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I would not start running ads right out of the gate. You could show something funny while the pics load instead of ads.

Good tip. It seems to be a common thread. I'm still make incremental improvements on the site just about every day.

I'm planning to replace the ads on the main page with incentive prompts to get people to add their own pics. Nothing mandatory, just something saying, "Hey - I bet your dog is cute too. It only takes 30 seconds to add them."

I agree with this. I waited 30 seconds just looking at ads while the page was 'loading'. After that I just left because I felt you were more interested in show me ads than content.

I totally agree. The ads that were showing should only have shown IF you'd worked through all the possible matches to vote on. The HN bump had almost instantly completed every match available and the system hadn't generated more yet.

It was configured to end a match after one dog got 5 votes and won by two, a process that normally takes hours. It took less than a second with the HN traffic. My bad.

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