Show HN: Topic
topic.so
topic.so
In the end, things didn't work out out. I think part of the reason is that people only care deeply about a small number of topics and they're willing to go where the community is.
As software developers, We've been taught that a good solution to a problem is a "generic" one, a "one fits all" solution.
for example, in this case, a solution that would fit "all" people interested in "any" topic.
The thing is, for all non-tech problems, the best solution is usually the specific one, the custom made one.
Most of the time when you try a generic solution, competitors specializing in a specific solution would beat you.
Jeff Atwood wrote about a similar idea and called it rule of the 3 [1]. I vaguely remember that he also wrote that they used this rule when starting StackOverflow.
The random topic effect is nice but how can I find a specific topic, or set of related topics, if I'm looking for them? Not having them show up as an easy to guess API makes it all but impossible.
Yeah.. Not really seeing the value this provides, or even a gap it might fill.
The front page could also use an example topic as part of the scrolling page to best illustrate a use case, as there are a vast number of other established sites and forums dedicated to such discussions. The small thumbnail mockup at the top doesn't highlight this enough I don't feel.
If I were to imagine a use for the site personality it might be for off-shoot conversations around something specific that I could link others to, but that would depend on the ease of sign-up.
1) "Follow the topics you care about, grow your reputation, get notified about the hottest news as they happen and chat with people like you."
-"get notified about the hottest news as it happens" sounds better
2) Categories are sometimes capitalized and sometimes not: fashion, music, Gadgets, Health, Most useful Apps, Movies, news -Stick to one structure of capitalization
Also, getting got this message when I did post:
Topic is confused! It hurt itself in its confusion.
It's unclear to me how this is better than twitter, unless the "more than 140 characters" aspect is the thing. But on twitter I can use multiple hashtags.
I clicked on "music" and the newest post is 14 days old, and it quickly drifts to 70 and 90 days old before you get past the first ten posts. "Tech" was even worse.
The posts go back about a year, which means in all that time you haven't figured out how to get fresh content on the site.
I'd strongly suggest you crack that problem asap.
Also, the topic page urls look like this: http://www.topic.so/t/32a14b833ff6a0e7013ff81a204d0042
That's a really, really bad way to structure urls on a content oriented site. Why isn't that topic.so/tech or /t/tech???
Now that I've signed up, the newest content I see is a month old?
2) Why should I "grow my reputation"?
3) Wording issues... "Enter topic here" umm... I should enter a topic? What.
4) Still waiting for my login e-mail, and seemingly no way to back out of the "already a member"/"sign up now!" white overlay.
None of the 12 topics shown are of interest to me.
Now what? Must a user pick topics they don't care about?
Consider an offering obvious way to just skip this, and also allow for searching for topics at this part of the sign-up instead presenting a limited choice.
This wouldn't be a problem if the service asked for my public Facebook profile and built tag cloud based on the pages I liked or at least gave opportunity to enter my own topics.
And yes, the same consideration should be made with regard to .ly (which seems to have fallen out of favor), .io, etc.