Who’s behind Page99Test.com and what’s our story?
The members of the team, in alphabetical order (because where would we be without the alphabet?!), are:
- Lance Jones, Co-Founder
While working for PricewaterhouseCoopers back in the late 90s, Lance and his coworker spent every night on a startup called “StockTipster”, where users contributed and rated stock tips. Enjoyed instant success… until the crash of 2000. Since then, he’s consulted as a usability/user experience enthusiast and e-commerce optimization expert with a focus on web (i.e., A/B, MVT) testing. Oh, and he primarily reads business books. - Steven Luke, Co-Founder
A voracious reader, Steven has a degree in business. He taught himself to code by reading those big fat techy books that make Joanna cringe. After working at a small company, he went to Intuit, where he’s been the most sought-after developer in the Global Web team for years and where he now leads a team of developers. Oh, and he’s a super-taster. And he loves writing about his travels. - Joanna Wiebe, Co-Founder
The plan was always to be a ‘real’ writer, so Joanna went the BA route and then the MA route. But, alas, no books. Instead, she fell into a job as a copywriter at an agency… and, over the last 7 years, honed her skills as a value-prop advocate, an interaction designer, a web writer and a ‘persuasion enthusiast’. She’s read all the serious lit you’re supposed to read… but she LOVES beach reads. And she’s still unpublished – but agented now, at least.
Before Page99Test.com, we 3 worked on a site that lets homebuyers & sellers rate real estate agents… but the agents didn’t like us very much. So that site’s been on hold for ~2 years. Oh, well. This is more fun anyway!!!
Contact us by email (click our names above)…
Beyond Page 99 
So where are the page 99s for me to look at?
Hi, Dave-
We’re just putting the finishing touches on the site now… and we’ll be starting a week-long private beta test on October 10th (10/10/10!). Once we’ve worked out any final kinks, the full site will launch, hopefully on or about October 18th.
Please sign up to receive notice of our launch — and the chance to participate in our private beta — at http://www.page99test.com
Thanks!
Lance
So far it is a great site. I really think it is going to be a fantastic place for writers to get real feedback on their work. However, i would suggest adding a search function so people can browse by genre. Not every genre is to everyone’s taste and so giving people the ability to zone in on a genre they can give the most constructive feedback on might be a boon.
P.s Sorry if it’s already there and i’ve totally missed it.
Thanks, Richard. Glad you like the concept. And you’re correct… there is no filter by genre currently, but it will be there for our public launch (late October).
Love the site. Spent time reading pages and trying to leave helpful comments. Seem to be a lot of international writers — England, Australia, Spain. I like the Agatha Christie and Stone Diaries pages to see if anyone is paying attention. I think it’s fabulous.
Hi
I know the idea is that we rate the page 99s without knowing who the author is, but is there a search facility for finding a particular author/page 99?
I see that your Pulitzer page 99 prize winner Carol Shields has only scored 63% with her ‘Stone Diaries’ in the literary category! I’m glad i ticked the right boxes on that one. Shame on you who didn’t!