

Ask HN: is it worth the effort to build (yet another) publishing platform? - hasenj

I would've thought the culture around YC would discourage this, and instead encourage looking into new niches or doing something more original, but I noticed that YC funded a startup that did just that: Posterous.<p>Is it worth the effort to try and build yet another publishing platform? I'm personally not much satisfied with any of the existing ones, and I do have some idea that I think are somewhat unique (or at least: I haven't seen them done).<p>Does it seem very unoriginal/unimaginative? Is it worth the effort or would it be a waste of time?
======
petervandijck
If you have to ask, no :)

But apart from that, yes. There are definitely still problems to be solved, I
don't think we've reached the end of publishing tools just yet.

------
glimcat
If you have a viable plan for getting customers and revenue, then yes.
Otherwise, no.

Business release "yet another X" all the time. It's called competition.

~~~
hasenj
> If you have a viable plan for getting customers and revenue, then yes.

I have some ideas for that, but I myself am not very good at sales/business,
and as of now I have no partner.

------
dlf
Can you share what would make it unique?

I think that your hunch that what's out there can be improved upon is correct,
but it would have to have some really unique value proposition that set it
apart from posterous, tumblr, and the like. Posterous and tumblr succeed,
IMHO, because Wordpress is difficult for someone who's not tech savvy to
learn.

~~~
hasenj
Besides the obvious things like clean UI, etc.

One thing that I only thought of recently is how on youtube you can "discover"
videos via the "related videos" side bar. I'm not aware of anything like this
in blogging sites.

Imagine the same thing for a blog. Actually I don't like the word blog, but
I'll use it for lack of a better term.

Imagine you're reading a blog post, and on the side you have similar/related
blog posts from many different other people.

If you're a reader, this is good because you can discover more content easily.
If you're a writer, this is good because your content can be discovered more
easily.

Something similar is happening on facebook. People make facebook pages and
write their thoughts there, it helps them get more exposure, even though the
facebook UI is not optimized for these kinds of things.

I like the dynamics of the non-linear "discussion" that take place on youtube,
and I think there's value in that.

~~~
akcreek
It would be interesting to figure out how to grab "related articles" from
other blogs. Tags are how some sites currently do it, but that is with posts
from the same author. Everyone uses tags differently and some don't use tags
at all. Maybe keyword density? Or I suppose tags could auto-complete to a
standard that you set.

~~~
hasenj
Not exactly from "other blogs". I mean, yes, other blogs, but within the same
site. YouTube doesn't list related videos from DailyMotion.

I think it's a mixture of similar content + user activity.

------
chromejs10
Depends how you do it I suppose. I mean Apple's great products came from
improving current products, not "necessarily" creating brand new ones. If you
have ideas that have the potential to revolutionize publishing platforms, then
do it. At the very least you'll have a product that you can customize to your
every whim!

