

Show HN: Our first startup attempt: blogging without a blog - akligman
http://www.insideword.com/

======
kqueue
Most of the articles are copied from somewhere else.

<http://www.insideword.com/member/profile/31> ->

[http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-04-04/compu...](http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-04-04/computing/29379872_1_new-
android-software-android-tablets-ipad-competitors)

Solving the original content problem is a must.

~~~
akligman
We filled in a few for demo purposes.. will be deleted :)

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akligman
So the three of us are trying to quit our finance jobs and get into startups.
Man.. that would be nice...

None of us are bloggers, so we wanted to build something where we could post
ad hoc content without having to create/build/maintain a blog. FB is not
really meant for article-length content.

InsideWord is kind of a mix between citizen journalism sites and, I guess,
blogging platforms - at least, that’s what we think it is. We could definitely
use some feedback and advice.

~~~
anony1212
>> So the three of us are trying to quit our finance jobs and get into
startups.

bubble :-)

------
talbina
Do you think that business/science/technology writers who have valuable
information and insight are finding obstacles to getting published online?

~~~
akligman
There aren't really obstacles, you're right. I know there are sites out there,
but I guess I'm just lazy to find them. By centralizing some of the content,
it may be easier to find.

I think IW is also geared more towards the novice blogger, who simply has a
blogger or wordpress site with little traffic. By syncing it to IW, it should
generate more exposure.

------
talbina
How are you going to stop spam?

~~~
akligman
We actually met a VC at SXSW this year who asked the same thing. We have a
ranking algo - rying to avoid spam the same way Reddit does by only getting
the best content promoted. We're thinking of building tools so users accounts
time out or a captcha generates if they post too much.

~~~
pan69
You could start by hooking into Mollom for the time being (mollom.com)

~~~
akligman
Thanks that's really cool. We're checking it out now.

------
nedwin
I really like the "I want to read / I want to write" UI element. Is that
something you guys came up with or discovered somewhere else?

~~~
akligman
Thx, We actually found it on another site (can't remember which one - too many
bookmarks!), but it was a tutorial slider. We just thought the idea was cool
and recoded it from scratch with jquery. Stupid thing won't work on an iPad
yet...

~~~
farout
is it the jquery will not work or the app using UISlider will not work on the
iPad?

~~~
akligman
Not really sure actually. We haven't had time to look into it yet. Just
frustrating.

------
shadowpwner
What's the incentive for people to contribute? It seems that it'll quickly
turn into something like Associated Content.

~~~
akligman
We've definitely studied AC. In our case, we're not telling anyone what to
write about or incentivizing them by paying them (i.e., trying not to be a
content farm here).

Users simply write about their interests like on any blog. The idea is to
aggregate and promote the best content. We'll direct traffic back to their
site via URLs on their profile, customization, etc

~~~
corin_
What plans do you have in place to prevent the site from (if it becomes
popular) being a place where most content is written by SEO copywriters who
discover it's a great place to get links?

~~~
mblomquist
Well first Google's ranking system works off of more than just one website,
otherwise these SEO link farms would just make one WordPress site and post a
thousand of links from there. Google's graph based algorithm is based on many
sites.

So even if we do get used for that we wouldn't be a good enough target, but
you're right, we can definitely see us possible getting bundled in with other
tricks. This issue however has been tackled by hundreds of other sites who
also have similar issues, like bots creating accounts and posting comments
with links. So the technology for solving this is already there and there are
plenty of Thirdparty vendors that provide software to fight this stuff off by
doing things like cross-site string matching.

But all in all yes, the fact that someone can post anonymously comes with
great technical challenges that we're eager to try and solve.

~~~
corin_
_"Well first Google's ranking system works off of more than just one website,
otherwise these SEO link farms would just make one WordPress site and post a
thousand of links from there."_

Well, yes and no. Obviously one site only gets so far for SEO links, but if a
site is popular enough then it is very worthwhile to have links from it. My
company runs a number of websites, PageRank 4-6, and we have had multiple
requests from SEO companies to buy links on our sites (which we obviously
turned down).

If they all created one site and posted links from it, they would gain very
little as Google would a.) detect that it is a site full of SEO spam and b.)
realise that no-one actually reads the site, so the value of its links would
be very low anyway.

However, if your site becomes popular, which Google will judge based on a
number of things, such as other sites linking to you, then your Google
PageRank will go up. With a high PageRank, suddenly you linking out to other
sites will become useful for SEO purposes.

There are already plenty of SEO copywriters whose job it is to find popular
websites and offer those websites pieces of content in return for a specific
text link. They could see your site and start using it regularly, essentially
turning it into an SEO content farm, generating SEO value not for you, but for
all the websites these SEO people are working for.

 _"This issue however has been tackled by hundreds of other sites who also
have similar issues, like bots creating accounts and posting comments with
links."_

Yeah, that problem is, for the most part, a non-issue, it's not hard to
eradicate that, 99% automatically and 1% with human moderation. But actual SEO
copywriting is very real, I have a few friends who are paid to write web
content purely for SEO purposes. They could go and get a job creating content
for one site, their writing isn't terrible, but instead they look for a site,
they write content for it in return for a link - one person might write an
article on gaming, an article on software development, an article on politics
and an article on medicine all on the same day.

And that's the kind of problem I can see, it would happen like this:

1) Site becomes popular

2) SEO people see that it is popular, and that therefore Google will care
about links from your site to other sites

3) SEO people start writing content for your site, which includes their links

4) The majority of your content is no longer _really_ user generated. It still
is, technically, but all the users generating it are SEO copywriters.

Now, if that happens, there are two possible end results, and I'm not sure
which is more likely. The first is a possible good result - the SEO writers
get the links they want, they give you good content, your readers enjoy
consuming that content, and everyone is happy. But the other possibility is
either than Google/etc. start to see your site as a content farm and punish
you in their rankings (which could lead to the SEO copywriters disappearing
and your content drying up, as you also lose traffic from readers) or search
enginges don't care, but readers stop visiting your site because the SEO
content isn't good enough - that would lead to less visits, less links to your
site, and the same negative result.

So, conclusion, not saying you definitely have a problem, and if it did
happen, it might not end badly for you. But certainly something to think
about. While I wish you all the luck in the world, I'm also slightly hoping
this happens because I'm now very interested in what the end result actually
would be.

