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Speaking as someone who has built this product before, I think you'll run into the same outcome that my product, Well, Bagcheck, Listly, Listgeeks, and others e
by ctide 14y ago
Speaking as someone who has built this product before, I think you'll run into the same outcome that my product, Well, Bagcheck, Listly, Listgeeks, and others end up at:
It doesn't actually provide any value.
It sounds really harsh, but unfortunately, that's the reality. People show up, make a few lists because it sounds fun, but you don't give anything back to them. You don't end up getting information that isn't already more readily available (and more useful) in other forms. There's this notion that people will carefully curate lists of things they care about, and it's true that they do, but only for a few days. There's no incentive to come back and maintain them because they aren't getting anything back out of it.
You can certainly say that I'm cynical and/or jaded from having built this and seen it first hand, but I think there's a reason why none of these sites ever stick. I don't believe it's due to them being built by bad engineers, or being implemented in a way that doesn't work, it's just that it's a feature and not a product.
- wheaties 14y agoLet me add to what ctide has to say by asking this: "What problem does it solve?" Seriously, what problem are you solving? It has to fit in 2 sentences. If you can't come up with a concrete problem that this is solving, no one will pay for it.
- sidman 14y agoMay I ask, i felt the same way but I myself am not much of a facebooker who likes t share his life, post on twitter or post on pinterest. Maybe its just me but all those ideas are the same arn't they ? They just need enough people to participate and it becomes fun, meaning its enough for people to come back. If people all left facebook there would be no reason to post status updates anymore, same goes for twitter. They dont actually have the kind of value that people are willing to open their wallets for (and people dont, im sure if facebook started to charge for their accounts many people would leave). In the case of listnerd isnt it the same. If the marketing efforts are good enough then why couldn't it follow the same trajectory as the other social sharing apps? Personally I have always wondered why people want to share their life online and hence why I personally dont have an interest in social sharing apps but many people do. Now people are more open online then with their own families and this is just another different way to share so my question is what makes this different then any of the other social (post what im interested in) sites that have been so successful over the last couple of years ?
- blhack 14y agoThe thing you're missing from that list is thingist, which is my "lists" app. Yes, it does provide value. Thingist has become my, and the few other people that have run into it's: Photo sharing site Bookmarking site Music playlist site Shopping list Link aggregator Blogging platform Etc. I've been keeping "songs I like" for almost two years, and it has replaced grooveshark or spotify for me. So yes, lists do provide value. http://thingist.com http://thingist.com (sadly I haven't worked on thingist much in the last few months. Depression is a bitch like that)
- ctide 14y agoI would argue that thingist is actually a micro-blogging platform that has renamed tags to lists. :) Mine (http://lists.io http://lists.io) turned into a useful app for me as well, but I had to deviate pretty far from our initial idea (which was nearly identical to this) for that to happen.
- blhack 14y agoI think we actually talked to each other a while ago :)
- stormen 14y agoI think you're forgetting a few candidates. Ranker.com and Listverse.com both have massive amounts of traffic; and they're based around lists - albeit with a far worse UX than Listnerd currently offers. So I wouldn't write off lists based on the ones that haven't made it; it's like saying Facebook can't make it because Myspace failed. That being said, I really believe in the value of lists; it's why we created the site after all. But: thanks for your input. We'll work as hard as we can to prove you wrong :)