Launching Fluther.com - Comments from YCers?

Now that we finally completed it we're climbing out from our cave and wondering if the site can fly, and how we help attract people to it.

Any comments or advice?

Link: http://www.fluther.com

I use ask.metafilter.com. I'm a daily user. What is really the worst thing about it? There is no sense of community. The site forces you to stay relevant to the question, and you cannot interact with the users directly. You cannot go offtopic, even though many questions just BEG to go offtopic. Think of how usenet used to be. After a while, you knew all the regulars, you knew the personalities, etc. ask.metafilter does not have this because no real discussion is allowed, just answers to the question.

Of course, it's clear why they do this. If you allowed discussion, the answers will become irrelevant.

I have an idea how to solve this problem:

Make each user have a personal "space", "blog", "diary", "miniblog", "question area", "twitter" or whatever you want to call it. When an answer goes off topic, it's moved to the personal area of the user. There, the person can rave and rant as he wishes, and the threads can go in any direction he wants. People can also cross link their answers on frontpage items into their personal area.

This is going to unfocus your site, but you will create a REAL community. The frontpage Q&A will be just as relevant, but behind scenes, there will be a lot of general chatting going on.

A bit like the diaries of K5 or the journals of Slashdot.

Do so, and you'll have a winner. A BIG site. Don't do so and in 6 months, you'll have Alexa of 60.000 and having $700 a month.

And when you get big with this idea, don't forget to send the check to maximus klein at gmail.

Put the active questions on the top of the home page instead of a big blank form. I really didn't know what I was supposed to ask a jelly-fish the first time I loaded the page. Try easing visitors into contributing to your site. They're first going to only read questions, then they'll reply to them, and then they'll start asking their own. Make browsing the first thing to do on the page.

Example: What is the best alarm clock?

Keyword them and also figure out which Google Adwords they fit with. Also, create an appropriate affiliate link to the product/services mentioned in the answers. Have a script that buys the appropriate Adwords and creates a link to the product that was chosen to be the 'best'. When people search for "alarm clock" on Google they see an ad for the question/answer/discussion at Fluther, they go there to read about it, then buy it via the link. You earn affiliate commissions. Also, you establish yourselves as the "useful, action oriented answer site". Or whatever.

There are many obvious permutations of this scheme.

Make it that answering a question is possible anonymously with a captcha. To ask a new question, you need to register. You'll hold on to more users this way.

Don't be obstinate. You don't know best. Everyone here is saying the same thing about anonymous answers, do listen.

Fluther is a bit hard to say but its unique and sufficiently catchy. I would stick with it.

To expand you should try attacking some focused niche areas.. Make it highly useful to a small group of people first.

Good work

1. Let me disable live preview. It seems to slow down my entire system.

2. Show me a list of all questions I've answered, not just those I've asked or that I'm specifically monitoring.

Good luck though.

Did I do something wrong? Doubtful.