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HN, please critique: Business model for Skittles' Super Mega Rainbow Updater

4 points by jawns 16y ago

phalien 16y ago
Something similar could be useful for foreign language learning. Say you're learning Swahili and want to know how a phrase / word is pronounced, you would enter the text on a website and have it spoken to you by a native person. This could be a service offered with a fixed subscription and implemented through Amazon's Mechanical Turk.
mdolon 16y ago
The idea might work given the right circumstances but I think your numbers are a bit off - there's no way a call center employee can 2 or even 1 video a minute. You have to take into account mistakes they make (multiple takes) and editing, unless you plan on doing that yourself (or just have raw video). Also, you probably should charge more than 25 cents - that is such an awkwardly low number that it my deter people from using it ("do I really want a $.25 charge on my credit card?"), not to mention you wouldn't make any money with all the fees. All that said, teenagers love digital interactivity, especially when it relates to chats and webcams. There's also room for something like this in the advertising space - I'd be willing to pay $2-3 to have someone record a 30-60 second YouTube video promoting my product.
- AndrewDucker 16y ago
  Agreed - If I was going to record 15 seconds of video, save it to a file, and upload that file (including logging in to the site it needed to be uploaded to) and then posting it to a third site (including logging in), I'd want 3-4 minutes minimum. If you want me to do more than mumble the line at high speed I'd want a chunk of time to try it out a few different ways too.
bdfh42 16y ago
About 15 seconds after your business starts it will be swamped by adolescents asking for videos of people saying obscene things - to amuse and shock their friends. Hmmn - that might be quite popular when I think about it although there might be problems in some parts of the world. Expect fatwas when people say bad things about various popular prophets.
- jgervin 16y ago
  Don't let this comment stop you. You should do it. The only issue I see is the sign-up/ payment issue. If you can get past that hurdle I bet you will get a million requests by day 14 if you can make it on Techcrunch and/or get people to go viral with Tweets and Facebook updates. DO IT!
iuguy 16y ago
I think it's so open for abuse it'd be bound to be a success, but whether or not you could grow something long term I think would be the question. What might work is if people who register can post messages or handle requests for people in exchange for credit. That might damage your revenue stream, or might go the other way.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
shrikant 16y ago
But where I think it could really generate some significant business is by targeting writers, particularly those whose works will eventually be spoken — playwrights, script writers, speech writers, that sort of thing. Wouldn't this primary use-case be easier to do with one of the many available Mechanical Turks?
landhar 16y ago
"I can't possibly see what could go wrong"
honopu 16y ago
I could be entirely wrong as I am not well versed on credit card payments but last I checked the fee to charge a credit card was 25-30 cents and around 2-3%.

4 points by jawns 16y ago

Something similar could be useful for foreign language learning. Say you're learning Swahili and want to know how a phrase / word is pronounced, you would enter the text on a website and have it spoken to you by a native person. This could be a service offered with a fixed subscription and implemented through Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

mdolon 16y ago

The idea might work given the right circumstances but I think your numbers are a bit off - there's no way a call center employee can 2 or even 1 video a minute. You have to take into account mistakes they make (multiple takes) and editing, unless you plan on doing that yourself (or just have raw video). Also, you probably should charge more than 25 cents - that is such an awkwardly low number that it my deter people from using it ("do I really want a $.25 charge on my credit card?"), not to mention you wouldn't make any money with all the fees. All that said, teenagers love digital interactivity, especially when it relates to chats and webcams. There's also room for something like this in the advertising space - I'd be willing to pay $2-3 to have someone record a 30-60 second YouTube video promoting my product.

AndrewDucker 16y ago
Agreed - If I was going to record 15 seconds of video, save it to a file, and upload that file (including logging in to the site it needed to be uploaded to) and then posting it to a third site (including logging in), I'd want 3-4 minutes minimum. If you want me to do more than mumble the line at high speed I'd want a chunk of time to try it out a few different ways too.

bdfh42 16y ago

About 15 seconds after your business starts it will be swamped by adolescents asking for videos of people saying obscene things - to amuse and shock their friends. Hmmn - that might be quite popular when I think about it although there might be problems in some parts of the world. Expect fatwas when people say bad things about various popular prophets.

jgervin 16y ago
Don't let this comment stop you. You should do it. The only issue I see is the sign-up/ payment issue. If you can get past that hurdle I bet you will get a million requests by day 14 if you can make it on Techcrunch and/or get people to go viral with Tweets and Facebook updates. DO IT!

iuguy 16y ago

I think it's so open for abuse it'd be bound to be a success, but whether or not you could grow something long term I think would be the question. What might work is if people who register can post messages or handle requests for people in exchange for credit. That might damage your revenue stream, or might go the other way.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

shrikant 16y ago

But where I think it could really generate some significant business is by targeting writers, particularly those whose works will eventually be spoken — playwrights, script writers, speech writers, that sort of thing. Wouldn't this primary use-case be easier to do with one of the many available Mechanical Turks?

landhar 16y ago

"I can't possibly see what could go wrong"

honopu 16y ago

I could be entirely wrong as I am not well versed on credit card payments but last I checked the fee to charge a credit card was 25-30 cents and around 2-3%.