DoDont: A New Social Network; Bring On The Snarky Comments | Hacker News Reader

DoDont: A New Social Network; Bring On The Snarky Comments

blog.dodont.com

34 pointsjblarge27 comments

Interesting idea: Two recommendations: (i) Add an openid-based login (e.g. GMail), nobody in their right mind would use Facebook connect (ii) The home page design is kinda weak, for example it doesn't show how the comments are grouped, e.g. will I be able to see all the Do's for restaurants, are they grouped by geotags, etc.

+1 for the alternative logins.. for those people who actually did delete their facebook account in the wake of the privacy contraversy a few months ago.

Yes please to OpenID. It kills me that an idea I was so excited about (single login) is being coopted by a site I hate so very much (Facebook), just because they are a behemoth. Offering both is great, but when I clicked through and saw only Facebook as an option, I immediately bounced.

I agree the Facebook Connect was enough to scare me off. I did end up signing up, but didn't actually post any information because I don't care to connect with people on my/through my Facebook account.

For example, I thought about using my "Do/Don't" as a funny resource for hackers but none of my Facebook peeps really apply.

By the way, I LOVE the write up. What a great way of circumventing the inevitable ridicule by doing it yourself.

"How is this different from status updates?

DoDont is a filter for important and useful information, and with great tag integration, your trusted information is always easiely available."

Great tag integration? There aren't any examples of tags in any of the samples (unless they're hidden, in which case it still seems silly to discuss them as the only differentiator of this service from FB).

Also, guys. Spell check your HTML. You're a startup, but you don't have to look like one. Modern HTML editors will helpfully put red squiggles under words like "easiely" to draw your attention to the error. They're not there for flair.

nthing the complaint about FB connect; you don't need to know my real name, especially without a privacy policy other than "Trust us, we won't post anything unless you say it's OK!". Sorry, that's insufficient to give you complete, unfettered access to my FB account and to datamine all of my friends (part of the bad about that falls on FB, but since that's what you chose to use...)

I avoid FB connect - sites/services I try don't need to be linked to my identity on Facebook, that's just too private, sorry.

Seconded. I think the move towards not having a new login at every site is a good one, but FB connect doesn't seem like the way to go. I'd like to see something like OpenID, but at the very least there should (always!) be a simple userid or email option.

Or maybe you're just an outlier who (a) understands how Facebook Connect works (b) actually cares. Does anyone have hard numbers on Social (FB/Twitter/...) signup vs. old-fashioned signup. In other words: as a site owner, why should I go through the trouble of setting up my own user management when I can get that for free by integrating FB Connect?

As a site owner you should probably have both. FB connect isn't "free": implementing integration probably takes more time than installing authentication plugin for Rails (and doesn't Django have built-in user management?)

But I think you should have Facebookless login if you care about early adopters: too many of them are indeed "outliers" you've identified above. I also think you should have facebookless option simply because it's good for the Internet: I wouldn't want to see so much of it being controlled by a handful of large corps.

As a real data point, the founder of Quora estimated losing 25% of his sign ups when it was a facebook connect only service[1].

[1] http://www.quora.com/How-much-is-Facebook-Connect-limiting-Q...

So how do I sign up? I don't see a link anywyere. There's FB button but I don't use FB.

I feel like I'm being forced to get a fake FB account (or a bunch of them) just for purposes to bypassing "Facebook tax" on the Internet.

I never sign up to these types of websites because I don't want to use a social login. I'm sure I'm not the target audience though!

Maybe i missed something obvious, but why call yourselves a social network at all - why lead with that? Opinion engine is much more accurate and much more compelling.

Opinion Engine reminded me of Bing calling itself a decision engine.

Agreed. If I watched the video and then had to explain it to someone else...I would never even think to use the phrase "social network"...even if you made me talk for 10 minutes.

"Sign in or Sign up here" doesnt work in Chrome.

DONT make your new startup's page unusable in a major browser. ;)

It's Facebook connect and works for me.

Really hard time envisioning this taking off.

Needs rewards, benefits, resources... something, anything besides people telling me what I should and should not do.

the FB connect button did not appear for me, either (also in Chrome). Saw it in Firefox; but... I'm not interested in logging in with my facebook account, so I guess I won't be using the site.

If it had you create a new account, quick and simple like, I would have checked it out.

Interesting to note that half of the comments isn't about the service but about Facebook connect...

There are plenty of niche networks that are interesting and useful (HN, Quora, Reddit). As long as creating friends isn't your primary activity, you're good.

This reminds me of the FML-style websites out there.

Your logo is a train crash right now. I hope its meant as an anti-web-2.0 joke otherwise there is no reason you needed to get Frank Gehry to design you a logo.

Hmmm... gotta admit, it's an intriguing idea. I think you might just be onto something. A new "general purpose" social network, probably not a great idea. But something dedicated to a particular topic, or theme (like opinions) could very well succeed.

Good luck!

"Never lose track of what you've thought and experienced" Man I would love to spend some time writing a debord-esque critique of that statement, but I am too busy also developing software to help people never lose track of their authentic experience...

DONT require a sign in just to browse. I'm not going to sign up just to see if there's anything in there worthwhile.

witty. looking forward to tweetdeck picking it up

why not just aggregate #dodont on twitter/facebook? There is no need to create a totally new messaging platform, just build something on top.

i just did it.

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