re: launching<p>I soft launched <a href="http://newsley.com" rel="nofollow">http://newsley.com</a> in November via comment here on Hacker news.  I wasn't interested in a big splash, but I was really interested in getting a couple of beta users that could give me some good feedback, and that's what I got.  It's a good crowd to get some feedback on what's broken and what works.<p>Since then, I've posted a few more links here in the comments, and prakash posted a link in one of his comments on a thread regarding economic social news sites (thanks).  I've also posted a link asking for beta users on Craigslist San Jose, and I've posted a couple links in economic blog comments where appropriate.<p>Traffic stats so far for 2 1/2 months:   1200 uniques, and close to 5000 page views.<p>My future marketing plans include buying some more beta users off of Mechanical Turk at $0.05 a pop, and using a $100 credit I have with Adsense.  I have a hunch, I'm going to get a lot better traffic with Mechanical Turk than Adsense.<p>re: funding<p>The scuttle butt in the Valley is that funding is slowly starting to flow again, but it's still pretty hard to come by unless you have traction.  Traction == customers signing up and loving your product and possibly revenue.<p>I'd focus on making your users really really happy, and slowly build up a customer base from that rather than go for a big splash and hope that things take off.