5 ms·

Apply HN: Agora – social network for debates on local and other issues

What – Agora is an online site for discussions about issues in real time. Main UI will show “debate topics” selected using user’s location, profession, and preferences. Any topic starting posts require: “initiator” (image, link, keyword references to set topic), minimum word-count text, and at least two “evidences” (image, link, keyword references). Responses only require text, but allow all. User profiles are sparse and private. Why – We often see socially motivated posts across news sites and on social networks, showing the need for a dedicated site for these conversations among citizens. We foresee Agora expanding the existing news media within 3 years. Agora will host solution-oriented discussions to help improve lives. Competition – Agora’s UI will be visibly different from forums. Medium is a similarly open platform for public to speak, but it doesn’t encourage P2P conversations. Quora’s Q&A format is sufficiently dissimilar. Business Model - Premium posters can pay to advertise themselves in an isolated section. If needed, sufficient local distributions of same premium thread can be created for ease of providing individual attention. As it currently stands, we will only allow news media (in all forms), government bodies, and socio-politically registered organizations to advertise on Agora. Challenges – Agora only has one founder. I agree that start-ups grow too fast for one person to manage. I am not currently looking for a co-founder. If I am to be funded, I will pay ramen salary and offer considerable equity to a determined and ambitious programmer to come on board for at least three months. Our goal would be to launch the product and secure funding for next phase before this funding runs out. Domain expertise of founder – Finishing PhD in Electrical Engineering from UCR. I have medium proficiency in programming, but I am a resourceful learner. I am also an active debater online, with posts on many sites.

