

Show HN: Cheers, our "like" button for the real world - mmastrac
http://www.chee.rs

======
mmastrac
Hey all,

We've been working on this app for the last few months as a pivot on top of
our last app idea (gri.pe). We distilled out just the positive aspects of the
good/bad reviews of places, and added the ability to "cheer on" random things
and people you know on top of places.

On top of that, we focused on building out a social network inside the app,
and building in a really simple user score called "cheerfluence". People can
build cheerfluence by either posting in the system, or can increase someone
else's cheerfluence by clicking the "cheer" button on someone else's cheer.
This works really well to motivate people to connect to other people and
interact with their content in the system.

I'm really proud of how the app turned out, and we've got some excited users
in the system. I'd love to hear what the HN folks think too.

------
bradhe
Great site, great design, great video.

Still don't get it. Is it Instagram + Foursquare? There is a lot of iteration
on this idea of feedback on and sharing about places and the return is getting
less and less interesting to the consumer. Without a network of people to see
what I "liked" in the app, why would I want to like anything? Isn't the
purpose of a "like"--to show that I enjoyed a place?

~~~
mmastrac
We're definitely trying to build an instagram-like app, in that people will
just share things they like in their daily life (people, places, things - not
necessarily just businesses) through cheers, and push them to
Facebook/Twitter/other networks for their existing social networks to see.

Bootstrapping an app like this without your friends in the system is
definitely tough, but we've tried to encourage a model where people will
interact with other strangers in the system by trading 'likes' (we call it
'cheering on') on each other's content. You can give 'cheerfluence' to other
users by just interacting with their content.

This turns out to work fairly well - lots of people in the system are
following other people in the system, not necessarily those who they need, who
just happen to be in the system and are putting content in.

------
typpo
This is vaguely reminiscent of jotly (<http://www.jotly.co/>), except not
tongue-in-cheek.

------
yarone
Beautiful design through and through: from web site to the app. Really nicely
done.

~~~
mmastrac
Thanks! Our designer, Kai Gradert (<https://twitter.com/#!/kaigradert>),
deserves the credit for creating a beautiful app. He's a UI/UX god.

------
latchkey
I don't get it. How will this company make money?

Or does it not matter because it looks like everyone working on this project
has a ton of money already from previous successes (congrats btw).

~~~
bradhe
Apparently there now exists a category of social app that is not expected to
make money. Not sure if this really falls in to said category but...

~~~
latchkey
I guess I don't understand why I'd download any of those apps and use them.
They aren't going to be around in 6 months because either they've pivoted to
the next big thing or the founders have been absorbed into a talent
acquisition. Heck, the current incarnation is a pivot in itself!

------
lambtron
Very nice app. Just curious as to the distinction of this among similar apps
such as Stamped and Oink?

~~~
farhad667
I wouldn't suggest you Oink your girlfriend, or Stamp your pet... they deserve
better. :)

Also, the ho-hum is not a Cheer.

Finally, some people oink (wanna be critics / raters), but all people love.
Cheers lowers the barrier to expressing love and appreciation publicly, and
for those who do, it's a very different feeling / feedback loop than having
simply rated something.

That said, Oink / Stamped are very good for ranking / rating things and as
such both should give Yelp a run for it's money.

------
tkahn6
I only barely understand the appeal of twitter so take this with a grain of
salt, but it seems really narcissistic to inject yourself into your friends'
wedding with something like this. It's _their_ wedding; for them it's a life-
altering milestone, for you it's 5 hours of friends and family and a hangover
the next day (unless of course you're extremely close, but then 'Cheering'
them is beyond tacky and impersonal). So when you 'Cheer' your friends'
wedding you're making it about you and your relationship with the ceremony and
the couple (i.e. "Yes. I have decreed this to be a wonderful event from my
perspective and thus I shall Cheer it. Like and retweet if you agree it's
wonderful."). You're no longer there in the moment for the experience and for
the people who are getting married, you're there to let everyone know _your_
perspective on the events in the moment they happen.

The difference between Cheer and taking a photograph with your point-and-shoot
is that the photographs are uploaded after the ceremony has happened and
therefore it is "let's remember what happened on this day" rather than "this
is what _I_ thought of this particular moment, like if you also agree this was
a particularly wonderful moment".

Sorry if this is out of line, it's a very pretty site. This is just something
that stuck out to me.

~~~
readme
You're definitely right that the motivation behind a tweet, or a "like", or in
this case a "cheer" is narcissistic. However, I don't think that makes a
difference. Your observation is just that, an observation. Psychologists have
made observations of this nature about human behavior already. If there was no
common, narcissistic behavior amongst humans, then the word "narcissism" would
never have been invented. Furthermore, we would never have developed a concept
of narcissism at all.

With that said, we all do narcissistic things. Narcissism is only a problem
when it gets out of control. That is why we have expert psychologists and
psychiatrists to take care of this, and define what is and is not an
acceptable level of narcissism (in the DSM-IV definition for narcissistic
personality disorder)

Sure, there are reasons to be for, or against narcissistic behavior. If you
like, you can personally hate narcissism every time you see it. But if you are
so quick to jump the gun and call this novel little app "narcissistic" and
declare you don't like it, because you must hold yourself to some higher moral
standard, then you are probably very, very blind to much of your own
narcissistic behavior.

We are all narcissistic. Some of us are more narcissistic than others, and
some of us are more aware of our own personalities than others.

The bottom line is that regardless of the motivation for "cheering" (liking,
or any other form) something, the end result is likely going to be fun times
clicking shiny buttons for everyone, so just live it up.

