Fame Game Hopes To Make You Internet Famous for a Day | Hacker News Reader

Fame Game Hopes To Make You Internet Famous for a Day

play-fame.com

81 pointsdclaysmith50 comments

Really nifty idea. What I'd like to see is an option to not automatically unfollow the person after the day that you can set on this site - maybe the person who won that day is really interesting!

good idea. will add to future releases.

isn't it kind of self sorting though? If you were really interesting, you probably already would have a lot of followers, and therefore would have no need to join this sight to get more.

In a way, but I'm sure diamonds in the rough exist on Twitter like they do elsewhere on the web.

Lots of followers more often indicates "good at self-promotion". Most of the interesting folks I follow have a couple hundred at the most.

This is the stupidest shit I've ever heard of. Combining humanity's idiosyncratic desire for fame with a lottery system.

i love ideas that are polarizing

can you expand on why you do?

Because it often means that you're onto something. Polarized opinions are, by definition, extreme, and people that are really, really passionate about your project are often worth the cost of having the same number of people hate it.

Obviously there are limits to that idea- if people hate it because they find it offensive then you might be in trouble. But if they hate it because they think it's stupid (as here), they'll likely just dismiss it and ignore it.

I'll reply to this by answering my own question:

Because there is no such thing as bad PR. People on the edges of the spectrum are vocal, and that translates to eyeballs either for the cool factor of the WTF factor. Either way you win. :-)

He was being smart-alecky. He feels very strongly in one direction about a concept that means "divide or cause to divide into two sharply contrasting groups or sets of opinions or beliefs."

Either you don't know what "idiosyncratic" means, or I don't know why those two sentences are related. Yes, it combines the uniquely human desire for fame with a lottery system. Why is that stupid? Is the desire for fame automatically stupid?

Nice. I made this exact same concept almost a year ago, too. It was fun to code and watch to see who randomly won. These guys definitely have a little bit better Photoshop skills than I do, though. :) I called mine Crowdwoo.

Here is my post about mine: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2576392 and my source code for it, https://github.com/ryancole/crowdwoo.com

and with a time machine snapshot to see what it looked like: http://web.archive.org/web/20110708205146/http://crowdwoo.co...

and finally a link to the original idea source, compliments of Dave Winer: http://scripting.com/stories/2011/05/15/socialMediaBubblePop...

This is pretty awesome! Simple silly question -- if you're already following the winner before they win, they won't be unfollowed when their day's up, right?

Right, only followers as the result of winning unfollow automatically the next day.

I'd suggest a button on the site along the lines of "I like today's winner, don't make me unfollow them tomorrow".

Great idea. Putting a new twist (i.e., twitter) on an old, OLD concept (like iWannaBeFamous.com started over 10 years ago) is a good thing.

I'd like to see this up to 100,000 or more followers to really give the featured person some real fame.

totally. the fun is watching what the winner does

Next step is to get some media attention for this. Hopefully with media attention you can get some real celebrities on board, who will tweet about it.

I think this is a great idea, it adds a little hint of surprise to your twitter stream.

I signed up just to see who gets picked and, if I like what they have to say, etc.

I know who I know. Finding people who I don't know, that might be interesting, is becoming difficult.

I like the idea. But why unfollow the next day? At least this should be optional with default set to "don't unfollow".

I, for one, would only use this if unfollow was set- in fact, it was my #1 concern when I first arrived at the page.

> But why unfollow the next day?

That's the main thing that stops this from being just another of the "sign up and maybe get lots of followers" scam sites.

You discover a new person each day, but that person's going to have to be pretty interesting that day to make you remember to follow them tomorrow.

Cool, idea, but I think it'd work better with longer time periods, like one drawing per week. Once it loses it's novelty, nobody is going to be gunning to get the title of "295th play-fame.com winner".

Plus, accumulating a weeks worth of followers seems to be (more than linearly) a better prize.

>Once it loses it's novelty, nobody is going to be gunning to get the title of "295th play-fame.com winner".

Novelty or not, the site will keep adding users over those 259 rounds, and all those followers will have value, even if it's just for a day.

This sounds like it's ripe for spammers, and given the recent article on the Pinterest spammer, and the current winner tweeting about her "lipob fat loss shots", I don't think it will get any traction. (Or at least it won't be abused).

abusers are instantly removed/banned.

Do you need to have a minimum of followers before "trying out" ? To avoid people submitting a lot of empty profile just to maximize their chance of being picked up?

Would that really help? If you're going that far couldn't you just make all of your sockpuppets follow each other?

Hmmm that would not prevent every attemps (someone really motivated could always game the system) but at least prevent someone losing 30minutes to creates dummy accounts and easily obtain one of the first fames (when going with 100 000 users it will be harder). And making fake accounts all following each other can be detected easily, especially if they all join the lottery

I have a big soft spot for concepts like this -- bravo!

You should really just have everyone follow the @fame account and then retweet the winners tweets for the day.

... But then they wouldn't have a lot of followers. Then, only @fame would have a lot of followers.

Note the goal of "YOU'RE NOW PLAYING TO WIN 1,652 FOLLOWERS" not "YOU'RE NOW PLAYING TO SEND TWEETS TO 1,652 PEOPLE".

I'm just telling you that trying to do this with the follow/unfollow API is likely going to end in tears and that the retweet style will have the same effect.

Silly but it isn't as if mass attention is logically or productively focused. Why not just go randomly? ;)

I think it's genius way to get people to follow you, they will rack up followers with this over time.

That's... cute.

But wouldn't that get a lot of people's accounts banned? If I remember right (from some time ago) you couldn't follow/unfollow too many people all the time, or you'd get banned.

you only follow 1 person/day, and then unfollow 1 person/day. no technical issues w/API.

Oh, right. For some reason I was conceptualizing it as following and unfollowing much more than that. You're completely right. Duh :)

I like this. Has potential. Good luck. :)

you have to email them to remove yourself? Really? It seems like you could have some type of removal thing.

I'd imagine you could just remove the OAuth connection in your Twitter preferences.

Sounds like MVP. I would check again in a few days.

How to make sure everyone plays fairly? E.g. I can cut the ties once I'm famous.

That scenario isn't a problem - if everyone quit after achieving fame, they'd lose one user per day.

I think the actual fun in the game will be watching people freak out when they win. I don't really care if I win, but I will enjoy watching random people do unusual things with their fame

genius strikes again!

Why, god, I ask Why?

that reaction is why

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