Goalie27 11y ago
Overall I like the idea. My main question would be how do you keep it from becoming an echo chamber or an all out brawl?
- SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
  Thank you for two very relevant questions! We will develop an algorithm that will compare "debate topics" by analyzing their "initiators", text content, and "evidences". This algorithm will assign a correlation factor to all possible one-to-one comparisons from domain of "debate topics". Any two "debate topics" with factor exceeding a threshold may be integrated together. Required minimum word counts for all responses, post flagging system at user-end, and algorithms searching for abusive language will all be used to prevent all-out brawls from breaking out. These are among important parameters that will be under observation starting in the development stage. We will learn from our experience and improve our algorithms.
bonbom1 11y ago
You might want to change the name if you don't want to be associated with the largest online drug marketplace.
- SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
  Wow I wasn't aware of this! Just looked it up. In Ancient Greek city-states, "agora" was the central square where they'd gather for important discussions. I really like the name and would hate to give it up. I will have to understand all of the implications of having the same name as that of a major marketplace from the deep web. This is pretty shocking to me.
SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
Dear moderators, I've made a mess of things while naming my company. I failed to thoroughly search the name before having decided for it. Please either - i) delete this so I may rename my company and start another thread, or ii) replace all mentions of "Agora" in above post with "Dais". I am happy with this second name. It refers to a platform or a podium, which goes with the purpose of our company. I have decided to not keep the previous name due to the extent of its affiliation with another entity.
Kinnard 11y ago
I really like this idea. Have you checked out the Economist's debates: http://debates.economist.com/ http://debates.economist.com/
- SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
  Thank you for sharing this. What I loved most about the debates held at the Economist was the participation on the part of the users. Although the focus was on the selected panel of moderator and the two experts, there were 29 comments made by users that were largely well thought-out. I believe the Economist is going in the right direction by holding debates on critical issues on the web that are open to public. But we will take it further by significantly moving the platform toward the public. In Agora/Dais, the center-stage of the debate definitively belongs to the general public.
  - SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
    I want to clarify that the 29 comments were on the particular debate I visited while answering this question. I don't have access to their user statistics at the moment. This number likely doesn't tell us about average user participation in their site.
Pils 11y ago
This seems really similar to Jürgen Habermas's Public Sphere idea (in a good way). One thing I would suggest is to make sure to stand on the shoulder of giants. There is a lot of academic work written on what worked and what didn't work in communities like Slashdot, kuro5hin, various bbForums, 4chan, Usenet, etc.
- SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
  Best comment! Agora/Dais, as you said, is really similar to the new philosophical concepts you've introduced me to. I was not aware of him before, but how I see this company agrees exactly with what I've read so far. Thank you for sharing this. This has not only sparked my intellectual curiosity, but also has become a learning responsibility as a founding member of a company working in the area of public discourse. I also agree with your latter points, which are no less important. All early members including myself are investing significant amount of time to research now, and will continue to do so long into the company's lifetime. We will also establish a company culture that emphasizes learning among employees.
pjlegato 11y ago
How will you acquire your first batch of enough users to reach critical mass, where the site becomes an interesting destination rather than a ghost town? This will be your biggest challenge by far. Your competition is not only existing blogs, newspaper comment sections, and discussion forums that already host socially-oriented debate, but also any other place where people spend their free time: Netflix and XBox. How will you reach the people who would be interested in participating in such a forum? When you do reach them, how will you overcome the initial "ghost town" chicken-and-egg problem, where nobody will want to use the forum unless lots of other people are using it already?
- SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
  Thank you for bringing up more highly relevant questions for our company! Our idea does indeed face a chicken-and-egg problem. The following strategies will be implemented to address concerns mentioned above - i) We will aggressively market toward a niched group to find early power users. This group can be college students. A higher proportion of all college students are likely to resonate to Agora/Dais. This will be enormously valuable for the company during the early stage to a) fight off "ghost town" issues, b) gain feedback for iteration. ii) Early employees, all with equity stake in the company, will be encouraged to regularly participate in the social network. We hope to make debating a part of company culture. This will also fight off "ghost town" problem. iii) We aim to funnel the constructive and creative energies currently visibly abundant yet mostly wasted across social sites, blogs, comment sections, and discussion forums. We are similar to hacker news in this sense, that it is the first and most uniquely designed forum for hackers (in the broader meaning of the word). Agora/Dais aims to be such a thing for debaters of sociopolitoeconomic issues. iv) Effective marketing of our values will help us find users who share the spirit of debating. Our challenge is to show that Agora/Dais can add value to the user's life by being able to talk about issues that affect them directly, and by being able to share in each other's knowledge on specific topics. Our "north star", the thing that gives value to our users, is each time a user gets a response. This is our metric of interest.
  - SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
vit05 11y ago
That s look cool. I thought Brigade app was trying to do something similar. But appears it is more restrict to political debates.
- SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
  Thank you for bringing this up. There are a significant number of apps already in the debate space, as listed below. The presence of competition in this space means that the potential market size these startups are trying to tap into is large. However, none of the startups have been able to capitalize on the idea. As a result, most people still meet their "debating needs" by making long comments on ESPN or Huffington Post or Facebook. Dais/Agora is confident it can capture this market in a manner Google did with search engines, or Facebook did with networks for friends. Brigade - User scrolls through topics and scrolls through multiple one-line statements within said topics. Then user chooses between "Agree", "Disagree", and "Unsure". User bonds with others who share similar percentage agreement on various issues as decided. Dais/Agora is at least 70% different. Even though Brigade has an active blog section and claims that it "is a free app that lets you express your opinions on news and politics", it does not give voice to the issues the way Dais/Agora will. DebateMe - Last updated 10.6.2015. There were 4 total debates going on worldwide. They are one- or two-liners, with ability to include images. Dais/Agora is at least 40% different, and will work hard to be a more vibrant community. Debate.com - Has about 30 total "debates" and "polls" in database - ranging from super bowl ads, death penalty, gun control, math vs. english, Abraham Lincoln vs. FDR, Deadpool vs Starwars, etc. Few votes and views, very few comments. We are 60-70% different. State - Established app in this space. Shows "opinion mixes" that are one-liners and gives user following choices to act in response - i) pick up to 3 words, ii) search, iii) pick from words featured. Dais/Agora is 65% different. Lighthouse - One of the more similar ones. Hosts conversations on local and national issues. User feed and profile are adjusted by gaining agree/disagree/neutral feedback on one-line issues. Users participate in conversations via texts ranging 2 or more sentences. A point to note is that most of the apps have gone for instant gratification methods because they followed the success of Facebook and Twitter. These companies are not providing the debating population with what they want (which is why they haven't succeeded). Dais/Agora realizes it is a radically different company from the existing successful social networks, and has a vision for itself. Dais/Agora has the task of using technology to bring back conversations that used to exist in a village, but has been systematically alienated due to urbanization. In Dais/Agora, issues such as an incompetent teacher in some neighborhood school will be able to reach a larger number of people more frequently, thus gaining momentum in the community more often and being addressed as such. We only hear one or two such cases on nationally televised media every month, and perhaps the number increases to three or five - in local media. However, well-ingrained and systematically-inbred transparency in such a massive civic society as ours remains a major hurdle for human civilization to overcome. edit: cut text "(which is desired)"
bestattack 11y ago
OK, I need you to give me a typical profile of a user (what they like to do, etc.) to understand why the user would join the site and contribute.
- SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
  Thank you for the question. A typical user would belong to one of following groups - professional/blue-collar family men and women, housewives and househusbands, and youth in their twenties. Users belonging to such groups are most situationally motivated to talk about issues directly or indirectly affecting them.
kumarski 11y ago
Online debate is a really tough space. Sam Altman had a very famous recent tweet about the productivity lost to online debate.
- SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
  I'm not aware of Sam's tweet. This being a tough space is an encouraging sign for a start-up. It was a founder of YC who encouraged start-ups to not avoid "schlep" business. Edit: I realized that your reference to a tweet was in effect a questioning of the validity/purpose of Dais/Agora. I'd like to answer this. Unorganized debating and commenting is inefficient due to their delocalized nature. Dais allows the true values of debating to shine by creating appropriate space, and via structured guidance (see differentiated visuals compared to competitors). By creating the first proper online space for debates, Dais gives birth to the possibility of entire cities, states, and nations being involved in issues (from temporary and local to far-reaching and international) at a level not observed since urbanization began, thus allowing unparalleled civic activism to flourish. This is the vision of Dais/Agora.
- SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
  To add to my previous reply, it has in truth been sad to watch sites like CNN do away with their commenting sections. Now that I hear that Sam Altman - a person with considerable popular influence - has openly chastised debating, I am becoming worried about the presence of a trend.

