Ask HN: Rate my startup idea "Be Caller Nine" | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Rate my startup idea "Be Caller Nine"

48 pointsjazzychad28 comments

I have always been fascinated with telephony programming (thanks, "War Games") and radio call-in contests where you have to "be caller nine" in order to win a prize.

Well, I have now developed a system that would allow any person/group/event/company/podcaster to run one of these call-in style contests just by administrating the incoming calls through a browser (instead of a giant 300 line switchboard like radio stations have). I have a working prototype, and the few people that have seen it thought it was a pretty neat idea.

My question is, would there be a market for this sort of thing? Would people/groups be willing to pay to be able to run such a contest?

I imagine this being used for things like: live podcasts that have sponsorships; conferences; internet radio stations; college radio stations; school fundraiser events; ad-hoc internet events (think twitter chats); etc...

What do you think?

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I was a DJ and program manager for my university's radio station, and based on my experience I think there's a much larger opportunity here. Firstly, to answer your question, yes I think non-profit radio stations in particular would be quite interested in something like this, as they can't usually afford more than a 1 or 2-line phone system.

Now, the larger opportunity. If you could make it a less-specialized system and aim it at radio stations, I think you'd really have something. The biggest problem we had with taking calls on the air wasn't so much that we couldn't afford the phone lines, but that we couldn't afford the call-screener. If you had a system that could simulate let's say 10 lines, whereby people call in, it plays an automated screening message asking them their name and purpose of their call, and then it transcribed that onto the DJ's computer screen and allowed them to pick which calls to answer while the rest remain on hold, that would be awesome!

I don't doubt this could probably be done with some combination of Google Voice and Grasshopper. Then again, they don't market their products to this niche the way you could. The biggest hurdle with B2B is acquiring the customers, which often takes a focused message. But I digress.

Awesome idea. As for how, with the Twilio API I think you could do the transcribe bit.

http://www.twilio.com/docs/api/2008-08-01/twiml/record#trans...

This would be a cinch with Twilio! Great idea and good luck!

Definitely possible, and adding that right now.

Good reverse pattern research:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22winning+radio+contests%22

By offering up a specific number of channels (i.e. incoming ports for calls) you could also specify what percentage of busy rings you could anticipate (example: Erlang/Engset calculations) to give the adrenaline effect that is more desirable -- hearing a "sorry you are caller # 4" vs a fast busy.

You could also play back an advertisement for 20 seconds saying that to be registered as a caller you need to listen to this or their calling party NPA-NXX-XXXX will be removed from the call count listing.

Sell the 20 seconds of ad time to local businesses saying things like "mention Blogcaster offer 14 to get 20% off your next meal" or unique one time numbers used for Amazon or other discounts where those numbers can be manufactured.

Sounds like the classic case of developing a thing because you think it's cool, not because you've seen any demonstrated need for it. Even if there is some demand you probably have little chance at getting in front of the decision makers, if you don't even know who they are already. I'd say 99/100 times this enough to know you should immediately abort any plans of turning it into a business. Maybe put it up somewhere, promote it a bit, and let people enjoy it, but don't try to make it into something it isn't.

On the other hand maybe this could eventually lead you to something that could be very successful. While trying to sell this you may find that there are many other unmet needs in the market. Maybe you can develop a whole suite of similar tools. This might be as good a place to start as anything else.

While you have a point that you need a market, perhaps rather than just "giving up" when you have no audience, you instead try as hard as you can to build one right now, and ask them what they think of your idea.

cool. i think the ideas that take services that were previously available only to bigger corporations and make them accessible to everyone (ala polleverywhere.com) are almost always useful. you might want to look in to developing in other mediums other then calling - texting or emailing in are also good.

Yes, texting could also a part of this, I should have mentioned it.

if you need some advice with US shortcodes for texting shoot me an email.. i spent some time dealing with this for a different idea

Do radio stations really have that many phone lines though? I'm not sure what the benefit of that would be; just let the carrier create the circuit or not, no? It certainly sounds like a good idea if the alternative is maintaining that level of infrastructure.

