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Comment by kappaknight | Hacker News Reader

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.)

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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.

I love lamp.

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.

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