

Ask HN: Web app feedback (intelligent chatting system) - benjamincanfly
http://www.circleofconversation.com

======
gruseom
I like it too. I might even use it, if there are enough high quality
participants.

I read the whole Theory page and it struck me as blah blah blah blah blah,
_except_ for these two points:

1\. Conversations on topics you want, going on right now; 2\. Karma keeps the
quality high.

To me those are the core, and they're a pretty cool core. If I were you I'd
strip everything else out. And emphasize those two things on the main page.

Personally, I'd drop the recommendation system, or at least drop talking about
it. There's so much tripe surrounding that kind of thing that, when I read it,
I noticed that your credibility instantly dropped in my mind. I'd rather you
put your effort into making it really easy for me to browse/search what's
going on so that I can make my _own_ choices. Recommendations won't make me
want to use your site if there isn't a lot of value there already. And if you
do develop a kick-ass way of recommending related stuff, don't talk to me
about it, just show me a few suggestions unobtrusively and I'll eventually
catch on.

I also like the slogan "chat rooms that really work".

Edit: on reflection, I seem to notice a pattern which, if it really is there,
I suggest you avoid like the plague. It is the idea of the system being
"intelligent". It comes out in details like your choice of the word "Theory"
and the title of this post, as well as in the emphasis on the recommendation
system and its overtones of AI. To me this is a big turn-off. I don't _want_ a
chatting system, and I certainly don't want an "intelligent" chatting system.
What I want is intelligent conversation. It seems to me you've got the kernel
of something that could actually offer me that, which could be genuinely
valuable. Focus on that and try to get the system _out_ of the way.

Edit 2: while it's fresh in my memory... I noticed another thought going
through my mind which was, "I wonder who is on here that I know from somewhere
else", like HN for example. I wonder if people would be willing to link their
user names to their names from other communities. I would, if I knew that lots
of other people from HN were talking about stuff on your site.

~~~
benjamincanfly
This is the kind of helpful feedback I was banking on. Thanks much.

Originally there was no recommendation system planned, but once I realized how
easy it would be I had some infatuation-based feature creep. Going back to the
drawing board with 'don't tell them, show them' as priority 1.

~~~
tdoggette
Perhaps add a "lobby" room on the dashboard page with no particular topic?
That'd show 'em.

Also, showing more tips hides the input box. It prevents people from being
sure they're implementing tips right, and adds more complexity to saying
things for new users.

------
mechanical_fish
I rather like it. No idea if it will take off or anything, but it's really
nice.

Your approach to user signup is superb.

There should be an explicit "tag this conversation" link. Otherwise nobody
will even know that they can do that.

Can I post a link to an ongoing conversation in some other place, like Twitter
or, say, here?

The "Theory" page is... a bit too theoretical. I mean, everyone here will get
it, but not the mass market. I doubt that many AOL Chat users understand what
"asynchronous" means. Don't delete the existing page... just make a slightly
simpler, shorter Theory page and relegate the existing text to a second-level
"Theory of the Theory" page.

Other than that... it's hard to know what to critique. Many of the essential
design features of such a site will only become obvious when it's flooded with
traffic or overwhelmed by griefers. That's hard to test. Maybe you should
start a really _provocative_ conversation and then post a Digg link to it. ;)

~~~
benjamincanfly
Thanks! In a way the signup process is my favorite thing about the site, since
there's no process required at all. I love it when I stumble upon a painless
method of any kind.

You can post the link from your address bar, but the next step will be to make
each tag and conversation a static URL which can be crawled by Google.

The theory page was basically written for the HN and reddit/r/programming
audiences, because I wanted to get some serious feedback on the concept
itself. In the next month or two everything will be made more palatable.

Thanks for the feedback.

------
benjamincanfly
Hey guys! I've been building this app in my spare time. It's based on a simple
idea I had over a year ago - somehow after all this time there still has not
been a great web 2.0 chatting site to come into existence, so I've been
steadily working at it whenever I've had the chance.

You can read my whole spiel at
<http://www.circleofconversation.com/#tab=theory>, but basically the idea
behind the app is that people like talking to strangers online(like we're
doing right now) as long as there is a sufficiently precise topical
specifier(like we have here). The app attempts to accomplish this by letting
users give their chat rooms tags which fade out over time and then disappear
if they aren't refreshed/spoken aloud. They're constantly replaced by now-
accurate tags, so ideally every conversation has a very precise set of topical
specifiers at all times, making them worth joining.

I'd love to get some feedback on the general concept as well as execution
specifics, though the UI is rough and the feature set is basic. Thanks, HN.

P.S. I'm intentionally posting this in the evening to try to avoid any
significant traffic, and to give myself time to hot-fox any glaring bugs,
since I do client work during the day. I bet this sounds familiar to at least
half of HN's readers.

