

Show HN: My inherently "viral" experiment: 3Pics.me - bryanh

As you can tell, it's heavily influenced by Mark Bao's threewords.me. The concept is simple, upload three pics and let your friends vote on them. In fact, I think I may have ripped the concept off a post about threewords.me. Anyways...<p>Basically, I just wanted to build something stripped down to a core functionality and a little different from my usual projects. I've spent a lot of time polishing the flow and trying to make sharing an inherent part of the app.<p>It's built on Ruby/Padrino/Sinatra, Postgres and uses S3 for image hosting. This is actually my first Ruby project coming from a pure Django/Python background. It was a ton of fun to build and the guys behind Padrino were super helpful.<p>I'm not really expecting much in the way of adoption, but it will be fun to watch either way. Anyways, let me know what you think of it! Enjoy!
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pwp
I really like the idea, and thought the site was aesthetically pleasing. I
don't mean to sound like I am complaining, as this is my first post, but I
want to help you improve the site. (I am no expert on viral sites, but I
assume the better the site the more likely it will go viral.)

There are two things I see possibly going wrong: 1\. www.3pics.me should
redirect to 3pics.me. I know most techies think this fairly common knowledge,
and it is quickly becoming so, but I still have family who think you have to
tack www on front of all websites you go to. So my basic thought is if Joe
Average can't find the site, it will severely limit your audience.

2\. You are using just a cookie to remember if someone has already voted. This
is a problem. A small script such as the following could quickly inflate the
results.

for i in $( seq 10 ); do wget --no-cookie --post-data='upload%5Bid%5D=34'
3pics.me/1; done

(I tested it to check to see if my suspicion was correct, I only ran with 10
requests with one second intervals between each request to minimize any
possible damage. upload[id] =34 has 10 extra votes. Sorry.)

Like I said, I don't want to sound like I am just a grouch, but I wanted to
give you a heads up before someone else figures this out and abuses it.

I hope you succeed, pwp

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jvdmeij
Cool idea!

Some feedback:

\- The buttons browse and upload are too far apart. I thought the upload was a
seperate button. Why not upload the photo as soon as an image has been
selected. Seen it in other places, so it is technically possible

\- Loose the C:\fakepath\\. I use a Mac so that is rather daft. Just show the
filename. And oh yeah, make sure it fits the box and doesn't wrap lines.

\- Throw same random numbers in the URL as an identifier. I don't think people
will like it if other people outside their social graph can view their
picture. Just a precaution..

\- Integrate the proper Twitter share button instead of linking to the Twitter
site. Much cooler and more handy!

\- Make the #1 #2 and #3 result balloons easily recognizable as which one is
winning and which one isn't. Now it's just random colours.

Hope this helps!

~~~
bryanh
The fakepath thing is a Chrome thing it seems. Dunno why it is like that.

I thought about extra random numbers, but security through obscurity just
never rang true to me.

Thanks for the feedback though! Hoping to get a little more traction and go
from there.

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sga
I really like the design of the site.

When I visited <http://3pics.me/1> my first response was to click on the text
that said "Click to vote for pic X!" as opposed to clicking on the pic itself.

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sagacity
Cool!

Ripped concept or not, it looks to me like something that has all the
potential to go viral (probably short-term).

I'd suggest the following:

1\. Line up some revenue streams (AdSesne /Aff etc.?)

2\. Prep up the backend/code/servers etc. for a huge spike (probably lasting a
few days)

3\. Submit to as many Web 2.0/social media focused destinations as you can
(following up on each response)

4\. Keep fingers crossed :-)

All the best.

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nesquena
Awesome project bryan! Glad we could be helpful during your first Ruby /
Padrino project. Look forward to future projects.

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JoachimSchipper
It's been done before, e.g. <http://www.okcupid.com/mybestface>. Knowing the
OKCupid guys, they might have some useful data on their blog...

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bryanh
Clickables: <http://3pics.me/> and here's my voting page: <http://3pics.me/1>

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mapster
I have t a totally new viral concept like this, will top all others, but need
a developer to help. PM me :O)

~~~
sagacity
Sounds interesting. Your email is not in your profile. You can email me (via
my profile) - let's see what we can do.

~~~
mapster
fixed. thanks.

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pythonking
very elegant design man. How did you do the design and create the logo?

From my perspective, i think it could catch on given that it gets to the right
people initially. It reminds me of hot or not accept your facing off against
yourself.

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rguzman
you should post this on <http://reddit.com/r/amiugly>

