Football Survivor Pool (Draftmix's First App) | Hacker News Reader

Football Survivor Pool (Draftmix's First App)

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22 pointsmattmaroon33 comments

My only caveat would be that if you expand to NCAA sports then you should add a warning reminding college athletes not to enter because they could lose eligibility. (Since you're targeting college students using their real names.) It's not really a legal liability, but then again you probably don't want colleges complaining to Facebook about your app because some idiots lost a year of football eligibility.

Very true. Unfortunately I'm not sure if we can run anything NCAA there (at least basketball) because Facebook sold exclusive bracket rights to a big media company. Ah the joys of non-open platforms.

What happens if multiple people pick every game correctly? The regular season's not that long...

There are tie breaker rules on the Rules tab.

The game is 14 weeks long... Statistically, it will take 32768 people to tie at week 14. And there are tie breakers.

It's 16 weeks. There are 17 regular season weeks, and we run all but the 1st.

We don't use a line, so the odds are better than that though. You can usually start off picking 10+ point favorites (which, if memory serves me, win about 85% of the time) but as you use up the better teams that worsens. For instance week 1 if you pick New England, you're a 16.5 pt favorite and will win almost always.

But yeah, the tiebreakers will handle it if it happens.

How come this contest doesn't have the standard legal rules "only in 48 US states" and "at least 18 years of age"? Every contest I see has those, though I'm curious why.

Well, our lawyer said not to bother basically. We're not randomly selecting a winner (in which case you have to jump through all sorts of legal hoops). It's a skill game with no buy-in.

Sweet, I'm sure my friends in Quebec will be very excited.

So if I was to sign up (and somehow learn enough about your so-called "football") then you'd ship it 12,643km to me? Cool!

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/distanceresult.html?p1...

Hmm, on second thought, we should probably fix that, but if it's you personally then what the hell. Any other Aussie will just be S.O.L.

I strongly suspect that they sell TVs in Australia. So, perhaps no need to ship it from US. If somebody in, say, Zimbabwe wins and you have to go through some hassle to have it delivered, the PR opportunity will be well worth it.

Well, you're assuming we're going to have to purchase the TV, and don't already have it or won't be getting it free or something.

Correct about Zimbabwe though.

Well I signed up. (Although I can't see myself winning)

(and if you want bug reports on here - when I tried to skip inviting my friends it took me to: http://apps.new.facebook.com/survivor_pool/invitations/send_... and gave the following error message: "There are still a few kinks Facebook and the makers of Football Survivor Pool are trying to iron out. We appreciate your patience as we try to fix these issues. Your problem has been logged - if it persists, please come back in a few days. Thanks!"

Thanks.

Fixed. Thanks for finding the bug.

According to how HN does timestamps - that took 2 minutes! (1 hour --> 58 min) I'm impressed!

Hey! How did you know i had a 1998 TV?

Gets the add.

Ha. Lucky guess.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Should work on your viral component. It sucks but people dont tend to send many invites out of the kindness of their hearts.

That's why we're giving a TV to whoever refers the winner. Any other ideas there would be greatly appreciated.

Oh I see that now. Ive trained myself to be a regular user and refuse to read anything :)

I would make a bigger deal out of your reward plan. Maybe a banner or something and repeat that on every tab.

Thanks, you're probably right. We've been making it progressively more noticeable, but probably should go farther.

Really? You should go ALOT further.

In my opinion you're making all the same mistakes I made when I started working on social applications. You had a idea first and are now trying to make it viral. Thats the wrong order. You need to get all your viral channels defined and working and only then are you allowed to have an idea :)

Mostly we're just trying to avoid getting too spammy. Maybe we'll just say what the hell and go for it.

ha I never bought into that whole "invites are spam" bit. Generally people like apps and invites. But its hard to believe that because the minority is very vocal.

If you wanna chat over email I wouldn't mind sharing some tips.

sure. themaroon on gmail.

Invites are not spam by themselves, but they're abused by many apps in a way that makes them spam. And you're very wrong if you think the silent majority enjoyed the FB spam fest a while back.

Abusing invites with more "viral channels" will only get the app into a lower invite threshold. FWIW I think a free TV is a pretty good incentive and will have people choosing the friends most likely to use the app. I do agree on promoting more the contest and the free tv thing, people tend to not read anything without flashy colors and big fonts.

I just wanted to reiterate that this is GOOD advice. Design your product to fit the viral channels; don't try to fit the viral channels into the product you already have.

Well you can force a app to be viral its just a TON of work. I dont suggest it but it is possible.

How about a game that people actually understand? Like football (the REAL football)!

Anyways, I'll refrain from commenting on this thing, because I am really not a sports fan.

Congrats on launching!

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