~~~
mstefff
The UI definitely needs work.

I didn't completely understand it until reading your comment.

Seems very difficult to get off the ground without a large, extremely active
userbase.

I don't use twitter or friendfeed but it looks very similar to it.

Still not sure if I see a real use or appeal for it - I could be wrong. I'd
like to see how it plays out after some time.

Domain name is wayyy to long..

Nice work so far though.

~~~
benjamincanfly
>I didn't completely understand it until reading your comment.

I'm finding it hard to sum the site up in a phrase, but I know this is
important.

>Seems very difficult to get off the ground without a large, extremely active
userbase.

Yep, same old problem. I don't have a marketing budget, so I'll just have to
try doing it the hard way.

>Domain name is wayyy to long..

At this point in the game it's either made-up words, non-descriptive domains,
or descriptive, long domains. I like conversational speech, so I went with the
third option. I think it's very easy to remember, which may offset the length.
I think it's funny that we consider three words so long when it comes to the
web, but I basically agree with what you're saying.

------
Alex3917
Great concept. I would start by putting everything into the dashboard page.
Perhaps borrow from the look and feel of the Wikipedia main page, in terms of
fitting everything into four different boxes. The theory page isn't necessary;
I know it's only for HN readers, but once the site is good enough the concept
will speak for itself (it already does for the most part.) Choose a snappier
name. This has the potential to get really big. (The YouTube of
conversations?)

~~~
benjamincanfly
Thanks for the notes, I'll take some of these suggestions. The "YouTube of
conversations" idea really resonates. Sometimes a simile does far more than a
detailed explanation - Command Shift 3's "like Hot or Not except (...) you
click on hot websites" is perfect, for example.

------
sutro
Good idea and nice start.

Suggestion: Add up-down voting for tags/topics, then rank the tags/topics on a
redesigned front page that looks more like HN or Reddit. You could make the
site behave like a HN for which all link submissions were self-referring (like
this one), and all commenting/conversation happened in real-time.

------
shawndrost
The feedback here is valuable, but leaves out one point which you might not be
aware of: an "intelligent chat system" will enjoy about as much widespread
success as a poetry board. (Which is not to say that you should stop, or that
this isn't valuable.)

------
dmnd
I really like the idea. A few things I noticed:

Tagging a conversation with a pronoun like "I" will probably means it sticks
around forever.

Can you join multiple conversations at once? What happens if two conversations
share a tag? Are they merged?

To stop conversations being tagged incorrectly, you could perhaps ask users
that join via that tag if it was accurate or not.

It'd be awesome if you could automate tagging of conversations. I'm not sure
how many people will be motivated to maintain metadata about their
conversations (the only way to find that out is to get more users though).

------
drewcrawford
Are conversations archived somewhere? Here's my reasoning:

1\. Some conversation and/or the site gets dugg

2\. Thousands of incoming users waltz in with good karma

3\. Everything goes to hell

Wikipedia, Everything2 et al. have some resilience because the audience is
more than just who's using the site at the moment. Dunno if you've thought
about that in great detail or not. Also,

* Friend system. Encourages people to band together against the trolls

* Bookmarking

------
cdr
"Under construction" is a phrase I have an immediate, strongly negative
reaction to. I'm probably not alone. How about "Coming soon"?

~~~
benjamincanfly
I guess that's a bit of a GeoCities throwback. Changed it to "in the works,"
thanks.

~~~
dominik
Is there a need for a such a phrase at all?

I think it's pretty clear websites continually evolve, grow, etc.

------
thorax
Really needs a quick way to get your friends in the room. Should actually be
very visible and very easy to get them in that room chatting with you.

Perhaps an obviously marked URL to copy/paste or something like that?

------
Hexstream
Typo on the theory page:

"Coupled with an analysis of your actual chatting history, this data lets
Circle makes helpful suggestions as to what conversations you're likely to
enjoy."

"makes" --> "make"

------
tocomment
Really cool!! I put all my comments in the chat system. We really need to link
this with hacker news so we can discuss things.

------
curiousgeorge
Not to put a downer on things, but this is not going to be useful for me at
all. Why should I want to chat with complete strangers about random topics.
And why online?

~~~
bigbang
Right now, you are here on HN :)

~~~
curiousgeorge
Totally different. Socializing is happening around a directed activity here,
and it's asynchronous.

