The following is an interview I had with phirate during the 8:00 am Developer Chat session.  You sleepyheads need to get up earlier.  (You can still catch the 3pm and 9pm sessions)  Everything you always wanted to know about the mysterious phirate and more!

Turnip Do you and graham ever argue over what changes to make, or do you simply take the coding orders?

phirate ok, the decision making process is pretty fluid.   I operate a very collaborative system with my clients, we talk through changes, sometimes I just make them if I think they’re a good idea, sometimes I talk to Graham, sometimes he comes to me with ideas or even just problems.  The main thing is to do what’s best for the project, and for the users. Graham is easy to work with because this is his entire focus.  If it came down to it and he put his foot down, with the exception of ethical issues, I would do what he requested regardless of my own opinion, but that hasn’t happened yet.

Turnip Are you simply paid for your time as a programmer for entrecard, or are you a partner, investor, partial owner?

phirate I am mostly paid for my time, but I do have a small shareholding as a gift from Graham for my work early on.

Turnip Graham recently announce a VC partnership, with plans to look much larger VC funding.  How will this affect you with more coders coming onboard?

phirate It really depends how it all pans out. Our ideal is to bring on a couple of people I’ve already earmarked, I’ve worked with them both before and their strengths will contribute significantly to Entrecard without requiring layers of management.  But it’s hard to predict exactly what the best structure will be in the future.  Hopefully, more coders will mean the ability to deliver stuff faster and better, more happy users, and a bit less weight on me for implementation.

Turnip A couple of times you mentioned the “Entrecard API”  What are some possibilities a person could do with it, and what type of coding experience would be required to be able to access and accomplish those things?

phirate The “API” covers a number of areas actually, it’s not just a single thing.  For example, the shop has a “callback” method that could allow people to automatically sell digital goods using it, or say manage a subscription service like a mailing list.  We also have API calls available for people who might want to build, say, a firefox toolbar to help people maximise their Entrecard experience and we do cooperate with people who want to do innovative Entrecard related stuff, for example one user came to us with the idea for a scratchie type thing.  It hasn’t been finished yet, but we added the code necessary at our side to allow them to sell the scratchies in an useful way.  With regard to experience, it really depends on the problem, using the API is easy, but you do have to know how to do your bit of the job.

Turnip Could I have a toolbar that showed me the EC cost of a site, the number of times they dropped on me in the last 30 days, and their status as a powerdropper?

phirate Yes, such a thing would be possible, we don’t provide parts of that information via the API right now, but if someone showed that they were serious about putting a toolbar like that together, we would make it happen.

Turnip I may look into it, I think people would enjoy that info while dropping.

phirate Indeed. We also have reasonably advanced plans for a new widget which would include more information like that.   The hard bit is making sure the new widget doesn’t break anything.

Turnip about how far away are we from beta testing the exchange market?

phirate The exchange market hit a bit of a hiccup with our Paypal integration. I’m waiting to hear back from tech support about that so it’s a bit hard to predict, “days” is about the closest I can get.

Turnip It would seem difficult to get people to “test buy” credits at $10 per 1000 when the value of the credit has currently been driven below that.

phirate We have not worked out our final limits on the trade value, however our preliminary collection suggests that there are a reasonable number of people willing to trade at that level.  while you can buy EC for less, I believe at the volumes the ECX will eventually operate on, people will be able to force their sell price higher due to demand. The essence is that if you pay higher, you get your credits sooner. This in itself is valuable and will help the overall valuation.

Turnip Was the idea you mentioned in a previous chat session about limiting drops to 300 per IP likely to happen down the road, or simply an idea thrown out?

phirate it was implemented then and there, although the limit is 600 per ip.

Turnip Anything along those roads is a start, even to let the spammers know their time is coming soon.

phirate the reason for 600 is that we have husband+wife couples, each with their own blogs, doing their own dropping. We like to encourage that kind of social thing.

Turnip Other than the exchange, what’s the most exciting change on the horizon?

phirate Of the stuff we talk about, the demand-based pricing change coming up will be the biggest deal by far.  The possibilities are fascinating, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it changes the overall dynamic. While the focus will still be on dropping to get your rank up there and generally get your name out, the price itself will become much more relevant overall.  We agonized over the pricing system for months, it’s been a real relief for us all to have finally made a decision on where we want to go, especially one we think will be so effective.

Turnip Ok, thanks for the interview.  You survived the hour.  I may be back with more questions at 3pm for part 2  if nobody shows up.

phirate sure, should probably grab a few hours sleep before the 3am

Turnip Yeah, thanks again, enjoy your rest

phirate cya