5 ms·
Ask HN: What to do with this meme?
Hello,
I made this little web app - iwl.me, which is just a box with a button. You give it some text, it analyzes it and tells you what famous writer you write like (I won't go into algorithmic discussion for now), and gives you a badge for blog and a link for sharing on Twitter/Facebook/Buzz. It's up for 3 days now, here are stats:
2nd day - 12,000 uniques
3rd day - 100,000 uniques
It's spreading just like a perfect meme should :-) E.g. http://search.twitter.com/search?q=iwl.me
My question is, what should I do with it:
a) for monetary gain (It already achieved the SEO effect I planned, not sure what to do now).
b) for a good cause. I'm already thrilled to notice that people discover and re-discover writers and say "Oh, I write like [writer], I must read more of his works." What can I do to get more of this effect?
What do you think? I'm open to ideas or deals. Thank you!
PS Technical details: it's running on a single Rackspace Cloud instance with 512 MB RAM, Apache+web.py.
- dchest 16y agoClickable: http://iwl.me http://iwl.me
- jonafato 16y agoHow about then giving the user a list of works by that author via amazon? If the users really do want to read more of that writer's stuff, this might be a good way to get some affiliate business. You could possibly even point to specific works that they "write like". You might also take a look at the goodreads api (http://www.goodreads.com/api http://www.goodreads.com/api) for some possible social networking aspects? Maybe you could show people reading things they write like via goodreads or something along those lines.
- dchest 16y agoI thought about Amazon affiliate program, but I'm outside the US, and it's a huge hassle to deal with checks here. Thanks for suggestions!
- jonafato 16y agoHow about trying to sell ads directly to booksellers? Even if affiliate programs won't work, you could offer users up the same kind of book list as sort of a customized banner ad. Being able to serve up that many impressions must be worth something, even if only for a short time. Even sites that don't directly sell books, but are related (back to goodreads, because its the only one I have really used) would probably be interested in this. Hope you get something off the ground.
- pbhjpbhj 16y agoI presume you mean cheques of money sent you from Amazon? If it's too much hassle to cash potentially huge affiliate checks then you're rich enough, give the site to someone else that wants more money. Seriously FB has 400Million active uniques. If you capture one-hundreth of a percent of those and then of those 1% convert and you make $1 on each conversion that's $400. Even if it took me a whole day to organise cashing the cheque that would be worth it. For Amazon though the problem is that they fragment their affiliate scheme (to create less opportunity for small sites to break the cash-out threshold presumably) so AdWords or whatever might be better.
- dchest 16y agoI'm in a new country (Montenegro), haven't got residence permit here yet, don't have a permanent address, and don't speak the local language to figure out how to cash checks. Anyway, I've added Amazon affiliate links now, maybe I'll cash out with gift certificates.
- Yaggo 16y agoCan anybody confirm it's possible to join Amazon Associates outside "Amazon" countries? (US/UK/FR/DE/JP/CA) Spent 5 minutes on Googling but didn't find the information.
- dchest 16y agoYes, it's possible. Just sign up here http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/join/getstarted http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/join/getstarted
- pbhjpbhj 16y agoPerhaps you have a friend or family member in the US that would take the money and pay you ...
- hcho 16y agoCheck skimlinks, they can pay you via PayPal, too.
- dchest 16y agoPayPal is also not an option here :/ But I have a workaround for this, so I will check it out.
- AmberShah 16y agoI second this just because the first thing I did was go search for books by that author on Amazon.
- hcho 16y agoHow about recommendations like "people who write like Bukowski enjoys Burgess"? Of course the author names are links to your affiliate program. BTW, the banner at the bottom of your site is taking ages to load.
- dchest 16y agoBTW, the banner at the bottom of your site is taking ages to load. Hmm, it's hosted on Rackspace Files CDN.
- waterlesscloud 16y agoMany of my FB friends are writers, this thing has spread like wildfire through them today. But the thing is it's a flash in the pan effect. It'll do huge for a very short period of time with no revisits. If you monetize, do it RIGHT NOW. Tomorrow is too late. Almost literally.
- dchest 16y agoI agree, just like almost every meme, it's short-lived.
- niels_bom 16y agoA lot of the memes on the web are short-lived, however there's nothing about memes that makes them inherently short-lived. Some memes live extremely long.
- dchest 16y agoI'd be interested to see examples of long-lived memes like this.
