5 ms·

Show HN: Vers – a new type of social network

5 points by 1mbsite 5y ago

square_usual 5y ago
If you're building a new type of anything, a concrete description of what's special with screenshots will go a long way. I'm not about to sign up for anything without any idea of what it's like and what's different about it.
- 1mbsite 5y ago
  Okay then don’t sign up. I’m personally tired of hearing this: Do you see a detailed homepage for Twitter and Facebook? No. Because they are a social networking tool - you see a little description and then a log in form, this isn’t a SaaS
  - square_usual 5y ago
    Sure, I won't!
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - posix86 5y ago
    No, but they're insanely famous! I didn't create a Twitter account for years because I didn't understand what it is; I only have one now bc I was forced to get to know it. You need to say why people should join.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - latexr 5y ago
    > Okay then don’t sign up. If you’re going to dismiss good actionable feedback, why bother with a Show HN? These rarely get many comments and the only two you have can me summed up as “I would consider trying it, but you’ve placed an unnecessary barrier I don’t want to cross without knowing what’s on the other side”. That is reasonable. > I’m personally tired of hearing this Because it is a mistake as serious as it is common. As another commenter[1] observed, it’s a fault large enough to make your service die unloved and untried. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28928389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28928389
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - brudgers 5y ago
      The feedback wasn't really actionable. Because it was from a person who didn't find the call to action motivating. No number of screenshots is going to change that. What I mean is that adding screenshots and such is not going to make a difference for the target audience. Or to put it another way, here we are on Hacker News and not a damn bit of that advice would be good for us.
1mbsite 5y ago
“Vers is a new type of social network that values your mental health and well-being over engagement and mindless scrolling. While other social networks are engineered to keep you online as long as possible; Vers encourages you to log off and experience the real world. Whether you realize it or not a social network is a very intimate tool that most of us use daily, and we here at Vers don't take that responsibility lightly.” - Currently in beta but I would love for you to test it out. Posted this on here last week but my listing was flagged because I didn’t have a homepage and privacy policy (a little excessive in my opinion but here I am posting one more time), all legal documents are complete now. Welcome to Vers
- derekzhouzhen 5y ago
  How do you achieve these goals? What value do you provide to your users? I am very skeptical about alternative social networks. If it still rely heavily on network effects, then it is only natural for it to maximize engagement. You can't beat them (facebook etc) by playing with their rules.
  - 1mbsite 5y ago
    Thank you for asking me about something other than homepage. For starter Vers has a distraction free feed that only shows you 1 post at a time, and never shows the same post twice. This feed is to discourage mindless scrolling. If using the chronological feed Vers will even let you know how many inches, feet, miles, etc you’ve scrolled. You can throttle notifications to once per day. More wellness features are on the way.
    - derekzhouzhen 5y ago
      If the game is still all about network effect, then all things being equal, the one that grab more attention will win, the ethical one that discourage engagement will lose. You have to have something else.
      - 1mbsite 5y ago
ColinWright 5y ago
I came here to say the same thing as square_usual[0] said elsewhere[1], but I'll expand on that a bit. My immediate thought was ... Hmm, I wonder what this is? Is it like Twitter? Is it like Facebook? Is it like Mastodon? Is it like Instagram? TikTok? QQ? Pinterest? Reddit? Hacker News? How is it different? How is it new? Then the first thing I saw was a paragraph of text and a sign-in form. You are competing for people's attention, and while your platform may be wonderful, if you don't get people to try it, it will die unloved. The first thing you've done is given them a barrier, not a taster. Now, you may not care so much, but recently I was talking with Steven Strogatz and he talked about one of the columns he wrote. He had shown his wife who said "It's confusing, I don't get the point, and people won't care." He replied: "No, no, it's wonderful! You'll see, I'll write some words and it'll be great!" It wasn't, and it died, effectively unread. She was pretty much his exact audience, and he ignored her feedback. I'm sure you've spent a lot of time on getting this up and running, and you're proud of it, but if no one tries it, your time will be wasted. Given the existing presentation, I won't be trying it. Then again, maybe I'm not your intended audience. But then again, maybe I am -- then it would be a shame if you ignored my feedback. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=square_usual https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=square_usual [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28927778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28927778
- brudgers 5y ago
  Statistically, to more than a few sigmas, most attempts to build a different type of social network fail. In the tradition of putting armor where the bombers are not missing parts, this suggests that, at best, conventional criticisms don't hinder success. The landing page makes it clear it is different. And you're asking for it to look the same. Asking for it to be filled with chart junk. Or when I looked at it, it looked a but like HN. It was probably because the call to action was reading. The reason I am not in the intended audience is I like HN, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and StackExcange. I'm not looking for an alternative. The dog gets me away from the screen.
  - ColinWright 5y ago
    I agree that it needs to be different, but simply stating that it's different isn't going to draw me into paying attention. It needs to be familiar enough that someone will start using it, but different enough to ease a pain, or provide something new. This claims to do so, but with nothing else to go on, why should I believe it? I don't generally use "Social Media" anyway, and without know how this achieves its purported differentiator, I'm not going to invest the time. I read the blurb ... it's social media, but because of the mental health issues we are going to encourage you to log out, and not try to keep you engaged all the time. An audience needs to be drawn in. An audience needs to be retained. An audience needs to be grown, and without other people, it's not "Social". These are, of course, random opinions from a random person on the internet. This is a hard problem, I know, and I'd be delighted to see something different. But my time is limited, and just saying that it's solved what it thinks is a problem isn't gong to make me take the time to try it. It needs "social validation" ... it needs people who have tried it and who are from "my tribe" to tell me to come join them. Or it needs examples of things I want to see. As I say ... random opinions from a random person, but I'm genuinely trying to offer things to think about, work on, and possibly will help.
ColinWright 5y ago
Suggestion: When you click links inside posts, consider opening them in a new tab so the context isn't lost.
- 1mbsite 5y ago
  Thank you for the valuable feedback I will do this
1mbsite 5y ago
Here’s a thread on Twitter I’m making that tells you a bit about Vers: https://twitter.com/daltonedwards/status/1450879297930113026?s=21 https://twitter.com/daltonedwards/status/1450879297930113026...