Goalie27 11y ago

Overall I like the idea. My main question would be how do you keep it from becoming an echo chamber or an all out brawl?

SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
Thank you for two very relevant questions! We will develop an algorithm that will compare "debate topics" by analyzing their "initiators", text content, and "evidences". This algorithm will assign a correlation factor to all possible one-to-one comparisons from domain of "debate topics". Any two "debate topics" with factor exceeding a threshold may be integrated together. Required minimum word counts for all responses, post flagging system at user-end, and algorithms searching for abusive language will all be used to prevent all-out brawls from breaking out. These are among important parameters that will be under observation starting in the development stage. We will learn from our experience and improve our algorithms.

bonbom1 11y ago

You might want to change the name if you don't want to be associated with the largest online drug marketplace.

SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
Wow I wasn't aware of this! Just looked it up. In Ancient Greek city-states, "agora" was the central square where they'd gather for important discussions. I really like the name and would hate to give it up. I will have to understand all of the implications of having the same name as that of a major marketplace from the deep web. This is pretty shocking to me.

SherlockeHolmes 11y ago

Dear moderators, I've made a mess of things while naming my company. I failed to thoroughly search the name before having decided for it. Please either - i) delete this so I may rename my company and start another thread, or ii) replace all mentions of "Agora" in above post with "Dais". I am happy with this second name. It refers to a platform or a podium, which goes with the purpose of our company. I have decided to not keep the previous name due to the extent of its affiliation with another entity.

Kinnard 11y ago

I really like this idea. Have you checked out the Economist's debates: http://debates.economist.com/ http://debates.economist.com/

SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
Thank you for sharing this. What I loved most about the debates held at the Economist was the participation on the part of the users. Although the focus was on the selected panel of moderator and the two experts, there were 29 comments made by users that were largely well thought-out. I believe the Economist is going in the right direction by holding debates on critical issues on the web that are open to public. But we will take it further by significantly moving the platform toward the public. In Agora/Dais, the center-stage of the debate definitively belongs to the general public.
- SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
  I want to clarify that the 29 comments were on the particular debate I visited while answering this question. I don't have access to their user statistics at the moment. This number likely doesn't tell us about average user participation in their site.

Pils 11y ago

This seems really similar to Jürgen Habermas's Public Sphere idea (in a good way). One thing I would suggest is to make sure to stand on the shoulder of giants. There is a lot of academic work written on what worked and what didn't work in communities like Slashdot, kuro5hin, various bbForums, 4chan, Usenet, etc.

SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
Best comment! Agora/Dais, as you said, is really similar to the new philosophical concepts you've introduced me to. I was not aware of him before, but how I see this company agrees exactly with what I've read so far. Thank you for sharing this. This has not only sparked my intellectual curiosity, but also has become a learning responsibility as a founding member of a company working in the area of public discourse. I also agree with your latter points, which are no less important. All early members including myself are investing significant amount of time to research now, and will continue to do so long into the company's lifetime. We will also establish a company culture that emphasizes learning among employees.

pjlegato 11y ago

How will you acquire your first batch of enough users to reach critical mass, where the site becomes an interesting destination rather than a ghost town? This will be your biggest challenge by far. Your competition is not only existing blogs, newspaper comment sections, and discussion forums that already host socially-oriented debate, but also any other place where people spend their free time: Netflix and XBox. How will you reach the people who would be interested in participating in such a forum? When you do reach them, how will you overcome the initial "ghost town" chicken-and-egg problem, where nobody will want to use the forum unless lots of other people are using it already?

SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
Thank you for bringing up more highly relevant questions for our company! Our idea does indeed face a chicken-and-egg problem. The following strategies will be implemented to address concerns mentioned above - i) We will aggressively market toward a niched group to find early power users. This group can be college students. A higher proportion of all college students are likely to resonate to Agora/Dais. This will be enormously valuable for the company during the early stage to a) fight off "ghost town" issues, b) gain feedback for iteration. ii) Early employees, all with equity stake in the company, will be encouraged to regularly participate in the social network. We hope to make debating a part of company culture. This will also fight off "ghost town" problem. iii) We aim to funnel the constructive and creative energies currently visibly abundant yet mostly wasted across social sites, blogs, comment sections, and discussion forums. We are similar to hacker news in this sense, that it is the first and most uniquely designed forum for hackers (in the broader meaning of the word). Agora/Dais aims to be such a thing for debaters of sociopolitoeconomic issues. iv) Effective marketing of our values will help us find users who share the spirit of debating. Our challenge is to show that Agora/Dais can add value to the user's life by being able to talk about issues that affect them directly, and by being able to share in each other's knowledge on specific topics. Our "north star", the thing that gives value to our users, is each time a user gets a response. This is our metric of interest.
- SherlockeHolmes 11y ago

vit05 11y ago

That s look cool. I thought Brigade app was trying to do something similar. But appears it is more restrict to political debates.

SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
Thank you for bringing this up. There are a significant number of apps already in the debate space, as listed below. The presence of competition in this space means that the potential market size these startups are trying to tap into is large. However, none of the startups have been able to capitalize on the idea. As a result, most people still meet their "debating needs" by making long comments on ESPN or Huffington Post or Facebook. Dais/Agora is confident it can capture this market in a manner Google did with search engines, or Facebook did with networks for friends. Brigade - User scrolls through topics and scrolls through multiple one-line statements within said topics. Then user chooses between "Agree", "Disagree", and "Unsure". User bonds with others who share similar percentage agreement on various issues as decided. Dais/Agora is at least 70% different. Even though Brigade has an active blog section and claims that it "is a free app that lets you express your opinions on news and politics", it does not give voice to the issues the way Dais/Agora will. DebateMe - Last updated 10.6.2015. There were 4 total debates going on worldwide. They are one- or two-liners, with ability to include images. Dais/Agora is at least 40% different, and will work hard to be a more vibrant community. Debate.com - Has about 30 total "debates" and "polls" in database - ranging from super bowl ads, death penalty, gun control, math vs. english, Abraham Lincoln vs. FDR, Deadpool vs Starwars, etc. Few votes and views, very few comments. We are 60-70% different. State - Established app in this space. Shows "opinion mixes" that are one-liners and gives user following choices to act in response - i) pick up to 3 words, ii) search, iii) pick from words featured. Dais/Agora is 65% different. Lighthouse - One of the more similar ones. Hosts conversations on local and national issues. User feed and profile are adjusted by gaining agree/disagree/neutral feedback on one-line issues. Users participate in conversations via texts ranging 2 or more sentences. A point to note is that most of the apps have gone for instant gratification methods because they followed the success of Facebook and Twitter. These companies are not providing the debating population with what they want (which is why they haven't succeeded). Dais/Agora realizes it is a radically different company from the existing successful social networks, and has a vision for itself. Dais/Agora has the task of using technology to bring back conversations that used to exist in a village, but has been systematically alienated due to urbanization. In Dais/Agora, issues such as an incompetent teacher in some neighborhood school will be able to reach a larger number of people more frequently, thus gaining momentum in the community more often and being addressed as such. We only hear one or two such cases on nationally televised media every month, and perhaps the number increases to three or five - in local media. However, well-ingrained and systematically-inbred transparency in such a massive civic society as ours remains a major hurdle for human civilization to overcome. edit: cut text "(which is desired)"

bestattack 11y ago

OK, I need you to give me a typical profile of a user (what they like to do, etc.) to understand why the user would join the site and contribute.

SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
Thank you for the question. A typical user would belong to one of following groups - professional/blue-collar family men and women, housewives and househusbands, and youth in their twenties. Users belonging to such groups are most situationally motivated to talk about issues directly or indirectly affecting them.

kumarski 11y ago

Online debate is a really tough space. Sam Altman had a very famous recent tweet about the productivity lost to online debate.

SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
I'm not aware of Sam's tweet. This being a tough space is an encouraging sign for a start-up. It was a founder of YC who encouraged start-ups to not avoid "schlep" business. Edit: I realized that your reference to a tweet was in effect a questioning of the validity/purpose of Dais/Agora. I'd like to answer this. Unorganized debating and commenting is inefficient due to their delocalized nature. Dais allows the true values of debating to shine by creating appropriate space, and via structured guidance (see differentiated visuals compared to competitors). By creating the first proper online space for debates, Dais gives birth to the possibility of entire cities, states, and nations being involved in issues (from temporary and local to far-reaching and international) at a level not observed since urbanization began, thus allowing unparalleled civic activism to flourish. This is the vision of Dais/Agora.
SherlockeHolmes 11y ago
To add to my previous reply, it has in truth been sad to watch sites like CNN do away with their commenting sections. Now that I hear that Sam Altman - a person with considerable popular influence - has openly chastised debating, I am becoming worried about the presence of a trend.