Vint – A new message broadcast app | Hacker News Reader

Vint – A new message broadcast app

blog.vintapp.co

18 pointssvillafe44 comments

I'm not terribly interested in reading what people have paid a buck to say. What would be much more interesting is an app that allowed anyone to say anything for free, and then filtered all those posts down to 20 posts for each user. So each user gets a different 20 posts, and (assuming a user posts only once a day) each user's post is seen by 20 people.

That'd be an interesting way of solving the "firehose" problem on sites like Twitter. Then, perhaps, you add on Pandora-like "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" features so that the service can pick better posts for you.

This would solve the "firehose" problem, but it would also make the "filter bubble" problem more worse.

1. People get much crap, because it's hyped by media.

2. People get much crap, because they like it.

The first thing leads to dumb opinions to be stuffed into peoples brains and the second leads to a feedback loop, which makes the first effect even stronger.

@RMarcus Thanks for your feedback, that's a very good idea, but an entirely different app. Vint tries to maximize the audience of each post by showing everyone the same 20 messages.

Am I to understand that this is like Twitter's Promoted Tweets without any other functionality? Because Promoted Tweets are really the best part of Twitter?

No it is not. We don't allow any type of advertisements in Vint. There are 4 rules that you have to follow to publish in Vint: * No offensive content. * No adult content. * No advertisements. * English only (We are currently implementing other languages)

Thanks for your feedback.

> No offensive content

Fuck that noise.

Promoted tweets are paid for https://business.twitter.com/en-gb/products/pricing

So how many days will it take for everyone to tell their message, if there are 20 message slots per day?

What do you mean?

The whole purpose behind Vint is to presumably have thousands of people reading what is posted. Hypothetically, if there are 20,000 Vint users and they all want to post something, it'll take almost 3 years to give everyone their say.

If EVERYONE wants to say something, yes. But we doubt that will happen.

What if you get more users, like 50.000, you still have 20.000 users (40% of the user base, which seems reasonable) and it will still take 3 years.

If that does happen (and we hope it will) we are planning on having different streams for different subjects or locations.

I mean that Vint might have some difficulties to make their users happy, if there are thousands of people waiting for their spot. At least for me the interesting stuff is to spread my message and I have a hunch that it might possibly get really crowded for all the posters with the 20 message daily cap. If the cap is raised significantly or categories (subjects, geographical areas, etc.) are created, then the whole original point of the app is lost in my eyes. I am sorry to have a bad feeling that Vint is driving to a dead end.

It's true that it might get crowded. In that case we plan to add more streams, but keep the original global stream. So if you want to spread your message globally, there is a place to do it, and if you want to spread your message locally, you have your place too. Also, new slots are opened every day, which gives you a new chance to get a slot.

If this app does get popular how are you planning on managing it when you are getting hundreds of message requests a day?

After the first 20 post requests for a specific date no more request are accepted. From the app there is a seven day time window where you can choose the date that you want.

I thought about this for a second; does this mean you plan on ideally make a revenue of 20 x 0.99 USD per day?

We have already thought about different strategies to make more money. Mainly different streams for different subjects or locations

This looks like it's the same as The List Serve:

http://thelistserve.com/

The difference is that in Vint you have the chance to post your message to a selected date, and you don't have to win the chance to post in a lottery. Here anyone can post.

Seems like the copy on your website is a bunch of hot air considering that you only show messages from people that pay to post.

Hi Glenda, What do you mean when you say "the copy on your web site"?

I mean the text you wrote makes it sound like you want all kinds of people around the world to be able to communicate about issues that are important to them.

But in reality you are more interested in promoting posts from people who are willing to pay a dollar.

Every post costs a dollar. There is no promotion to any post, every post is the same.

I love the idea of having a platform where I can say something and potentially be heard (twitter), but if I have to pay 0.99$ everytime I say something, I want to know how many people are going to see it..

Are you going to post how many daily active users you have on a regular interval?

Yes, we are working on a daily analytics email for the poster of the message.

Great!

Deleted comment

If you have an iPhone you are in the group of people who can afford to pay a dollar. I'm sorry to hear you think it's shady, would you care to explain why?

Ok, there is an error in this everybody-should-have-their-voice mentality.

We should be valuing what people who knows about something has to say about this subject, not what anyone willing to talk has to say about it.

How to know who knows? Well...

We think that everyone has the right to speak their minds. Vint is the place to share your opinions or stories on any subject. Before Vint if you were not a massive brand or have no power, there wasn't a method to reach a wide audience.

I agree that people have the right to speak their minds, but why cap it at 20 "messages" per day? Is this backed up by any psychological research or did the team set it up arbitrarily?

I'm thinking if I want to really use the app, I'd like to personally control how many messages or views I'm bombarded with. Perhaps I want to hear something every waking hour of the day (so ~18 messages). But maybe some days I would like much less or much more. Why should Vint control my ingestion of messages?

"But the real reason for the limit in the messages is to maximize the audience"

Can you explain this further? Do you mean to say that if you bumped up the number of messages to 40, you will not be maximizing the audience because there are too many messages? Are you curating these paid messages manually?

Exactly right. If we increase the number of messages per day, less people will read each message. We do curate each message manually. (It's only twenty of them)

20 messages is the sweet spot between to much and to little for users to leave. But the real reason for the limit in the messages is to maximize the audience. In Vint, there are only twenty messages per day. The same messages everyone sees.

Is there an audience yet on Vint?

Growing by the minute.

Actual numbers?

We launched today (3 hours ago). We will get back to you with numbers at the end of the week.

That's not what Vint appears to be to me. There's curation. Maybe there isn't but it appears that there is.

Yes there is curation and 4 rules to be followed if you want to publish a message

There's already something called Vint. https://www.joinvint.com Will be confusing.

That app is no longer working. At least the links in their website don't

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