Ask HN: Could I trouble you for feedback on a social news startup? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Could I trouble you for feedback on a social news startup?

7 pointsvail1307 comments

The website is up and running in open beta at http://www.colorwarfare.com.

The idea is to turn social news submission into a game with actual prizes. Registered users can link Facebook and Twitter accounts, and the site imports posts and assigns points based on likes, comments, and retweets. Users can create custom "wars" (competitions between two teams), and top performers on each team would earn prizes if enough people joined the war.

With people working hard to post interesting content, content quality would increase (in theory), and more readers would come.

I'm mostly looking for big-picture assessments. If you don't think the idea seems viable, why not? If so, what are potential next steps? I'm at a little bit of a stand-still as far as growing the user base, too, so that's another area of interest for me.

All feedback is GREATLY appreciated! Thanks in advance!

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A few UX/design notes - it feels really cluttered. You could better distinguish the left column from the right column, and then each content section from the next. I can't figure out where to start. Also, I'm not 100% fond of the logo... though I like your use of the icon lower down on the page, the word "COLOR" isn't very distinguishable and it would take me a while to figure it out if I didn't see it with the URL.

I agree with the cluttered part, first thing I thought was where do I start. I would start with a nice landing page, that has a nice explanation of what the site is. I think you need to put less emphasis on the game, and focus on getting users just participating, and provide compelling content.

My view is that once you attach a monetary value to such online activity you actually devalue it and the experience of sharing.

If each Karma point on HN got me a buck I would not care as much as I care now about how many upvotes I get.

-- This would apply only to social sharing. If you were to find professionals who shared to create curated content that is a different story.

That's a really good point.

I suppose my initial idea was to do something that gave people the feeling of belonging to a team, which I implemented through competitions, and then I felt the need to reward winners of the competition somehow.

Do you (or anyone) have any ideas for socially meaningful rewards for participation? I feel like I see badges all over the place nowadays, so that seems kind of overused...

How are you forming these teams? Ad-hoc? Then I would have no allegiance. But if you assign people with birthdays on odd days to one team and even to another then I can see tribal behavior and competition emerging. You have to some reason to assign people to team no matter how arbitrary.

Getting to the point: How about if people gave physical stuff (old xbox games? whatever it is that would excite your community) and winners could choose from this? That way people can share, recycle, compete in a virtuous cycle.

I feel that it would be tough for you o/w to find ways to make enough money to give people $ for points/activity. At the point that the conversion from virtual to real becomes meaningful to them it is bound to bankrupt you because they are taking more value out than putting in. Second Law of Thermodynamics and all that*

* unless there are network effects...

Thank you all SO much.

maxbrown and minalecs, you make some great design points. jayzee, really good insight into the tribal behavior. And nice physics reference.

I'm going to let it all sink in today (during my day job), and this weekend will be full of some 'putin and 'grammin.

Clickable:

http://www.colorwarfare.com

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