Kevin Rose’s Oink Hits The App Store | Hacker News Reader

Kevin Rose’s Oink Hits The App Store

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Didn't he say when he formed this group that he wanted to work on big mobile problems? And that he didn't want to do just another photo app... this seems pretty uninspired to me. It looks good, but in the end it's just another Get Glue, it doesn't really make my life easier.

Well...I think you are looking at it wrong.

This could be a Trojan Horse (whether Kevin knows it or not yet) into big data mining, and personalized recommendations.

Imagine, you have an app that send you customized ads/offers based on your actual real world history.

For instance, if you liked this sushi dish at this restaurant in San Francisco, maybe you will like a similar dish at another restaurant when you are travelling in Texas. That's insanely powerful.

Haha - yes I was thinking the exact same thing - though I was refraining from posting it as I prefer to see if Kevin would have come up with it without prompting.

Now they can just say "uh, yeah that was our plan all along!"

A lot of things could be insanely useful if you skip the extremely difficult step of gaining traction first. No restaurant would be interested in even participating if there aren't a lot of users, Kevin Rose or no Kevin Rose.

Possibly, but I'd say if you know the places a person goes to - that's enough information to figure out what they like. Foursquare wins there with check-ins and tips (which tell you which dish to order)

This was also Color's pitch:

"The company has six patents pending and sees itself as "much more of a research company and a data mining company than a photo sharing site.""

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/color_ceo_the_tech_just...

The difference though is that Kevin isn't pitching that. Kevin is pitching the consumer benefits, which is being able to rate individual items and explore other items you might like.

If I were living in the US and had an iPhone, I would likely use this. Definitely sounds intriguing.

hunch says the same thing. In fact most mobile check in type , location based apps all live off this premise.

"well do data mining" is the new "well have ads" for unmonetizable businesses. Then again the data mining is probably just for ads anyway, so maybe it's just more of the same...

Yes, he did. I wanted to wait and see what he would come up with - and while oink seems interesting, I don't think it could be considered "big mobile problem" solver.

I'll need to give it a try though first.

What are the big mobile problems in your estimation?

PageRank for every single thing in the world curated by your friends. Sounds like a pretty big problem to me.

Kevin Rose should have read Steve Jobs' biography by now. You're supposed to romanticize the product with the user!

Instead this is how oink acts when you first meet-

1. Prompt user for location access 2. Prompt user for push notification access 3. Prompt user with 'builder' description 4. Prompt user with social account username/password requests 5. Prompt user with Join button (permanently affix to bottom left of screen) 6. Prompt user with arbitrarily ranked pizza on out of the box uitableviews

Maybe the pig app could ease into these prompts and start out with a few on-topic questions and flashy UIs. Perhaps a list of telling foods to rank with my fingers followed by a list of spices to sort? Maybe touch/label the part of the food I liked most? It could then add a random oink developer as my friend automatically. After I browse around for a bit it might ask if I want to see random famous person x's most/least favorite food in city y, or switch to my current location (enter prompt 1) because...

Is this like a real version of http://jotly.co/ ?

Ha, it looks like it! They're competing head on (.. will be soon).

Haven't heard of jotly before but it seems jotly is available for ALL platforms not just iphone so I already like it 100x more then oink.

The video is awesome! I actually tried to download the app until I found out it was a parody :)

Damn it!

Why do they need to access my DMs if I login via Twitter?

Is anyone else actually able to add any items yet? It just asks me to sign up/connect with a social service and tells me that I'll get an email when I'm "allowed" to access the actual features of the app.

I'm having authentication problems.

I had some issues with that as well. I did it with Twitter and ended up signing in to Twitter in iOS Safari and then going back in to Oink and then having it authenticate. Worked that way for me.

Same here. I guess they're limiting initial sign ups.

Wow! Then why release it? There's many other services that do many, if not all of the same things as this. Making us pine for more in a world of copycat apps isn't going to make me stick around. The carrot being dangled here isn't that enticing. This isn't directed at you, just a general rant. I'm not sure why they released this app yet. Unimpressed.

ahem ahem Digg V4

When someone gets up and says to the effect "we are going to make a bunch of apps, 2-3 per year, this is the first one, we'll see if it gets traction" (paraphrasing what I remember from the oink announcement from web 2.0 this year), I am immediately disinterested.

I'll be kind and say that I'm unclear on the message here.

This is a classic critical mass app and I'm a little skeptical right now as to if it has the legs. But then again, I thought Quora was the greatest thing since sliced bread and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

It's good to see Rose doing something new and I genuinely hope he is succesful.

Oink taps the data mine much deeper than other foodie apps. Will it work in Europe or Asia, since their pigs don't actually say 'oink' do they?

Depending on execution, this actually looks like an awesome idea to me. The best recommendations come from reliable friends, who say things like, "try the X at Y, it's the best thing on the menu." If it can properly pair my tastes with others who have similar taste, I would love it.

How is this substantially different from Foursquare tips though? I get that the focus is on items, not places, but that just makes it harder. The #1 reason why I don't use Foursquare is no one -- not a single person -- I know in real life uses it, despite me nagging them to. If you go even more niche an start checking into items on a menu, you're going to have a tough time finding users who get the full benefit outside of the San Fran bubble.

It's focused. 4sq tips are about tables, the best thing to try when you're already at location X.

4sq: I want to find a nice cafe in London. Let people rate the service, the view, the atmosphere, the newspapers and magazines.

Oink: I want the best English breakfast in London.

based on my real world usage, I either have something in mind and will check on yelp, or if I'm really clueless I'll check out my friends reviews. I'm usually limited to what restaurants are in an area x miles away from me, and in a short time I pretty much know all the good items at all the places within the areas I frequent. For all the companies that try to build off of these types of recommendations I just don't see it as a problem.

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