42 ms·

Lonava- Retrospective of a failed RealName HN/Reddit clone

5 points by e1ven 16y ago

e1ven 16y ago
Ultimately, I had fun building the site, but it didn't pan out. People don't want to post under their Real Names ;) I've disabled the Real Name Verification aspects on the site- If you create an account at www.lonava.com is assumes you're verified, if anyone wanted to see how it worked. Code is at Github.
- e1ven 16y ago
  An example post of how stories with images look is available at http://lonava.com/stories/24416 http://lonava.com/stories/24416
prodigal_erik 16y ago
Yeah, sorry, any venue that requires my True Name will never get more than cheerful fluff from me, no substantive opinions (unless they're utterly non-controversial) much less What You Can't Say. I rely on getting food and shelter by negotiating with other members of a nosy, judgmental, sometimes irrational species.
- greenlblue 16y ago
  I'm not really sure about that. Have you seen the kind of stuff people post on facebook? It's outrageous. You can get people to use their real identities and you can get them to share real personal stuff as long as you trick them into doing it with the right social incentives. What we can learn from this failed experiment is that rational arguments don't convince people to do anything even if you do offer higher signal-to-noise ratio.
- e1ven 16y ago
  Fair enough, that's what I wanted to test ;) People post to HN while hoping that pg et all will give them money- There's even more on the line then there is posting under your name. I still think that people Would, if there were compelling enough content there to warrant the "price of admission", but since the site only works once people pay it by verifying themselves, it never builds up that unique content and discussion, so never will hit critical mass where people are willing to ID themselves to join.
  - ryandvm 16y ago
    Facebook is what a social site looks like when you don't have anonymity - and I don't like it. People end up self-censoring about 3/4 of the things they want to say on Facebook so they don't offend anyone. It's an intellectually barren wasteland of harmless platitudes and abandoned thoughts. I appreciate where you were coming from with this idea, but I like a little anonymity to my Internet. It's the truth spice.
michael_dorfman 16y ago
I think there's two issues going on here. One, of course, is the RealName issue, and naturally, that's where the focus of the discussion is. The other, however, is that a site like this, RealName or otherwise, has a serious chicken-and-egg problem. You need to have a serious plan for traction before even starting. Without a built-in audience (like Joel and Jeff's readers at StackOverflow), you're fighting a seriously uphill battle to begin with.
- petervandijck 16y ago
  Agreed. Chicken and egg problem would be much harder than the realname bit. There are 100s of these sites out there, it's just hard.
quesera 16y ago
I imagine the user resistance is more due to a) not wanting to pay to join a ghost town, and b) not having significant issues with the quality of community on HN/Reddit (or being satisfied with the local methods of filtering). I wouldn't draw any conclusions about Real Names from this exercise, except perhaps that users don't consider them valuable enough to overcome the other frictions created by your product.
petervandijck 16y ago
Interesting post. I think you made a bunch of mistakes. 1. Underestimate the importance of good content to attract people. 2. Overestimate the importance of real names. 3. Design. Either make it ugly (which would have been fine), or really good looking. Both your design and the designers' design where in-between meh. You should have kept it ugly and focused on the content :) 4. Pulling in feeds makes the content worse, not better. Automated content doesn't create community.

5 points by e1ven 16y ago

e1ven 16y ago

Ultimately, I had fun building the site, but it didn't pan out. People don't want to post under their Real Names ;) I've disabled the Real Name Verification aspects on the site- If you create an account at www.lonava.com is assumes you're verified, if anyone wanted to see how it worked. Code is at Github.

e1ven 16y ago
An example post of how stories with images look is available at http://lonava.com/stories/24416 http://lonava.com/stories/24416

prodigal_erik 16y ago

Yeah, sorry, any venue that requires my True Name will never get more than cheerful fluff from me, no substantive opinions (unless they're utterly non-controversial) much less What You Can't Say. I rely on getting food and shelter by negotiating with other members of a nosy, judgmental, sometimes irrational species.

greenlblue 16y ago
I'm not really sure about that. Have you seen the kind of stuff people post on facebook? It's outrageous. You can get people to use their real identities and you can get them to share real personal stuff as long as you trick them into doing it with the right social incentives. What we can learn from this failed experiment is that rational arguments don't convince people to do anything even if you do offer higher signal-to-noise ratio.
e1ven 16y ago
Fair enough, that's what I wanted to test ;) People post to HN while hoping that pg et all will give them money- There's even more on the line then there is posting under your name. I still think that people Would, if there were compelling enough content there to warrant the "price of admission", but since the site only works once people pay it by verifying themselves, it never builds up that unique content and discussion, so never will hit critical mass where people are willing to ID themselves to join.
- ryandvm 16y ago
  Facebook is what a social site looks like when you don't have anonymity - and I don't like it. People end up self-censoring about 3/4 of the things they want to say on Facebook so they don't offend anyone. It's an intellectually barren wasteland of harmless platitudes and abandoned thoughts. I appreciate where you were coming from with this idea, but I like a little anonymity to my Internet. It's the truth spice.

michael_dorfman 16y ago

I think there's two issues going on here. One, of course, is the RealName issue, and naturally, that's where the focus of the discussion is. The other, however, is that a site like this, RealName or otherwise, has a serious chicken-and-egg problem. You need to have a serious plan for traction before even starting. Without a built-in audience (like Joel and Jeff's readers at StackOverflow), you're fighting a seriously uphill battle to begin with.

petervandijck 16y ago
Agreed. Chicken and egg problem would be much harder than the realname bit. There are 100s of these sites out there, it's just hard.

quesera 16y ago

I imagine the user resistance is more due to a) not wanting to pay to join a ghost town, and b) not having significant issues with the quality of community on HN/Reddit (or being satisfied with the local methods of filtering). I wouldn't draw any conclusions about Real Names from this exercise, except perhaps that users don't consider them valuable enough to overcome the other frictions created by your product.

petervandijck 16y ago

Interesting post. I think you made a bunch of mistakes. 1. Underestimate the importance of good content to attract people. 2. Overestimate the importance of real names. 3. Design. Either make it ugly (which would have been fine), or really good looking. Both your design and the designers' design where in-between meh. You should have kept it ugly and focused on the content :) 4. Pulling in feeds makes the content worse, not better. Automated content doesn't create community.