

Ask HN: feedback on my startup? - len
http://www.elephinoinc.com

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eterno
I spent half an hour going through the main links and the "how it works". I
still have no clue what this site does and why should I use it.

~~~
tdavis
The only opinion I could form was "It looks nice, but I have no clue what it
is."

~~~
trickjarrett
And I have to disagree with this, I think it looks nicely bad. It's bland and
each link takes up too much screen real estate.

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staunch
Is this like an openly paid Digg or something? Needs more explanation.

~~~
len
yes. all the analytics are open to everyone. you can submit content for free
or pay for it to be placed higher up in the list.

advice as to specifics for the explanation?

~~~
johnrob
I went to your site. I saw a list of links. I saw buttons that say 'buy' and
'adjust'. The price is 0. The CPMs are 0.

I am confused.

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rksprst
Why would I pay to have my site linked to on your site? Do you have enough
traffic?

How is it sustainable? After a while, all the top sites would be paid and thus
of no interest to users who visit your site.

~~~
trickjarrett
And on top of that, why would I visit your site to see who is paying the most
for my attention? That's called advertising and this is a site devoted to
mixing in paid placement with the voting public.

Why does this make it better than Digg / Reddit / Mixx / HN? I just don't get
it and have no inclination to try hard to understand it.

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thomasswift
I think it's a pretty cool idea, good luck with it.

Likes: I like when you X out of something it replaces the content, pretty
smooth.

Dislikes: the wording of the yep nope buttons, while it made me laugh because
a yep nope is a mullet reference, but your site seems to be fun but still
serious site(analytics) Maybe: Yea / Nay | Yes / No | Advertiser / Visitor

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mikkom
I went to your site and have no idea what it is. Some short "about" page would
be really helpful. Why is there a "buy now" button (that btw does nothing at
the moment - too much traffic?)

edit: I found how it works - link at the bottom. Would be very good idea to
link it on the top of the page somewhere.

I don't understand the concept for the visitor, why would I want to visit a
social news site that has easily manipulated voting system?

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hopeless
I've no idea what the site does. I think it needs a big (1.5-2") banner with
2-3 sentences/graphics at the top explaining the purpose and process of the
site. I just don't understand what it means to buy the xkcd:sleet story?

From reading the comments here it does sound interesting but such a
new/different/unusual site that it needs a lot of explanation.

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gills
It looks nice and behaves well, very clean. I couldn't immediately tell what
value I would derive from using your service -- eventually found 'How it
works' at the bottom. Maybe there's a way to make it painfully obvious for
people like me.

Using ul/li for your central list, instead of nested faceless spans, will make
it a little more accessible too.

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timae
I'm surprised that people are confused by this. It's seems straightforward to
me.

I purchased the top spot for my site for $5, but afterward I did some clicking
around and couldn't find it. After taking about 10 mins to write this post, I
went back to the site and it is there, however the logo didn't come through
(It was there in steps 3 and 4 of the adding process while in "preview" mode).
Could you look into that?

Overall, it could work, if it becomes a way for startups to show off their
webapp or blog and doesn't get infiltrated by garbage. However the downfall
might be the quality of the content. To get on the front page of digg, the
content has to be interesting; to get on the front page of your site, all you
need is $, which makes it easier on the publisher, but will make the content
less interesting to the viewer (which = less viewers).

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shawndrost
This site is broken. You had an idea for a business model for Digg -- a better
way to sell eyeballs, perhaps. But you don't have any eyeballs, and you don't
seem to have any way of attracting them.

Side note: I think the title of this site is a reference to a joke I've
enjoyed since I was 5: "What do you get when you cross an elephant with a
rhino?"

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gaika
Cool, that's exactly what I need, yet, even after skimming "how it works" page
I'm still not sure.

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mbuchanan
It looks good and I bet it's very useful... but i don't understand it either.

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vaksel
you should move the "how it works" link up top, because right now the whole
thing is very confusing and the how it works link is way on the bottom, in a
neutral color which you can barely see

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unalone
It looks nice. That's a good start.

I can't figure out what it is or why I should be interested. That's not good.
But at least you've got the aesthetic look down.

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grag
Not sure I understand either. Is this website supposed to be a destination
where users go to find good content / entertainment?

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nittwerp
What is the meaning of "Current" and "Previous" in the Statistics section?
Previous to what? Today? I'm kind of confused.

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mstefff
so it's analytics for a single page of content? why wouldn't i just use my
regular analytics?

i dont get it

~~~
len
the 'current' analytics are for the current content. the 'previous' analytics
are the sums for the spot (e.g. page 1, spot 1; page 1, spot 2; etc.) - per
the faq.

you have statistics to base your submission decision on before spending any
money.

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btw0
What's this? I can't figure out.

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tontoa4
I like the idea, just needs to be refined

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gojomo
I like the model of mixing fully disclosed/transparent paid placement with
another default noneconomic ranking. Goto.com won big with that and more
recently Stumbleupon.

The name Elephino is somewhat weak but might work _if_ you had the domain
'elephino.com'. I have a hard time imagining people telling their friends that
they visit 'el-eph-in-o-inc-dot-com', especially since all the Elephino
syllables have multiple plausible alternate spellings.