- dabent 16y agohttp://icanhascheezburger.com/ http://icanhascheezburger.com/ http://www.hotornot.com/ http://www.hotornot.com/
- hugh3 16y agoThose at least give you neverending variety. There are novel thousands of new variations on the lolcat theme every day, and no end to the slot-machine-like fun of rating people hot or not in the hope of eventually getting to one who is either particularly hot or hilariously not. But once you've posted in a sample of your own writing, gone "Hahaha, I write like Mario Puzo, hey guys, guess what?", I find it hard to imagine anyone coming back time after time.
- mynameishere 16y agoBased on your post, you write like Dan Brown.
- pclark 16y agoupsell a relevant product affiliate deals for the authors books enjoy the seo :)
- ssn 16y agoLovecraft here.
- ssn 16y agoThere is no info about the 'famous writer'. At least an Amazon affiliate link to the author should generate some income. Also, the first paragraph from Wikipedia would be useful.
- patrickmclaren 16y agoObviously this would be something that would mean a lot more work, but how about.. Tracking a users's blog feed, parsing each post and see how their writing style evolves over time? This would certainly increase the longevity of your app.
- dchest 16y agoThis is a great idea. I'll do this when I have time, thanks.
- nedwin 16y agoon that note checkout 750words.com. Basically you write 750 words a day and it analyses the text to tell you about what you have written - whether it's extroverted, self-centred, positive etc. These stats are then displayed with nice graphs.
- wlievens 16y agoI fetched a document I wrote and entered several paragraphs, and got a different author each time. What does that say about me (or your algorithm)? Congratulations on the traction though!
- forcetenhen 16y agoI tried a couple of times, got Raymond Chandler, Margaret Atwood, Stephen King and... Dan Brown. All for different elements of the same page. In turns inpsiring and soul-crushing..
- ckeen 16y agoI just pasted some irc logs. IRC writes like Mark Twain...
- ankeshk 16y ago1. Quickly send an email to the Top 20 writing sites out there. And make them an offer: they could get a white label version of your script to be on their URL with their logo for a fee. Strike while the iron is hot. 2. On the results page, quickly create a form that asks for peoples email id. And then publish a newsletter that helps folks become better writers. Capturing email ids also give you a big base of folks with whom you can share your future apps with. Faster seeding.
- dchest 16y ago2. Done. Thanks!
- JMiao 16y agopg ~ kurt vonnegut
- ncarroll 16y agoDepending on which paragraph within the same blog post I checked I write like Margret Atwood, Mark Twain or Isaac Asimov. By removing the last sentence from my Asimov-like paragraph: H.P. Lovecraft. Removing another sentence I write like Edgar Allan Poe. I'm not sure what this tells me about my writing, but it does stroke my ego. Sometimes that's just what a writer needs.
- Ardit20 16y agoI write like Joyce apparently and Defoe
- drtse4 16y agoImpressive uniques progression... what did you do on day 1? I mean, what strategy did you employ to launch the meme? I guess you launched it on codingrobots blog/newsletter/twitter, did you do anything else? Regarding the spreading, a tweet from some real author will be great (how?). And what about publishing some real-time stats about the results? i.e. 30% of our users write like Dan Brown, 10% like xxx, etc... EDIT: "Margaret Atwood, who is in our database of famous writers, tweeted about it (apparently, she doesn’t write like herself… oops :)" Already happened... enjoy the exponential growth in visits :)
- dchest 16y agoYes, newsletter, Twitter and blog. First "outside" referrals were from reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/cnmny/what_famous_writer_you_write_like_check_with_this/ http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/cnmny/what_famou...) and my HN comment on "What are you working on today?" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1501078 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1501078). Total of 132 visits on the first day. Currently: facebook.com 20.75% tumblr.com 8.24% twitter.com 5.57% Of the popular writers, Margaret Atwood tweeted about it (apparently, she doesn't write like herself -- she is in the database :) http://twitter.com/MargaretAtwood/status/18463485898 http://twitter.com/MargaretAtwood/status/18463485898 and William Gibson http://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/18450533599 http://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/18450533599 I don't track any stats regarding results of analysis, I can only see which result pages get more visits.
- vinhboy 16y agoDude, you have no facebook Like, Tweet this, Buzz it, links? .... oh wait.... they do exist... Umm ok... How about you use the regular icons for familiarity sake? I also like the "bio" idea. Seeing a name I don't recognize makes the experience a bit hollow.
- xutopia 16y agoAmazon affiliate links for books by said authors?
- revorad 16y agoOh you should totally join forces with this guy - http://www.finishstart.com/ http://www.finishstart.com/ - it will be a whacko mashup.
- ComputerGuru 16y agoI know you said you're not discussing the algorithm, but to me, the biggest proof of silliness (I won't say "nonsense") is that when I entered 7 different blog posts of mine, I got 6 different results.
