

Ask HN: which of these ideas should I build? - Throwaway53

I've put each idea as a comment so you can just vote for it. All comments welcome too. If anyone wants to join in, or is working on something similar just say.<p>My background: experienced web developer with a few tiny successes under my belt. Strong: technical, business ops, design, ideas. Weak: sales, marketing, biz dev.<p>I debated whether to use a throwaway or not - Went with it in the end.
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Throwaway53
A site for people to meet other people. Facebook but for people you don't know
yet. Works on location, interests etc. I see a huge interest on hn in plotting
maps of who is nearby, or searching for founders. I'm lonely some of the time,
Id be happy to meet people to chat - bounce a few ideas round, find a climbing
buddy etc. It's easier to find a swinging party than someone for a coffee.
Chatroulette tapped into something here. It needn't be limited to real world,
but can be global with people choosing to meet people over video, or IM, or
skype.

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eitally
I see this as a logical extension of all the existing location-based social
networking stuff out there (Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook Places, and even
Yelp). Since I'm sure all of these guys are already working on extending their
apps to be more flexible in this area, you'd be doomed before you started.

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Throwaway53
A visual search engine for porn. Using a wiimii type interface, users can
create a (cartoon) picture of what they are looking for - a redhead, with
glasses, and flat chested. Outdoors, doing X. You get the idea. Sites submit
their content to the site for free, and add the meta data for each video.
Essentially a youporn, but with good search.

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eitally
Terrible idea. first, pick a random porn site and look at the hundreds
(thousands?) of tags people use to label their fetishes/preferences. Secondly,
think about how you'd use an avatar to search for porn verbs. Not pretty
(unless you want to double the product as a "create your own hentai"
platform).

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Throwaway53
A white label realtime companion site for sports games. People watching a game
on tv can engage with other viewers online - chat, stats, form etc. The idea
is to license the system to teams/clubs to use on their own sites. The clubs
sell the tv rights, but benefit from eyeballs on their own site at the same
time as people are watching on tv. Clubs have ready access to sponsors etc. If
I can get peoples attention during commercial breaks then my screen is as
valuable as the tv, without the cost of actually buying any broadcasting
rights.

~~~
eitally
You're going to be beat to this one by the big guys & their partners (Google
TV, for instance). You won't be able to do it as well as they will, especially
without device manufacturer partnerships.

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Throwaway53
I'm not disagreeing, but they are going for the tv. I'm aiming at a
laptop/iPad on someone's couch. I may have misunderstood what google tv are
doing though.

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DiabloD3
GoogleTV is a stand alone ARM box that runs Android, but with a special 10
foot interface (instead of a 10 inch interface used on phones).

Basically, they're trying to compete with Boxee and XBMC and Apple iTV while
offering native Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu apps.

Plus, future GoogleTV platforms could be based on existing cable and sat
boxes, allowing you to have GoogleTV alongside traditional content.

In addition GoogleTV, seeing as it is Android, will have access to the Android
App Store, and the Android SDK will be extended to support GoogleTV
appropriately.

tl;dr: Google is doing to the TV industry what they did to the cell phone
industry.

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Throwaway53
None, they're all shit.

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eitally
Two of the three are a-ok, especially if you'd started two years ago. :-)

