So, do you guys plan on being around for awhile?

[jasony]

Like many data nerds, I track lots of stuff obsessively. I just bought a brand new truck and plan on keeping it for 15-20 years. I really like Fuelly, but I'm also entering my data in another website (the one you suggested elsewhere) as well as an iPhone app. This is just in case you all decide, Microsoft-like, to end the website after I have a decade of data.

Is the long-term plan of this site to monetize somehow? How can we be at least pretty sure that you're going to be here for the long haul? I've got 17 years of data on my old car, so it's safe to say that you and I are in this relationship for the duration.

[mathowie]

Yes, we will be around for the long haul, on the order of 10+ years at the very least. My main priority is my other site that I created (MetaFilter), where fuelly co-founder pb works on the code for me. We recently celebrated its 10 year anniversary with almost 70 parties on 7 continents and it remains a vibrant community website.

Fuelly is an app both Paul (pb on Fuelly) and I wanted personally for ourselves and we knew the community data could make things more interesting. In terms of costs, Fuelly is very cheap to run. We used a ton of existing code and infrastructure we already had built for MetaFilter and the entire Fuelly app runs on a single webserver that has minor monthly costs. The textads you might see when logged out don't bring in too much money, but even without positive revenue it's comparatively cheap to run the site and the app so I don't see any reason not to keep it running for many, many years.

[jasony]

"We recently celebrated its 10 year anniversary "

Well, then! Nothing like a reputation. Thanks for the quick reply- and in the middle of the night!

now that I've outed myself as a data nerd, I have to say I love the stats! Any chance we could get truly crazy graphs? Like the ability to graph per keyword (how are my MPG's different at Chevron vs. Texaco?).

Thanks for a great service.

jason

[mathowie]

Yeah, we've been talking about having a new "reports" tab in the output screens on your own car that would let you produce almost any graph you could imagine based on your data. It's mostly an interface problem to solve (how will it work, how to hide complexity and make it easy to use, etc).

[WeArePennState]

Glad to hear the site will be around for awhile. I thought about that myself when I signed up.

Any chance of adding a user defined numeric field (and calculate the average)? My car's computer shows a MPG estimate that I'd like to track. I've put the data in the comment field, but would have to hand calculate an average to compare to my actual MPG.