Whose Time is a web application that allows you to take a moment of time, write a blurb about what happened at that moment, and see the other important events surrounding that slice of time. I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Own Lewis of Whosetime, and he let me in on the details of this fantastic little site.

Owen In A Nutshell

Thanks for taking some time out for this interview Owen, tell us a little about yourself.

I was born in ‘73 in Wales. I have 3 children and love energetic things like running, cycling and the like. I have a 1st class honours degree in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence, so officially allowed to say “trust me I’m a doctor”

I lived and worked in UK until 2000, then in California (Laguna Beach) working for consulting company, and now in Belgium. Split my time between helping Toyota optimize their supply chain with some clever maths, playing with my baby daughter Jaime and helping my team to nurture whosetime.com.

(You can find out more by checking out Owen’s birth minute on whosetime)

Time To Burn

Alright, tell us a little something about Whose Time. What’s your niche and what problem where you trying to solve when you came up with the system?

Simple really. My wife and I wanted more time to enjoy our lives and our new baby (and in the first few months when Jaime was born, just more time to sleep!) More time didn’t seem possible, but just collecting what we had and sharing it with others was. We came up with the idea of somewhere that anyone and everyone can share with others moments of time that they treasure in their lives or that were just somehow significant to them.

Because time is finite, we initially had the idea of giving each person one free minute, and then asking them to pay a nominal fee of $1 for additional minutes. But after releasing to beta and having some time to reflect we decided to put a stop to the old adage “time is money”, and now whosetime.com is completely free.

A Stitch In Time

Time is money, but I guess time is also priceless. I’m glad you folks have decided to go with the latter option. Tell me, how are you promoting the product? Have you found it difficult to carve a niche out for yourself?

So far, we have taken it quietly and just been listening to what people say about our first version. We made a press release with the intention of getting some interest and also registered with a few sites like Techcrunch. It’s early days for us yet, and with the new completely free version about to be released in a week then we’ll reserve judgment on whether we can carve ourselves out a neat little niche.

That’s a really fantastic outlook. The most important part is really believing in the product. If you have a passion for the enterprise finding opportunities for promotion is the easy part.

Time Machine

Project one year into the future. Where do you see Whose Time? Whose using it and why? What are your long term goals?

Where? In the top 10K sites on Alexa with visitors ranging from proud fathers announcing the birth of their babies through to commercial users claiming celebrity minutes for advertising. We already have a mix of these kinds of customers and expect to see these grow significantly over the next year. Another interesting phenomenon we have already experienced in our beta phase has been the competitive nature of some of our users (me included) to try to get the top voted minute in a year / category. We think this will be a key part of whosetime going forward and a key incentive for existing users to continue to visit whosetime and also to tell more and more people about it.

Our long term goal is to build a hive of activity around the site, and as a piece of “internet matter” create an account of our social history (or social time) but originating from the lives of individuals rather than the official history written by journalists and historians.

Honestly, it’s that second part that really sold me on this idea. There is real value in the ability to take events that would otherwise never get any coverage and to allow the “world” to decide on how interesting they are. As information becomes more widely available, I think sites like Whose Time will provide some real value for those who have become jaded by traditional journalism.

Show Time

I try to ask all of the entrepreneurs that I interview this. As entrepreneurs, do you have any advice for people who have an idea but just don’t know where to start or how to get it off the ground?

YouTube is a tough act to follow. I think its generally good in life to have high expectations that you are going to enjoy your time creating something, strong will power and motivation to go ahead and create it when others around you may criticise (although, do remember to listen) and finally, a sense of adventure and determination to achieve what you set out to do. I think the market will soon tell you if you got it right or wrong – listen carefully, adapt, and if you got it right then good on you! If not, then make sure there is a next time – don’t give up after a set back.

Great words to live by Owen, thank you!

Web 2.0 Roundup

I encourage you all to give Whose Time a look, if you want to know more about this product here is some contact information to get you started.

Whose Time Ltd

Email
owen.lewis@whosetime.com
julie.lewis@whosetime.com

Developers

http://www.whosetime.com/whose_time/contact