5 points by 1mbsite 5y ago

If you're building a new type of anything, a concrete description of what's special with screenshots will go a long way. I'm not about to sign up for anything without any idea of what it's like and what's different about it.

1mbsite 5y ago
Okay then don’t sign up. I’m personally tired of hearing this: Do you see a detailed homepage for Twitter and Facebook? No. Because they are a social networking tool - you see a little description and then a log in form, this isn’t a SaaS
- square_usual 5y ago
  Sure, I won't!
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- posix86 5y ago
  No, but they're insanely famous! I didn't create a Twitter account for years because I didn't understand what it is; I only have one now bc I was forced to get to know it. You need to say why people should join.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- latexr 5y ago
  > Okay then don’t sign up. If you’re going to dismiss good actionable feedback, why bother with a Show HN? These rarely get many comments and the only two you have can me summed up as “I would consider trying it, but you’ve placed an unnecessary barrier I don’t want to cross without knowing what’s on the other side”. That is reasonable. > I’m personally tired of hearing this Because it is a mistake as serious as it is common. As another commenter[1] observed, it’s a fault large enough to make your service die unloved and untried. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28928389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28928389
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - brudgers 5y ago
    The feedback wasn't really actionable. Because it was from a person who didn't find the call to action motivating. No number of screenshots is going to change that. What I mean is that adding screenshots and such is not going to make a difference for the target audience. Or to put it another way, here we are on Hacker News and not a damn bit of that advice would be good for us.