- AgentConundrum 16y agoI tried two different posts I wrote (in fact, the entire contents of my rebooted blog, since RSI has kept me down lately), as well as one half-written post, and apparently they all appeared to be Dan Brown works. I'm not quite sure what to think of that, but at least it was reasonably consistent for me.
- irahul 16y agoIt was completely inconsistent for me. I tried 4 posts and got 4 different results. I tried 2 different parts of the same post and got different results. I suspect the webapp is just suggesting random writers. Also, NLP classification is a hard problem. I don't think doing it reliably over a weekend is possible. I think that had OP done any good work on NLP, he would have discussed it. I am more inclined to think the app is just giving random results.
- GBKS 16y agoI'll share some experience with your from cornify.com, which had the same effect and still goes strong 1.5 years later (this year invitation to ROFLCON, SXSW people's choice award, installed in 550000 web pages...). This is my experience with a project that's different from yours, so I hope it will help with your specific situation. The main thing you need to achieve is to make your site about a bigger theme. This feature will remain the core, but you need to be associated with something bigger. With Cornify, it's always been about happiness. Unicorns and rainbows are (almost) second to that, which gives me much more room to work with. Make your site about famous writers, becoming a better writer, or something like that. Use imagery that matches the theme. The second big thing is to make your tool deep, while keeping it simple. People know it for this one thing and the one thing only. Make it so you can find something new every time you use it, make it smart so it learns with the number of times you use it. Surprise people. Tweak, tweak, tweak. Third recommendation is to build a voice and talk to people. Get Twitter and Facebook accounts. Decide on how you want to relate to people and what they should get out of being interested in you. I've gotten so many "Oh, I can't believe Cornify is on Twitter" comments, it shows that you care about the site. A brand would also be a big help. Maybe you can look into using imagery of famous writers. Find a way that people can create things on your site. With Cornify, people really like the photo uploader. Find something that people can create on your site and then share. This keeps people coming back. Most importantly, keep things fun. This is not serious business, this is a meme. If things stop being fun or get cluttered with ads, people will not take your serious and won't come back. Be very careful about monetizing. A meme that people like is an incredibly thing to have in your resume and a great talking point. I worked on projects for MTV, Nintendo, EA, etc, but people get way more excited when they find out I created Cornify. This is a meme and you may be more proud of other things you have done, but in terms of public recognition, you should take this very serious. And congratulations. It's very exciting to see a project blow up like this. Hope you have a great time with it.
- jackfoxy 16y agoIt says I write like James Joyce. You sure know how to pump up my ego! There must be money in that.
- kashif 16y agoMakes the two of us. Want our money, you can have it.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- paraschopra 16y agoBit off topic, but it will be interesting to learn how you seeded the meme. Will be good for people like me who churn out such minor projects which always fail to get >100 visitors :) As far as monetary gain is concerned, immediately you can find some of the writers books on Amazon and link them up in the results page with your affiliate id. Long term you can capture email ids and send them offers on email.
- kapranoff 16y agoFirst, congratulations. I think your first goal now should be encouraging users to return later. I would definitely promise right on the results page that more writers would be added regularly and algorithms would be improved so that people had reasons to bookmark you or to subscribe to your twitter/facebook waiting for their favourite authors. I would also make local pages for all writers you have. Link to Amazon in that place is unexpected. You could also encourage showing off by enhancing badges. That could be percentages (e.g. I write like 7% of users) or cool portraits or even something like "I write like Stephen King - I could have written The Stand".
- mindcrime 16y agoYou might consider pinging somebody at Lulu (print-on-demand self-publishing company). They might be interested in partnering with you in some fashion... since they specialize in helping authors get published, there might be some synergy there; even if it were no more than a Lulu advertisement on your site. Other self-publishing outfits (CreateSpace, SmashWords, etc.) might have a similar interest. Disclaimer: I'm a former Lulu employee and still like those guys a lot, which is why they came to mind first. :-) Also, if you're interested and need any help making a contact there, feel free to email me. I still have a few connections left over there, I think.
- fragmede 16y agoDepending on how well it's done, I could imagine 'niche' writing analysis doing alright. What 18th-century philosopher do you write like? What CS textbook writer do you write like? Which Doctor Who do you write like? Etc.
- mirkules 16y agoIt would be interesting to see a comparison graph of other users. For example, I would be interested to see how many other people write like Vladimir Nabokov, and maybe even what the top 10 writers are. Congratulations on your success! P.S. You said you're in Montenegro but don't speak the language -- just remember "pivo" (beer) and "poshto?" (how much) and you'll be fine ;)