To be fair, I recommend taking the "doomed" comments here with a grain of salt-- HN readers aren't likely to be the sort to enjoy a service like this, so there

To be fair, I recommend taking the "doomed" comments here with a grain of salt-- HN readers aren't likely to be the sort to enjoy a service like this, so there could be a lot more pessimism than you'd see in wider audiences. In general (and I agree with them) HN users seem to look down on superficiality more than casual internet users would. We got a lot of pessimistic comments here on HN for our site yumbunny.com but we ended up with surprising press coverage (e.g. TechCrunch) and our users really are enjoying the obviously-superficial fun. That doesn't mean your site will do well even if the HN audience dislikes the site-- just keep in mind the potential differences. A lot of the practical advice on this thread is good, even if it's toned a bit pessimistically.