

Ask YC: Better to ask users to upload photos vs. have some canned images? - dharmainit

Which is better for our social search/recommendation site?
A) Have some standardized, category-based photos for users to select from when authoring recommendations (we have ~12 top-level domains/categories of recommendations).  But, also have the ability to upload your own photo if you want.  Pro: User can quickly add a photo that somewhat reflects the topic of the recommendation.  Con: The photo selected might not fit the content exactly.<p>B) Have no standardized, pre-selected photos but emphasize the photo uploader.  Pro: User-uploaded photos might be more accurate to the rest of the authored recommendation (e.g., Yelp photos). Con: People might not go to the trouble and there would be a lot of "empty" photos on the site.<p>Thanks!  Please add specific examples/urls if possible!
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ram1024
best case i would have both. require the author to select a category when
posting, and using this category either pull random image out of stock photos
in the category or if you want to get cheeky, parse the text and run semantic
to get a closer match (does it really matter though? :D ). if user decides to
upload his own photo, just use that instead.

easy peesy

