

Ask HN: Please evaluate my reddit-clone - kaizenfury7

I've been thinking about putting a spin on social news and I decided to put up a prototype to test my idea.<p>The idea/twist is simply this: <i>Use full sentences as a subreddit name.</i><p>So instead of subscribing to subreddits:<p>- worldnews<p>- technology<p>You would 'subscribe' to:<p>- I am interested in world news.<p>- I am interested in technology news.<p>You can subscribe to other 'full sentence' subreddits like:<p>- I love Star Trek.<p>- I need a student loan.<p>- I enjoy rock climbing.<p>- I am worried about the global economy.<p>Thus, submitting a link would look like:<p>- <i>Title</i>: Greek tremors continue to rock markets - CNN.com<p>- <i>URL</i>: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/05/05/...<p>- <i>Target this link to people with this profile</i>:<p><pre><code>    -- I am interested in world news.

    -- I am interested in technology news.

    -- I am worried about the global economy.
</code></pre>
The difference may look minor, but I think it provides an interesting twist on submitting links.<p>For example, here's another possible submission:<p>- <i>Title</i>: Star Trek club is more than ‘stereotypical nerds’<p>- <i>URL</i>: http://www.cw.ua.edu/2010/04/22/star-trek-club-is-more...<p>- <i>Target this link to people with this profile</i>:<p><pre><code>    -- I love Star Trek.

    -- I enjoy rock climbing.
</code></pre>
If you want to play around with submitting a link, you can use any of these demo accounts:<p>hn_demo1<p>hn_demo2<p>hn_demo3<p>hn_demo4<p>The password for all of them is: hacker
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pedalpete
I'm not sure that that is a large enough differentiator.

If I understand correctly, you're changing 'topics' into sentences. Is that
correct?

the nice thing about not having a sentence to assign as a subject is that it
is faster for the person adding the link, and doesn't take up as much real
estate when navigating.

I was having some serious usability issues with your site. The colors made it
VERY difficult to focus on what I was supposed to be looking at. As well, the
layout didn't really direct me as to where I should be looking.

Most important, I kept looking at the Social News section, expecting to see
the submitted links. Then I thought that maybe i needed to answer the
questions before getting the links.

It took a bit before I realized that the links where in the 'recommendations
for you' section.

Overall, you've put a huge number of roadblocks between the user and the
content, which is a big no-no.

~~~
kaizenfury7
Yes, that's pretty much what I'm doing. I'm experimenting with adding more
meaning to a 'topic' or 'tag'. It does make it a more complicated to add a
link, but it allows someone to be more expressive in what they want to see in
their news. This should in turn allow a submitter to really target their link
to the right audience.

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kaizenfury7
Clickable link: <http://socialnews.targetmyinfo.com/improve_recommendations>

