Ask HN: Review my relaunched startup

2 points by typicaljoe 17 years ago | 5 comments

Hi Hacker News,

This past week I re-launched my new web project called mostrecent.net.

I'd done a small launch for feedback in December with mixed results. I got very little user interest but I did get some good feedback. Overall the site needed to be easier to use and their needed to be more of a "hook". In this case the hook is being able to use Adsense to make money.

The basic idea of the site is to let you, as an expert in your field, build a news page. On this page you can highlight whatever it is on a particular topic that you know to be important. This is different from a blog (where posts quickly disappear off the page) and different from a social news site (where you may post the most relevant article, but the mob decides what gets exposure).

The pages are Drudge Report style portal pages and are edited using a very simple drag and drop interface.

I'd be very interested in getting peoples thoughts as well as suggestions for future versions.

http://mostrecent.net

Thanks!

Ian

aristus 17 years ago |

Quick notes:

The design is a turn-off.

The demo editor does not work. I gave my page a name, but none of the link or text buttons work.

Posting a review request at noon on Sunday limits your exposure.

I don't quite get the value prop here -- even if making a page is "easy", it's not easier than writing something on my own blog.

I can't open my own subjects without asking you? What if I don't care about the dozen languages listed?

Server went down at this point. Sorry, man. This is a nice idea but you'll need to give users more power and more reason to use it. Maybe importing links from delicious or similar.

typicaljoe 17 years ago | |

What browser are you using that the editor stopped working? You can do any subject you want, in fact I may even add it to the list. I added the box on the left to give the site some initial focus.

aristus 17 years ago | | |

I tried both FF3 and Safari3 on Mac.

Ah, I see -- I misunderstood the "let me know". I got the impression that new subjects had to go through you.

My other comments stand, though. You need an info/UI designer to go over the site, and you need to improve the value prop to contributors. There are lots of sites in similar areas -- three that come to mind are squidoo, mahalo, and twine.

tdoggette 17 years ago |

The promise that you, too can make a web page, and it's as easy as surfing the web(!) smells really 1997. Especially considering that the content is all about programming languages and the like, I doubt anyone in the target market is intimidated by making a web page.

Also, just looking at it, what's it for? Making web pages about technology? There are lots of web pages about technology, and lots of places to host new ones.

dbul 17 years ago |

Sweet! Looks like you put a lot of work into this. More content probably needs to be added before you can see exactly how it will be useful to your audience.

I would get rid of the ads for now and spend a bit more time reconsidering the user experience. For example, the color scheme, bold headlines, brief blurb of what the page you are about to click on is. It would also be nice to know what pages are external and which are not.