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Comment by mmastrac | Hacker News Reader

As a founder of a company in the same space (chee.rs) I was surprised to see them pivot from the idea so quickly.

Our internal analysis of share/engagement metrics was showing that our own users were way more engaged than Oink's. We were expecting that if they noticed us in the market they'd have been working on rev 2 of the product - gathering intel from products like ours and integrating it - rather than shutting it down.

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Honestly I had no interest in anything associated with Kevin Rose thanks to Digg.

I know it shouldn't be a factor when it comes to judging his work, but there's something about his attitude that just rubs me the wrong way.

I definitely understand why the public isn't a big fan of his anymore, but I can't help remember back to The Screen Savers, and the early days of digg, when he was really someone I looked up to.

I haven't really been involved in social bookmarking very long, but isn't Digg what spawned the voting-system type site that we see in Reddit and HN? My understanding is that slashdot based on discussion instead of a straight-up voting mechanic.

The difference between Digg and Slashdot is that with Slashdot, all the stories were placed by editors. You might have been able to submit stories to the editors, but there was no upvoting and the front page was purely up to the editors. Of course, later Slashdot added Firehose, and then awhile after that I stopped reading Slashdot.

Slashdot had moderation for comments, but no similar mechanism for stories. Digg had the voting system for stories and for comments.

And even after all these years I still think that slashdots comment moderation system is the most effective one on the web today.

The "trending links" nature of Digg also resembled Delicious Popular, Rose has mentioned it as an inspiration.

Reddit and Digg spawned around the same time. I'm sure Digg had a little impact but I think they were being developed around the same time.

metafilter predates both Digg and reddit by 5 years, and was enjoyable for quite a while longer than either of them. I don't think it's fair to credit either of those sites with social bookmarking.

Digg launched like 6 months before Reddit did.

I don't know the Reddit history that well, but as I read recently in a PG essay, it was originally slated to be a food ordering application on your phone.

I do not know when they pivoted, or when their idea to pivot came, but I _suspect_ that their pivot was at least partly inspired by Digg's early release.

Since you guys are in the same space. What are you seeing that the rest of us are missing? Is there an actual business around the idea?

Oink was maybe useful when items were attached to locations. As soon as people started like Macbook Pros and other free standing stuff, it became completely pointless for me. (Too cluttered and not enough recommendation value.)

We're pretty confident there's a big business in our space. chee.rs is focused on the positive experiences in our users lives, rather than rating every little thing. Users post what they love (it's freeform: it can be music, restaurants or just general concepts), and other users pile on with positive reenforcement. What we're seeing is that users get hooked on having a space dedicated to things that people like and spend hours at a time (literally - like spending 3+ hours on some nights) in the app just going through what other people like, and posting their own content from time-to-time.

We've had a few businesses approach us cold after being cheered, asking if they could offer some sort of coupon, or other offer to users who cheer on their business. That's something we haven't really figured out how to run with and/or monetize yet.

I can't really explain what gets these users hooked, but you can see the sort of engagement we're seeing here: http://chee.rs/1433322

Just curious. Why are you ruining such a good domain by redirecting to www.chee.rs?

That bothers me too. One of the limitations of AppEngine, sadly:

http://code.google.com/appengine/kb/general.html#naked_domai...

We've been waiting for them to fix this for a while. I hope that it arrives around the same time as SSL support for custom domains.

If you can, use CloudFlare for SSL instead. $20/month and you get a ton of other features. You don't get last mile SSL support to GAE, but at least it stop script kiddies in coffeeshops.

That's not a bad idea- thanks for the suggestion. We can even use the SSL support for https://*.appspot.com to get SSL for the last mile.

If your users love you so much, have you considered selling them some premium version of your service? If you want to survive, you've got to sell something, whether it's equity, someone else's product/service or your own.

Explore the space between selling virtual sheep to OCD-inflicted grandmas and shoving the local butcher's billboard in your loving users' faces.

I love lamp.

I wouldn't call this a pivot. This is an abandonment.

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