4 ms·

Ask HN: what do you think of idea for startup

2 points by andrewtbham 16y ago

my idea for a start up is a platform where users ask opened ended questions and then ask their friends and others to respond... then users can respond and other users can vote up the responses. the results will be shown in a style similar to reddit/hacker news/youtube/fml, etc. a mixture of upvotes and newly submitted are near the top.. plus if there are enough submissions a best of today, last week, all time, etc. it would be similar to FML, or texts from last night, or http://notanewyorker.com/. Except users can generate their own open ended statments questions and spread them virally. This phenomena already happens on twitter. #geekpickuplines #3wordsaftersex The open ended statements would be mostly funny...or philisophical... the main difference between this and what happens on twitter is that you can see a best of... that just doesn't exist the way it happens on twitter. please let me know if you think this is a good idea, and how you would implement it. how it would ever make money (ads?) and general thoughts...

oscilloscope 16y ago
This would be a great side project for learning how to setup and manage a social Q/A site. I don't think it's a good business/startup idea though. It doesn't seem much different than Reddit, in particular. How about playing with the Reddit, Twitter, etc APIs to create pages devoted each devoted to an open-ended question? For instance, a user could ask the question, "Is marriage worth it?". You could use Natural Language Processing and other techniques to pull answers from all the web's wacky sources. Still have a submission system for your own users to submit answers-- but prepopulating with existing content on the web might help solve some chicken-egg problems for you.
- andrewtbham 16y ago
  the idea of interfacing with the twitter apis is an interesting one... can you show me an example link of an open ended statement on reddit? here are some examples on twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/search/%233wordsaftersex http://twitter.com/#!/search/%233wordsaftersex http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23wordsthatleadtotrouble http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23wordsthatleadtotrouble
  - oscilloscope 16y ago
    There are lots. Check the AskReddit subreddit (reddit.com/r/AskReddit) A recent thread I really enjoyed reading was: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/related/ddwcl/hey_reddit_how_do_i_explain_death_to_my_4_year_old/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/related/ddwcl/hey_reddit_h...
- andrewcamel 16y ago
  I definitely agree with oscillioscope that you would need to use APIs from twitter and other websites to gather answers to these questions and probably the questions themselves, at least in the beginning.
andrewtbham 16y ago
Here are more examples on twitter... yet there is no best of. i laugh every time... http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23ilaugheverytime http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23ilaugheverytime annoying question... http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23annoyingquestion http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23annoyingquestion when i was little... http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23wheniwaslittle http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23wheniwaslittle
andrewcamel 16y ago
Truthfully, I think the idea has potential, but not as anything too serious. As I see it, you would really just be reinventing the wheel by creating another social platform and then just adding one little function to the much larger machine. Here is where I think you should go with it: Create a system that will track these types of questions, but do not create a new social platform beneath it. Essentially, the success that I see in this idea would be in bringing together all of these existing questions to one site, so if someone wants to use your functionality of seeing "the best" responses to questions, they can visit your site. From that point, they can upvote the responses and comment further on them. If I were to label the site as I described it, I would call it an aggregator, which I think is where it's success really lies.

2 points by andrewtbham 16y ago

oscilloscope 16y ago

This would be a great side project for learning how to setup and manage a social Q/A site. I don't think it's a good business/startup idea though. It doesn't seem much different than Reddit, in particular. How about playing with the Reddit, Twitter, etc APIs to create pages devoted each devoted to an open-ended question? For instance, a user could ask the question, "Is marriage worth it?". You could use Natural Language Processing and other techniques to pull answers from all the web's wacky sources. Still have a submission system for your own users to submit answers-- but prepopulating with existing content on the web might help solve some chicken-egg problems for you.

andrewtbham 16y ago
the idea of interfacing with the twitter apis is an interesting one... can you show me an example link of an open ended statement on reddit? here are some examples on twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/search/%233wordsaftersex http://twitter.com/#!/search/%233wordsaftersex http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23wordsthatleadtotrouble http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23wordsthatleadtotrouble
- oscilloscope 16y ago
  There are lots. Check the AskReddit subreddit (reddit.com/r/AskReddit) A recent thread I really enjoyed reading was: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/related/ddwcl/hey_reddit_how_do_i_explain_death_to_my_4_year_old/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/related/ddwcl/hey_reddit_h...
andrewcamel 16y ago
I definitely agree with oscillioscope that you would need to use APIs from twitter and other websites to gather answers to these questions and probably the questions themselves, at least in the beginning.

andrewtbham 16y ago

Here are more examples on twitter... yet there is no best of. i laugh every time... http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23ilaugheverytime http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23ilaugheverytime annoying question... http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23annoyingquestion http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23annoyingquestion when i was little... http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23wheniwaslittle http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23wheniwaslittle

andrewcamel 16y ago

Truthfully, I think the idea has potential, but not as anything too serious. As I see it, you would really just be reinventing the wheel by creating another social platform and then just adding one little function to the much larger machine. Here is where I think you should go with it: Create a system that will track these types of questions, but do not create a new social platform beneath it. Essentially, the success that I see in this idea would be in bringing together all of these existing questions to one site, so if someone wants to use your functionality of seeing "the best" responses to questions, they can visit your site. From that point, they can upvote the responses and comment further on them. If I were to label the site as I described it, I would call it an aggregator, which I think is where it's success really lies.