

My create-your-own-social-news-site startup is live. Feedback appreciated.  - brett
http://slinkset.com/

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redrory
I Like, I love the design, the colors works well for me. The layout also
pleases me:) KISS ( Keep It Stupid Simple) I feel like a mix between Jottit
and Digg Create your little Digg site with the ease of creation like Jottit.

I recommend.

~~~
marrone
Very nice, well done, I have to agree. Reminds me of Basecamp.

Was very easy to get started that is for sure

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blored
I agree. The design is very nice.

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bprater
Great work Brett. Very polished for getting started. You need to figure out
how you can beat Reddit's new "build your own reddit" system. Maybe focusing
on certain niches like families that like to share links (mine!), pet lovers,
sports fans, etc. I think you could make fast inroads by figuring out how you
can target folks like that rather than going after reddit.com head on.

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jedberg
Im curious as to why you think reddit can't serve those niches right now? You
can create a private reddit just for you and your family, you can create a pet
lover reddit, a reddit for you favorite sports team, etc. Is this perhaps a
marketing problem of reddit's?

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aston
Design thing that irks me: Seems like a number of mouse hovers trigger an
object to get duller rather than brighter. That seems like the opposite of
what you want to happen.

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jedberg
How is this different than user created reddits on reddit? The only difference
I see is that you can change the colors here.

However, I will say that the colors are nice. :)

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r7000
Not necessarily a minor difference. People have added blogs and message boards
provided by 3rd parties and themed them so that they appear integrated with
the main site. Does it follow that there might be a demand for an "integrated"
niche social news equivalent? Kind of reminds me of ning too.

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dskhatri
Ditto. Providing the ability to integrate such a link sharing/voting app into
an existing website would make slinkset stand out! May I ask why the name
slinkset? I don't get the name.

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brett
There's not really anything to get. I'm more worried about you being able to
remember and spell it.

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staunch
<http://slinkset.com/signup_and_create>

The vertical divider in the page made me think I only had to fill out one side
or the other. "Setup your account" __or __"Setup your site" I thought. So I
figured I could create my network just by entering title/URL/privacy option.
Only after a little confusion did I realize it's not "or", but actually "and".

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mattmaroon
I find the star with an inverted star below it for up/downvoting a little off.

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xekonic
Like the design simplicity. A possible idea on how to differentiate it from
reddit. Consider having an option that makes it almost like a media producer.

What I mean is, while the post link is interesting, when it comes to something
like Hacker News I always click through for the comments, because they're
usually great. What about combining this idea with almost a kind of private
access and putting the point system to more use?

For example: You have the link (or topic) that is submitted as they are now,
and then the discussion that occurs from the link (or topic). As people like
it, they vote it up or down (giving it points). However, all this discussion
is taking place not in public view (recalling the invite only). But each day a
submission goes public (also opening up comments) based on which one has the
most points. This essentially creates 1 piece of interesting material a day
(similar to that of a blog) based on dynamic discussion.

Just a thought.

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crescendo
You should pre-fetch the rollover images in the "Featured Slinkset Sites" on
the front page. Currently when the page first loads, there is a split second
when you mouse-over the screenshots where the image completely disappears as
it's loading the hover image. Otherwise the design looks very nice.

~~~
brett
Thanks for the tip. We've been meaning to go the css sprite route on those,
but haven't gotten to it yet.

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eznet
Nice job man. The whole process from the user's end is about as simple and
painless as it can get - something that, if done poorly, will kill a site
quicker then anything. Nice concept and seemingly small/few bugs/issues for a
just launched site. Kudos!

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rksprst
Add comments (or use disqus) and allow people to use their own domains.

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brett
We actually have comments. Clearly that's not obvious if you are not logged in
(and no one has yet commented on a link on the page). Something we should look
at.

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rksprst
You should make the comment link visible, but require registration to actually
post a comment. You should not hide any features from unregistered users, just
require registration before they are used.

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ph0rque
Neat! I was just thinking that we need something like this for our family,
instead of emailing each other news articles all the time.

Since this is RoR-based, I assume it's RESTful?

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ph0rque
Ok, so I created an account; it was a great experience. There are several
requests I have:

1\. Let users add custom CSS to it, so they can customize it the way they
want. 2\. Let users add a custom subdomain.

~~~
brett
Cool. Both of those are on our todo list. Using an arbitrary domain works, but
we haven't put it in the ui because it requires some work from the user and we
want to make sure there is appropriate help so that it does not confuse
anyone.

~~~
ph0rque
Awesome! As mentioned in the grandparent post, we're using it for family news,
and we have a suggestion: give users the ability to hide certain links from
certain users for a temporary period of time. For example, if my dad has a
birthday coming up and we want to throw him a surprise birthday party, we can
start a discussion link about organizing it, and have him not be able to see
it. That news item would be hidden from him until 1 day after his birthday, or
something like that; same thing for anniversaries.

~~~
wumi
and to think '' there are thousands of people paying for a service like this
at myfamily.com ( a few more features, but barely)

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tim2
Good idea, good execution. High five.

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ncbutters
high five back.

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gregwebs
I created one <http://justnews.slinkset.com/> For anyone who is tired of all
the stupid news commentary, and just wants new.

It would be nice to be able to increase the font size on the Hacker News
ripoff design.

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john_gunther
Why did you name it SlinkSet?

What is the problem that you are trying to solve?

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mr_palomar
If I set my site to "private", the "Users" link gives me a 500 error ("We have
a piper down"). If I change it to Public it works fine. I would still expect
to be able to invite users to a private site.

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brett
Yeah that was a bug; I just deployed a fix. We weren't ready for people
putting periods in their usernames. My guess is that you changed it to public
right after the fix. Thanks.

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Kaizyn
What technologies did you use to create the site? Is this Rails based?

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gaika
seems like rails: "Server Mongrel 1.1.4" in response headers, application.js
with prototype.js in the scripts.

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brett
Yeah. It's rails.

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mrwizard14
Pretty awesome. Slinkset looks like a great idea, good execution.

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run4yourlives
Nice job. Have you thought about how you'll monetize it?

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brett
We're still nailing that down, but I think we've got some decent ideas...

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t0pj
Cool. Simple design. Very easy to get started. <http://ghost.slinkset.com>

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marketer
It would be nice to have some kind of preview feature, either in the form of a
demo, or existing pages.

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jgamman
very cool - i've been waiting for something like this for ages. can i please
echo the request for a webpage plug-in? it'd be nice to drag and drop this
into something else rather than have the visitor leave my space.

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tonyvt2005
Great job, the design is nice. Just curious - about how long did it take to
do?

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rrhyne
holy shit, you nailed the signup experience. I'm wondering though, by not
verifying emails or even having a captcha, are you worried about undesirables
turning your site into a spam/link farm?

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mcxx
Add a username/password captions to the login form on your homepage.

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DXL
Little tip: On the sign-up page, there's a big line between the "Set Up Your
Account" and "Set Up Your Site" form. It looks as if it are two separate forms
and you should choose one. Maybe you can tinker with it a little bit to make
it look more as one whole.

