Ask HN: Please review my startup, skipscotch.com, our solution to online reviews
Feel free to play around with the demo, although I can't promise speed will be great. The site can be largely experienced w/o a user account, although feel free to create a temp account if you like (fake email or not). I'll delete any accounts/reviews/etc created and hide the URL again after everyone's had adequate time to play around with the site.
Some background info: For the past 4 months, I've been developing SkipScotch, a starting point to increase credibility of online reviews. It's not the ultimate solution, but I'm thinking the structure is in place to get started down the right path. Some highlights:
- Reviews are given based on service experienced, and ratings are calculated per service offered. Currently, we are planning on the basic average of reviews to calculate ratings, but we have a more accurate weighted average designed that we'd love to implement (we'd need a decent amount of reviews for the weighted average to matter). Read about the weighted average at http://blog.skipscotch.com/2011/11/only-way-to-do-reviews-right-way-is-to.html (it's mentioned towards the end of the post)
- Reviews can be up-voted/down-voted by users. Points awarded for reviews contribute to a reviewer's 'wisdom' score
- Scoring reviews/reviewers based on quality should increase credibility of reviews in SkipScotch. We have plenty of future goals with these credibility scores, like utilizing them in a weighted average, review filter, reviewer ranks, and rewards for respected reviewers.
- Individual reviewers can be 'trusted', which provides a new trusted rating along with the public rating
- Events can exist per service and are searchable through the basic search. Examples currently implemented are trivia and karaoke nights
Reviews and ratings are randomly generated for demo purposes. Businesses and events are real and accurate. Reviews show up in each service's show page, simply so they can be experienced regardless of service visited. Our revenue model exists, but I won't get into it here. Just wanted to highlight that we haven't overlooked it.
There's 2 founders, but I'm the only developer. This has been entirely bootstrapped. I did not know RoR (what the site is built with) prior to developing SkipScotch, although I've been a full-time software engineer for 3 years. Design is also not my specialty, so I realize there may be issues with it.
I'd love any feedback you can offer, especially on strategy and product launch. I realize it'll be tough to solve the chicken and egg problem, but I have a few strategies in mind (if you have some, I'd love to hear them!).
Any signups we can get through the landing page will be greatly appreciated. Feel free to contact me directly at founders@skipscotch.com for any reason whatsoever. Cheers and many thanks!