5 ms·
Service I want: "Report websites that suck"
Hey,
I was just going to pay my monthly bill on PG&E. For some reason the "Pay" button doesn't work in Firefox 3. Of all the functions on that websites the "Pay-button" is likely to be the most important one. Sad they had to fuck that up.
So, here is my idea in response. Build a service called "Websites that suck". It could be a firefox plugin or just a website. People can sign in and report sites that constantly suck or break. It can be a very simple tools where thousands of users together figure out which sites that REALLY suck.
Once a month a report is created, very similar to Technorati's "State of the blogsphere" that lists the websites that suck the most and how the top 50 has changed month by month.
What do you guys think? Big opportunity for a startup. Say I work for PG&E and 10,000 people report every month that our website suck but I don't know why. I then buy all the comments from the startup for say $1000/month. It's a cheap way of getting rid of bad PR.
Gustaf
- socmoth 19y agobookmarklet
- gustaf 19y agoeven better idea. works in both IE and FF right?
- andr 19y agodelicious tag?
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]
- Hexstream 19y agoThat's completely off-topic, subjective and it's completely "reversible" too, look: "I actually like Firefox better than IE. Loads faster, works better." Beware of such statements, they're often a sign of insipidity.
- ryanmahoski 19y agoGood luck, but if PG&E et. al ever get caught paying to unransom published comments they'll face a worse PR nightmare than mere reports of bad javascript.
- xenoterracide 19y agohttp://search.wikia.com/wiki/Search_Wikia http://search.wikia.com/wiki/Search_Wikia I don't know how it's coming but wikia search should be able to allow users to modify whether search returns are good and valuable.
- mynameishere 19y agoStupidest idea I've heard in a long time. Extortion, outwresting, or exaction is a criminal offense, which occurs when a person either unlawfully obtains money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution through coercion or intimidation or threatens a person, entity, or institution with physical or reputational harm unless he is paid money or property. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion
- mynameishere 19y agoQuit downmodding me, shitheads. I'm trying to keep this numbskull out of bankruptcy court or prison. EDIT: No, really. I want ONE person to admit having downmodded me. Seriously. You've got some potential criminal posting shit here and he needs corrected.
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]
- astine 19y agoI didn't downmod you but I think that the reason people did wasn't the legal warning (which is certainly valid and relevant,) but the tone. Insulting people just doesn't get them to listen.
- trevelyan 19y agoI just modded you up. Yours is the most point-on comment on this entire page.
- menloparkbum 19y agoMichael Arrington already does a good enough job with this sort of reporting.
- akkartik 19y agoAnother way to think about this: take the "site x doesn't work with browser y" bugs out of all the different browser bugzillas and give them a more coherent home. This will help mitigate the martian headsets problem (http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html) Heh, browserzilla.com is available.
- gustaf 19y agothat's a very technical way of looking at it. i'm not only talking about how a site works in a particular browser but if it's actually good or not. mainly the sites i have in my mind are sites where you don't choose the service based on the web-service and you end up with a really sucky service that you can't leave. for example: - banks - utilites companies - cellphone carriers - government sites - ecommerce sites (where you're a customer in the physical store) etc
- akkartik 19y agoYeah, I didn't phrase it right. What I suggested wasn't exactly the same thing, but it seemed more actionable. What constitutes 'sucky' is often subjective and open to interpretation. You risk ending up as just another review site. Defining sucks as 'broken', however, means focussing on things like "why the heck doesn't submit work here?" and so on. These websites have all been tested, even at the most monopolistic places. They just haven't been tested on some combination of browser and platform. So that's how I made the subconscious transition from your idea to mine :)
- mrtron 19y agoI would just have people just be able to log what sites don't work, and automate that browser checking. Less data entry, more responses.
- hbien 19y agoIt might be SSL that's broken on the new Firefox. I can't visit any https sites using Firefox 3 beta on the Mac.
- prakash 19y agoSiteAdvisor does something similar - http://www.siteadvisor.com/ http://www.siteadvisor.com/
- josefresco 19y agoHow about a website where corporations can submit information on unreasonable-sucky users/customers. They could then share that data and deny you service based on your unreasonable expectations (like compatibility with BETA software used by <1% of the population) and proven history of alarmist posts on elitist websites like Hacker News. I'd build that.
- juzmcmuz 19y agoI think this has legs. Could be positioned and designed something along the lines of http://www.shoulddothis.com/ http://www.shoulddothis.com/ or even http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ (but this service would be 'doesthissitesuckorisitjustme.com). It's not 'extortion' to companies subscribing. It's valuable and a cheap form of research. Has to be presented 'nicely' of course!