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I think the site has real potential for fun, but it needs more focus. It's too vague right now. I couldn't really understand what it was for by looking at the f

I think the site has real potential for fun, but it needs more focus. It's too vague right now. I couldn't really understand what it was for by looking at the front page or the help page, and that's bad. Consider this tag line: "Mobtropolis helps you find interesting life experiences, document them, and show them." [1] Life experiences is a fuzzy and abstract phrase -- "challenges" or "unusual experiences" would be better, and a specific mental image like "strange foods" or "something you've never done before" would be better still. Document is an abstract phrase -- what you really want to say is "describe" or "photograph". The help page... is not much help, I'm afraid: "Mobtropolis is a tool to find, map, and share interesting experiences in the local world around you through peer pressure and simple game mechanics." Peer pressure and game mechanics? This sounds like an abstract from an academic sociology paper. People who aren't game designers don't want to hear about game mechanics, they want to play games! Compare this to a (hypothetical) Flickr tag line: "Take a bunch of pictures and share them with the world." Or the Twitter tag line: "What are you doing?" Your own introduction right here on news.yc is a vast improvement over the site itself: "An easy way to think of it is as a photo scavenger hunt or photo dare site." Yes, that's absolutely true, and your site should say that. Just sticking the words "photo scavenger hunt" on the home page would improve it tremendously. Or something like this: "Challenge yourself. Take photos. Then challenge others." (Your "help" page, or the "about this site" box on one side of the home page, can go on to expand this tag line into a three-step numbered list -- kind of like the help page does now with its three sections, except that I would explicitly number the steps. You want to teach people that doing all three steps in order is what the game is all about.) [1] Note: I fixed this English up a bit. :)

davidw 19y ago
Here's a simple tagline: "Mobtropolis - try something new today". Oops, that seems to be the tagline of a big grocery chain in the UK. Maybe I should be in advertising:-) Maybe you can work from it and create something similar that creates that idea. I think what I like about the site is it encourages you to try things that are readily available (well, to some people in some places at least), but you might not have considered before. I could see looking at that from time to time.
- iamwil 19y ago
  Huzzah! I'm glad that part came across (albeit with difficulty). This originally came about because I felt like I was stuck in the office chair all day, and all any of my friends ever could think of to do after work was eat at a restaurant, watch a movie, or go to a bar. There's lots of interesting things to do in the world, from the extravagant to the everyday that you might pass over. But it's hard to be spontaneous on the fly, so having something like this would help. Huh, yes, you all should work in advertising. The taglines that you came up with are vastly better than mine.
  - hollerith 19y ago
    it is probably longer than a tagline, but it would have got the point across to me if near the top of the home page it had said, "The purpose of this web site is to coax you to have new experiences, and perhaps to take pictures as proof."
iamwil 19y ago
Thanks for the feedback. :) Yes, I had a lot of trouble coming up with the tagline. I suppose in a moment of weakness, I conceded to academic paper speak. You're right about things needing to be concrete. I like your last one about challenging oneself and others. Mind if I roll with it?
- mechanical_fish 19y ago
  Yes, I offer it to you royalty-free! :) Really, it's just a distillation of your own news.yc post. It's already clear, just by comparing the site's description of itself with your description here, that your marketing skills are improving with practice...

davidw 19y ago

Here's a simple tagline: "Mobtropolis - try something new today". Oops, that seems to be the tagline of a big grocery chain in the UK. Maybe I should be in advertising:-) Maybe you can work from it and create something similar that creates that idea. I think what I like about the site is it encourages you to try things that are readily available (well, to some people in some places at least), but you might not have considered before. I could see looking at that from time to time.

iamwil 19y ago
Huzzah! I'm glad that part came across (albeit with difficulty). This originally came about because I felt like I was stuck in the office chair all day, and all any of my friends ever could think of to do after work was eat at a restaurant, watch a movie, or go to a bar. There's lots of interesting things to do in the world, from the extravagant to the everyday that you might pass over. But it's hard to be spontaneous on the fly, so having something like this would help. Huh, yes, you all should work in advertising. The taglines that you came up with are vastly better than mine.
- hollerith 19y ago
  it is probably longer than a tagline, but it would have got the point across to me if near the top of the home page it had said, "The purpose of this web site is to coax you to have new experiences, and perhaps to take pictures as proof."

iamwil 19y ago

Thanks for the feedback. :) Yes, I had a lot of trouble coming up with the tagline. I suppose in a moment of weakness, I conceded to academic paper speak. You're right about things needing to be concrete. I like your last one about challenging oneself and others. Mind if I roll with it?

mechanical_fish 19y ago
Yes, I offer it to you royalty-free! :) Really, it's just a distillation of your own news.yc post. It's already clear, just by comparing the site's description of itself with your description here, that your marketing skills are improving with practice...