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Comment by ZackOfAllTrades | Hacker News Reader

I am guessing anyasq is a YC company that just launched? Rationale: Harjeet doing an interview at a relatively unknown company/project.

Also, how does anyasq beat reddit ama?

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Yes, AnyAsq is a YC company. We hadn't asked Harj to do an AMA though. :) And we hadn't really intended to launch quite yet but we're not complaining.

Ways we hope AnyAsq beats reddit ama:

-The concept should make more sense to people as a standalone site than as a sub-section on another site. (Easier to explain, easier to link to, etc)

-As a standalone site we can optimize the interface for this concept, which is really a very different idea than reddit.com.

-Twitter integration is really helpful. Acts as both moderation and as a way for people to spread AnyAsq to their followers when they do an AMA or ask a question.

-We're a YC company which will hopefully help us get people like Harj (or pg? Don't do it quite yet though please) on there and maybe help with press.

Neat! Good answers.

How do you make money though? Who is paying for what?

Interesting. A couple of points:

> The concept should make more sense to people as a standalone site than as a sub-section on another site. (Easier to explain, easier to link to, etc)

> As a standalone site we can optimize the interface for this concept, which is really a very different idea than reddit.com.

reddit already has the capability of allowing the moderators do a different domain with a different interface -- the mods just have to decide to do it, so be careful here.

Otherwise, you make some interesting points. I'm curious though, what is your advantage over Quora, which is also a clone of Iama, designed to be a standalone Q&A site?

Feature request: don't force me to sign in with twitter. I understand having the option and even encouraging it, but I don't actually like twitter and don't want to use it as my identity/login. I don't want to use Facebook for that either, though I'm sure it would be wise to offer that as an option.

Please support OpenID and good old non-social username/password logins.

The concept should make more sense to people as a standalone site than as a sub-section on another site. (Easier to explain, easier to link to, etc)

Should isn't very strong. I don't think the 15 seconds it takes to get used to an /r/IAMA thread is worth a whole new product.

As a standalone site we can optimize the interface for this concept, which is really a very different idea than reddit.com

That's true.

Twitter integration is really helpful. Acts as both moderation and as a way for people to spread AnyAsq to their followers when they do an AMA or ask a question.

Twitter has a text box where i can tweet anything i like. Your twitter integration makes it harder to sign up and adds almost no benefit. That's a negative, imho.

We're a YC company which will hopefully help us get people like Harj (or pg? Don't do it quite yet though please) on there and maybe help with press.

So is reddit, and reddit doesn't need any help with press, given it's 15 something million users.

You're taking something that works and breaking it.

"I don't think the 15 seconds it takes to get used to an /r/IAMA thread is worth a whole new product."

I don't know what to think about this product, but I have to disagree with you on this point. It might take 15 seconds to explain Reddit AMAs to techies, but if the aim is to make AMAs more popular with non-techies, I can definitely see that there might be an advantage.

I think you underestimate the value of a giant community interested in reading about stuff in general. They are the consumers of knowledge and content and are there to consume pictures, videos, AMAs, etc. While I don't always want to read AMAs, the most popular do make it through to my front page or I can see what's going on when I feel the urge, without ever changing sites. That value proposition alone is why I don't think I'd regularly use a dedicated AMA site.

As an early user on anyasq (http://bit.ly/iQYjXb), I'll say anyasq already has a much better user experience than reddit AMA. The twitter integration for both questioners and submitters (and the emails when you get new questions) are key. Once they get a few prominent people on there I could really see this taking off.

> Also, how does anyasq beat reddit ama?

* Better moderation. Seems like there are no unverified AMAs on anyasq. Trolling is a major problem on /r/iama.

* By leveraging the YC network to get AMAs with people who would never do a Reddit AMA.

These two things are relatively straightforward and simple, but I think it's a winning combination. The popularity of the AMA concept certainly has been validated by /r/iama. Backed by a company, I think it has a lot of potential to form the basis of a small successful media company. For example, I have a binder saved of useful advice mined from /r/iama. The value of this advice is great and would normally be unavailable to me. If someone put out a curated book, I'd buy it in a second.

Devil's advocate: Reddit is getting better at the trolling with confirmations from moderators. Reddit AMA gets a surprising amount of important people to pass their way. And technically reddit is in the YC network (though the founders have left). But agreed that there are some people who would never do a AMA on reddit that might come from YC.

Also, let's say that anyasq isn't a YC company (not sure if they are or not). Then all they have going for them is better moderation. To me that just sounds like retweeting on twitter without the character limit and a cleaner interface. I am not so sure that is a winning combination. One would think that YC would pick a company that didn't need to be in YC to succeed.

> One would think that YC would pick a company that didn't need to be in YC to succeed.

I don't think that holds up here. Like it or not, reputation is the name of the game when it comes to media. It doesn't matter if you are as good of a writer as those on staff at the Times, you simply wont get the same opportunities. I think it would be silly for YC to discount this fact when funding media companies.

what moderation?

Unverified IAMAs tend to be the I am a doctor etc...which can't be verified.

The ones where it's a person, /iama/ already verifies those.

Seems like this is a money grab...and at least reddit doesn't require that you allow it to spam your twitter account.

> The ones where it's a person, /iama/ already verifies those.

Trolls have successfully gotten fake IAMAs from celebrities like Emilia Clarke verified by the moderation team. The fake Emilia Clarke IAMA got close to 1,000 comments before the ruse was discovered. [1]

> Unverified IAMAs tend to be the I am a doctor etc...which can't be verified.

It's an incorrect assumption that verification is only useful for specific people. There was an amazing AMA by a Navy Seal a week or two back [2] and verification was crucial in that case (for some odd reason, lots of people like to claim to be a SEAL). Verification is certainly possible for most AMAs, including professions like doctors. Another example that comes to mind was an AMA by a law school professor [3], which was verified as well.

> what moderation?

Successful moderation is a critical part of running a community in this area. The moderation in /r/iama is extensive and they do good work there. I'm simply saying someone who is getting paid to do it will do a better job.

> Seems like this is a money grab.

Well that's because it is. It's a company. It's not like the /r/iama moderation staff couldn't have spun off a company a long time ago. That's what the moderation staff of /r/starcraft ended up doing and it seems to be working. There's nothing wrong with someone trying to make money off of a value added service. When you think about it, AMAs have the appeal of books like Founders/Coders at Work. People like to read that stuff and I can see the benefit is someone trying to start a company around it, rather than do it as a hobby.

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/huqug/the_emilia_clark...

[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/i3s61/iama_former_navy...

[3] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/hnhia/iama_attorney_an...

I am not sure I accept the proposition that moderation staff who are paid will always do a better job. Unpaid moderators do it for their various reasons, one of the most common I've seen is a deep passion for the topic. Being paid to do something changes that dynamic incredibly. The best moderated forum I ever was a member of was done completely on a non-profit basis. There were paid competitors, every other site in the niche had some sort of monetization, except this one. The mods loved the area and were deeply respected in the niche. The community was strong. They eventually did quit and sold it to a company, the site died nearly instantly with a paid staff taking over.

I think it's competing more with formspring, than reddit.

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