1mbsite 5y ago

“Vers is a new type of social network that values your mental health and well-being over engagement and mindless scrolling. While other social networks are engineered to keep you online as long as possible; Vers encourages you to log off and experience the real world. Whether you realize it or not a social network is a very intimate tool that most of us use daily, and we here at Vers don't take that responsibility lightly.” - Currently in beta but I would love for you to test it out. Posted this on here last week but my listing was flagged because I didn’t have a homepage and privacy policy (a little excessive in my opinion but here I am posting one more time), all legal documents are complete now. Welcome to Vers

derekzhouzhen 5y ago
How do you achieve these goals? What value do you provide to your users? I am very skeptical about alternative social networks. If it still rely heavily on network effects, then it is only natural for it to maximize engagement. You can't beat them (facebook etc) by playing with their rules.
- 1mbsite 5y ago
  Thank you for asking me about something other than homepage. For starter Vers has a distraction free feed that only shows you 1 post at a time, and never shows the same post twice. This feed is to discourage mindless scrolling. If using the chronological feed Vers will even let you know how many inches, feet, miles, etc you’ve scrolled. You can throttle notifications to once per day. More wellness features are on the way.
  - derekzhouzhen 5y ago
    If the game is still all about network effect, then all things being equal, the one that grab more attention will win, the ethical one that discourage engagement will lose. You have to have something else.
    - 1mbsite 5y ago

ColinWright 5y ago

I came here to say the same thing as square_usual[0] said elsewhere[1], but I'll expand on that a bit. My immediate thought was ... Hmm, I wonder what this is? Is it like Twitter? Is it like Facebook? Is it like Mastodon? Is it like Instagram? TikTok? QQ? Pinterest? Reddit? Hacker News? How is it different? How is it new? Then the first thing I saw was a paragraph of text and a sign-in form. You are competing for people's attention, and while your platform may be wonderful, if you don't get people to try it, it will die unloved. The first thing you've done is given them a barrier, not a taster. Now, you may not care so much, but recently I was talking with Steven Strogatz and he talked about one of the columns he wrote. He had shown his wife who said "It's confusing, I don't get the point, and people won't care." He replied: "No, no, it's wonderful! You'll see, I'll write some words and it'll be great!" It wasn't, and it died, effectively unread. She was pretty much his exact audience, and he ignored her feedback. I'm sure you've spent a lot of time on getting this up and running, and you're proud of it, but if no one tries it, your time will be wasted. Given the existing presentation, I won't be trying it. Then again, maybe I'm not your intended audience. But then again, maybe I am -- then it would be a shame if you ignored my feedback. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=square_usual https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=square_usual [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28927778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28927778

brudgers 5y ago
Statistically, to more than a few sigmas, most attempts to build a different type of social network fail. In the tradition of putting armor where the bombers are not missing parts, this suggests that, at best, conventional criticisms don't hinder success. The landing page makes it clear it is different. And you're asking for it to look the same. Asking for it to be filled with chart junk. Or when I looked at it, it looked a but like HN. It was probably because the call to action was reading. The reason I am not in the intended audience is I like HN, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and StackExcange. I'm not looking for an alternative. The dog gets me away from the screen.
- ColinWright 5y ago
  I agree that it needs to be different, but simply stating that it's different isn't going to draw me into paying attention. It needs to be familiar enough that someone will start using it, but different enough to ease a pain, or provide something new. This claims to do so, but with nothing else to go on, why should I believe it? I don't generally use "Social Media" anyway, and without know how this achieves its purported differentiator, I'm not going to invest the time. I read the blurb ... it's social media, but because of the mental health issues we are going to encourage you to log out, and not try to keep you engaged all the time. An audience needs to be drawn in. An audience needs to be retained. An audience needs to be grown, and without other people, it's not "Social". These are, of course, random opinions from a random person on the internet. This is a hard problem, I know, and I'd be delighted to see something different. But my time is limited, and just saying that it's solved what it thinks is a problem isn't gong to make me take the time to try it. It needs "social validation" ... it needs people who have tried it and who are from "my tribe" to tell me to come join them. Or it needs examples of things I want to see. As I say ... random opinions from a random person, but I'm genuinely trying to offer things to think about, work on, and possibly will help.

ColinWright 5y ago

Suggestion: When you click links inside posts, consider opening them in a new tab so the context isn't lost.

1mbsite 5y ago
Thank you for the valuable feedback I will do this

1mbsite 5y ago

Here’s a thread on Twitter I’m making that tells you a bit about Vers: https://twitter.com/daltonedwards/status/1450879297930113026?s=21 https://twitter.com/daltonedwards/status/1450879297930113026...