Show HN: Vers – a new type of social network
vers.social
vers.social
My immediate thought was ... Hmm, I wonder what this is? Is it like Twitter? Is it like Facebook? Is it like Mastodon? Is it like Instagram? TikTok? QQ? Pinterest? Reddit? Hacker News? How is it different? How is it new?
Then the first thing I saw was a paragraph of text and a sign-in form.
You are competing for people's attention, and while your platform may be wonderful, if you don't get people to try it, it will die unloved. The first thing you've done is given them a barrier, not a taster.
Now, you may not care so much, but recently I was talking with Steven Strogatz and he talked about one of the columns he wrote. He had shown his wife who said "It's confusing, I don't get the point, and people won't care." He replied: "No, no, it's wonderful! You'll see, I'll write some words and it'll be great!"
It wasn't, and it died, effectively unread. She was pretty much his exact audience, and he ignored her feedback. I'm sure you've spent a lot of time on getting this up and running, and you're proud of it, but if no one tries it, your time will be wasted. Given the existing presentation, I won't be trying it.
Then again, maybe I'm not your intended audience. But then again, maybe I am -- then it would be a shame if you ignored my feedback.
In the tradition of putting armor where the bombers are not missing parts, this suggests that, at best, conventional criticisms don't hinder success.
The landing page makes it clear it is different. And you're asking for it to look the same. Asking for it to be filled with chart junk.
Or when I looked at it, it looked a but like HN. It was probably because the call to action was reading.
The reason I am not in the intended audience is I like HN, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and StackExcange. I'm not looking for an alternative.
The dog gets me away from the screen.
This claims to do so, but with nothing else to go on, why should I believe it? I don't generally use "Social Media" anyway, and without know how this achieves its purported differentiator, I'm not going to invest the time. I read the blurb ... it's social media, but because of the mental health issues we are going to encourage you to log out, and not try to keep you engaged all the time.
An audience needs to be drawn in. An audience needs to be retained. An audience needs to be grown, and without other people, it's not "Social".
These are, of course, random opinions from a random person on the internet.
This is a hard problem, I know, and I'd be delighted to see something different. But my time is limited, and just saying that it's solved what it thinks is a problem isn't gong to make me take the time to try it. It needs "social validation" ... it needs people who have tried it and who are from "my tribe" to tell me to come join them. Or it needs examples of things I want to see.
As I say ... random opinions from a random person, but I'm genuinely trying to offer things to think about, work on, and possibly will help.
To me, the problem with it is that it is just like every other new social media site. No network of people who know each other.
That probably means building a site that doesn’t require it.
If you’re going to dismiss good actionable feedback, why bother with a Show HN? These rarely get many comments and the only two you have can me summed up as “I would consider trying it, but you’ve placed an unnecessary barrier I don’t want to cross without knowing what’s on the other side”. That is reasonable.
> I’m personally tired of hearing this
Because it is a mistake as serious as it is common. As another commenter[1] observed, it’s a fault large enough to make your service die unloved and untried.
What I mean is that adding screenshots and such is not going to make a difference for the target audience.
Or to put it another way, here we are on Hacker News and not a damn bit of that advice would be good for us.
I am very skeptical about alternative social networks. If it still rely heavily on network effects, then it is only natural for it to maximize engagement. You can't beat them (facebook etc) by playing with their rules.
Do you provide values that do not depends on the network effect? Ethical is nice but it does not stand on its own. Also it requires a leap of faith.
In the long run, it is about delivering value to users.
Demanding it be high key is off key.
Low key works for Hacker News because it filters out people who want high key.
I know it’s not for me because I like Facebook and TikTok. Or more accurately, for me they are useful tools because of how I use them.
And the dog gets me off the screen and out in the world.
Hacker News has the audience and YC endorsement.