

Ask HN: Review their startup - icount.com  - vyrotek

A startup I worked closely with over the summer just launched and is looking for feedback. I've talked to them about the HN community and told them to sign up but haven't seen them do anything yet. Hopefully some good feedback would encourage them to join us!<p>icount is a social network for politics. They help you find the issues that matter to you and help you connect with your representitives. From what I understand, they are working directly with many politicians to make this their main communication platform.
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Toast
The core idea is certainally a good one. Creating a closer connection between
the voters and the politicains is needed. If politicians are willing to take
it seriously then it has great potentional.

Some initial impressions is I wold second it dosn't seem fully polished. The
left menu wasn't actually links in IE8 and the most apparant search is a
search for other users. It would seem most beneficial to have it be searching
for Elected Officials. I did see the search in the top right that would search
Officials, Candiated, and users which is of help. I also noticed that the
summaries on Legislations is showing as straight text so you are seeing HTML
code.

It also would be beneficial to have some filtering options. Such as sorting by
Legislation Type(what it effects), Where a candidate/Official is located and
what level of the Government are they apart of.

With a little UI work it can grab the users and has great potential. However
these little things can stop from getting a more casual group which is what
the site will need to reah that potential.

Just some initial impressions.

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jthomasut
Great idea! Hope this means politicians will start listening to their voting
base rather than special interest groups.

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ryanelkins
I think the idea is interesting, I just want to see the UX developed. It's all
really rough right now. The y definitely didn't wait to release before it was
fully polished ;)

The big thing I see is that it's really hard to figure out what you're
supposed to do on the site - or what they even expect you to do.

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vyrotek
Clicky - <http://bit.ly/icount>

The link will auto connect you with me. Follow some issues and say hi. They
could really use feedback on the registration process, UI and usefulness of
the idea.

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mohmentum
The UI needs some work. Especially on the "left navigation" area to make it
more useful. But I really liked finding my elected officials when I validated.

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fooslord
This is an interesting idea. Something needs to happen to get politicians
listening better.

