Show HN: ChatVoting - American Idol-like voting for everyone | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: ChatVoting - American Idol-like voting for everyone

chatvoting.com

23 pointsconsultutah13 comments

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I've finally reached MVP stage for this and would really love to know what HN thinks.

What do you think I should change on the landing page, or in the app?

It is built with Sinatra running on Heroku and uses Twilio for SMS services.

Allow me to see pricing without signing up.

Noted. Thank you!

So you don't have to login to see pricing, it starts at $10 for what I think most people would use and goes up from there.

Is there a way to try it without paying first? Or is there a demo video?

There isn't. A demo video is definitely on my roadmap. I'd love to find a way to offer a free demo too, but I'm trying to bootstrap this and twilio charges me for phone numbers and msgs.

Maybe I could allocate a few numbers and let people demo with one of those for a little while.

I understand it's hard to offer a free demo. But then a video is really essential. I think patio11 offers a free demo on his Appointment Reminder site, which also uses Twilio. Maybe you can ask him how much it costs to see if it's affordable?

I'll reprioritize the video higher on my roadmap and I think I've got some ideas now on how to let you demo it without signing up.

Thanks for your comments.

Is it affordable to give a demo poll, which closes automatically when you get 5 votes?

The SMS msgs themselves are cheap, it is getting the numbers that might add up. What I'm thinking is allocating a block of numbers, maybe 5-10 for now and many more if/when this takes off and then letting you create a poll with one of those. The interesting part will be not letting numbers be used in a close enough time period that someone would skew someone else's poll results.

It's my impression that those voting things are a way to make money for the company that initiates the voting. In your concept it's the other way around.

I'm curious who your customers will be.

My original thought was just conventions. If you are running a convention and wanted to have a poll on which of the top finalists had the best booth, you would use this.

But I staggered thinking that it could be used for about anything: Beauty Pageants, chili cook offs, etc.

Flame-Bait: Jason Calacanis could use it to find the most popular startup at the next LAUNCH.

You use the word "Lean" about 4 times on the page. Spell check! ;)

Ha ha, that was in the template I bought from ThemeForest... I should have noticed. :( Fixed.

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