Well, it may not be mostly for radio stations... I was thinking more of taking this "radio contest" construct/analogy and letting other people/groups recreate it w/o needing that sort of infrastructure. The contestants would immediately relate to what's happening, but instead of calling a radio station, they are calling another entity (podcaster, event, group).

I can definitely see this on streaming radio apps like ShoutCast. Great idea Chad!

It seems like this is 1 feature which might be interesting to bloggers/podcasters. Is there a more generalized "podcaster sweepstakes platform" you could build? Help bloggers/podcasters engage their audiences more around giveaways/sweepstakes to generate buzz and attention, track brand impressions/dollars, present network of advertisers, etc... I'm not a big blogger or podcaster so I wouldn't likely be the best person to design this product to solve my problems. But reach out to real users/partners/potential customers. They'll likely tell you what to build.

I think executionally it's a great idea. The thing is - telephones were always used as an input channel because people were listening to the radio and NOT doing something else. Maybe there's a live tv application here - maybe event programming makes sense (you could sell this off to a progressive experiential marketing agency - Jack Morton/etc.) for promotional elements.

The long and short of it is - think of the required use/application and where this actually fits. Or if not, create a use for it and monetize.

Is there a way to make it useful in an asynchronous context? I think the kernel is smart, but the 9th caller issue seems less pertinent in a web-based world. However, the notion of creating a reward system for attention and action could be the start of something big.

Right now I imagine the evaluation of such a purchase would be: "cool, but I can just say "the first person to send me an email with an answer to X" wins something."

Cool idea though, stick with it.

Hey Chad, too bad about your original idea. I liked that one. Anyways, I think you need to think where contests are headed, especially when considering conferences, live podcasts, etc. Many people are going the SMS route, so if the app could integrate both phone calls and SMS, I think that would be fancy. Just my 2 cents. See you next week.

Think its a neat idea, and could have a lot of uses from radio to podcasts, etc. What APIs/telecom libs are you currently using? Have you looked into Voice XML/ccXML?

I'm interested in writing some open source telcom APIs/server so I'm always curious to hear someone's thoughts that might be a potential user.

As a marketing event producer at a multimedia company I say absolutely yes there is a market for this concept. I wish It was available now. It adds tremendous value to sponsorship packages and a measurable outcome for driving people to a website, event, etc ... everything other than television, print, and radio

Seems like this would be in demand, especially as more people start producing their own videocast and audiocasts.

If you target the blogger market, and many of them use Skype, then you can implement your idea as a skype/justin add-on. It'll be easier to market by piggybacking on a larger solution/platform.

One company I recently purchased from (www.bonobos.com) has had some success marketing via rewarding consumers for attention. Their various strategies got people a little more involved than just listening and calling a phone line, but I think it's an interesting concept.

Good idea, I think there are many low-power radio stations with limited resources that could utilize something like this. Also, the concept could be extended for local businesses to run phone-in contests when running a TV or radio ad.

This is a great idea, and I think the power of it is that it's essentially a raffle but stepping around the regulations that make doing so illegal without government permission.

Do DJs and what not actually wait for the nth caller? I always just assumed they just grabbed a line and, woo hoo, that's the winner.

I've been a DJ on several commercial radio stations in medium sized markets and legally we have to keep track due to contesting rules put in place by the CRTC or some other part of law. That being said if it's a lesser contest for tickets or something then nobody will be really paying attention and we just sort of eyeball it on the phone system with no screener needed.

I've definitely been too early in the past: "You're caller #6, please hang up and try again. <click>"

most of your responses are from "super techies". They may not be your target.One of your targets should be the folks that stay at home or listen on the radio...there are lots of us now...consider the demograhics. The "over the hill gang".

I like it!

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