" is a term with a very specific medical (psychological) definition: broadly, a compulsive behavior that negatively impacts your life. I don't see where you have addressed a link between entrepreneurship and compulsion, or negative life impact. Can you elaborate.

It was meant to be interpretive. And, the implications of 'addiction' in this case weren't necessarily negative.

Generally, I find the entrepreneurial process addictive in the sense that it fills an emotional need (neither good or bad) that more structured areas of business leave empty.

Palahniuk removes layers from his characters to make this point. I think entrepreneurship accomplishes something similar with business.

sounds more like adaptation to me.

There is so much career crap that comes through the internet, and this is the most practical piece I've read in a long time. So many decisions can be concluded by simply asking the question of the post title.

The best one to make, I assume, is if you can both earn and learn.

Agreed that it's a strange comment. It was about the only thing I disagreed with in that piece.

Surprising too. I often find more inspiration from fiction than non-fiction. Plenty of fiction work has factual elements of science and technology behind them; they are just stylized into a story. Often, it makes the reading more interesting.

How do you "disagree" with how someone else chooses to live their life? He's not clubbing baby seals.

Sorry; I'm really not "sticking up for Jason Fried" guy, it's just funny how we all get into this rut where everything that's posted here is a subject for critique. I'm as bad as anyone else. But, seriously? How he chooses to spend his spare time?

I should have been more clear. I was referring to the "waste of time" comment.

I think the disagreement is with the notion that fiction is a "waste of time", not with how Jason chooses to spend his spare time.

Echo you here. That's the funniest thing I read in this whole thread.

It's as if Jason's reading habits have caused the OP to take a different view of whether Basecamp is the right/wrong solution to their own needs.

I'm looking for a technical cofounder for my company, AM Analytics. We're based and incubated out of Berkeley. Please email me if you would like to discuss details:

alex@amanalytics.com