4 ms·

Ask HN: Please evaluate my reddit-clone

1 points by kaizenfury7 16y ago

I've been thinking about putting a spin on social news and I decided to put up a prototype to test my idea. The idea/twist is simply this: Use full sentences as a subreddit name. So instead of subscribing to subreddits: - worldnews - technology You would 'subscribe' to: - I am interested in world news. - I am interested in technology news. You can subscribe to other 'full sentence' subreddits like: - I love Star Trek. - I need a student loan. - I enjoy rock climbing. - I am worried about the global economy. Thus, submitting a link would look like: - Title: Greek tremors continue to rock markets - CNN.com - URL: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/05/05/... - Target this link to people with this profile: -- I am interested in world news. -- I am interested in technology news. -- I am worried about the global economy. The difference may look minor, but I think it provides an interesting twist on submitting links. For example, here's another possible submission: - Title: Star Trek club is more than ‘stereotypical nerds’ - URL: http://www.cw.ua.edu/2010/04/22/star-trek-club-is-more... - Target this link to people with this profile: -- I love Star Trek. -- I enjoy rock climbing. If you want to play around with submitting a link, you can use any of these demo accounts: hn_demo1 hn_demo2 hn_demo3 hn_demo4 The password for all of them is: hacker

kaizenfury7 16y ago
Clickable link: http://socialnews.targetmyinfo.com/improve_recommendations http://socialnews.targetmyinfo.com/improve_recommendations
pedalpete 16y ago
I'm not sure that that is a large enough differentiator. If I understand correctly, you're changing 'topics' into sentences. Is that correct? the nice thing about not having a sentence to assign as a subject is that it is faster for the person adding the link, and doesn't take up as much real estate when navigating. I was having some serious usability issues with your site. The colors made it VERY difficult to focus on what I was supposed to be looking at. As well, the layout didn't really direct me as to where I should be looking. Most important, I kept looking at the Social News section, expecting to see the submitted links. Then I thought that maybe i needed to answer the questions before getting the links. It took a bit before I realized that the links where in the 'recommendations for you' section. Overall, you've put a huge number of roadblocks between the user and the content, which is a big no-no.
- kaizenfury7 16y ago
  Yes, that's pretty much what I'm doing. I'm experimenting with adding more meaning to a 'topic' or 'tag'. It does make it a more complicated to add a link, but it allows someone to be more expressive in what they want to see in their news. This should in turn allow a submitter to really target their link to the right audience.

1 points by kaizenfury7 16y ago

kaizenfury7 16y ago

Clickable link: http://socialnews.targetmyinfo.com/improve_recommendations http://socialnews.targetmyinfo.com/improve_recommendations

pedalpete 16y ago

I'm not sure that that is a large enough differentiator. If I understand correctly, you're changing 'topics' into sentences. Is that correct? the nice thing about not having a sentence to assign as a subject is that it is faster for the person adding the link, and doesn't take up as much real estate when navigating. I was having some serious usability issues with your site. The colors made it VERY difficult to focus on what I was supposed to be looking at. As well, the layout didn't really direct me as to where I should be looking. Most important, I kept looking at the Social News section, expecting to see the submitted links. Then I thought that maybe i needed to answer the questions before getting the links. It took a bit before I realized that the links where in the 'recommendations for you' section. Overall, you've put a huge number of roadblocks between the user and the content, which is a big no-no.

kaizenfury7 16y ago
Yes, that's pretty much what I'm doing. I'm experimenting with adding more meaning to a 'topic' or 'tag'. It does make it a more complicated to add a link, but it allows someone to be more expressive in what they want to see in their news. This should in turn allow a submitter to really target their link to the right audience.