

Brad Feld created a Hacker News-esque site, Startup Revolution - jqueryin
http://hub.startuprev.com/

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alanctgardner2
Sorry, but no. While the content may be the same, the format is entirely the
opposite of what I read HN for. Even given the same quality of discussion and
links:

\- The thumbnails add nothing useful

\- Fewer headlines are visible without scrolling

\- Insipid 'social' functions showing me everything going on down the right
pane

I read Reddit and HN, but I read them for different reasons. I'm not looking
for a Reese's-esque solution, I would like my chocolate and peanut butter
decidedly separate.

~~~
ScottWhigham
It's answers like this that make me wish for the karma/comment score system to
be returned. I 100% agree - the "information density" is just digg-like and,
as a result, I'm out. But if I just upvote you, so what? Maybe it floats to
the top, maybe it doesn't. Who knows how many people agreed with you? You
might get 150 votes but no one will ever know that 150 people agreed with you.
And if I was the developer/Brad, I'd want to know that "150 people in my
target audience agreed with this" vs. "This is the top commment as voted on by
an unknown number of people".

~~~
alanctgardner2
Well, I appreciate your upvote ;)

More seriously, I think the tone of the comments on HN is not supposed to be
binary: we don't aim for solely critical or supportive feedback. We try to
improve things by offering suggestions. That my comment made it to the top
means my suggestions were widely viewed as useful, or at least my criticism
was accurate.

The magnitude of the negative sentiment isn't really important. It's the fact
that, if the creator values HN's input, he should accept suggestions more-or-
less from the top down, and weight them appropriately. If he scrolls to the
bottom to see some generic 'Good work man, way to hustle', he doesn't really
get it, does he?

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kmfrk
No disrespect to Brad, but just "Brad Feld" in the title as someone everyone
should know? I can see that he's an insider and all, I just have never managed
to hear much about him.

Should I be familiar with him?

The site looks great, though, although the white-to-pink contrast is pretty
bad. The more HN alternatives, the better.

~~~
colinsidoti
His reach is right up there with Fred Wilson IMO. He's a well respected guy in
the entrepreneur/investment community. He also always answers his wife's phone
calls, even in the middle of talks.

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kyt
I doubt Brad spent much time on this. If you notice, it's powered by
"SocialEngine", which got its seed funding from TechStars where Brad is a
mentor.

~~~
bdcravens
HN isn't driven by a product YC or PG sells. To me, that speaks volumes.

SR (gotta refer to it by an acronym you know) is powered by SE. If it could
handle HNish load, that would speak volumes about Social Engine, no?

Obviously there's a commercial interest (even if it doesn't drive decisions,
it's still there)

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pclark
Good grief that is a hideous website

~~~
alexbenzer
How can we make it better?

~~~
rdl
copy news.ycombinator.com. differentiate yourself (if you want) with content
(maybe geo-focused? hn might be comparatively weak on NYC, Boulder, Seattle,
Austin content?), and/or add actual features.

It's not like the community even cares about "pretty" design, they want
functional design, and HN is approximately as good as it will get. The things
to fix about HN are the non-reversible actions, annoying link-timeout due to
continuations (hint: don't use Arc, probably...), etc.

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alexbenzer
Hey guys, I'm with SocialEngine - we are helping Brad build this community.
First off, want to thank you all for the helpful feedback here.

\- We've toned down the colors. Look better? \- Sounds like you guys feel that
the right-side gutter isn't serving a good purpose? Should we just ditch that?
\- We are going to tone down the BigDoor plugin.

This is still, at its core, an experiment. It definitely isn't perfect yet -
the underlying platform is only 2 months old - so your feedback is really
helping us... please keep it coming!

~~~
trendspotter
As I wrote here (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4872853>) please fix the
issue of enabling the user to edit posts after submission (in a time frame
like 1 hour or 1 day). And enable users to delete their own submissions.

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Bjorkbat
A superficial issue I'm sure, but the abundance of pink is somewhat offensive
to the eyes, a lot of things really need to be toned down.

But content is what matters, and the content seems alright.

~~~
Vivtek
One of those few situations where color-blindness pays off, I guess.

Thanks, Mom!

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andygcook
Found two bugs in the sign up and took me 5 tries to get through the form:

1\. The about me field and uploaded image input reset themselves whenever your
form is invalid.

2\. When signing up with Twitter, the form doesn't register that your image is
already set via Twitter and forces the user to upload one locally.

~~~
trendspotter
I was able to sign-up via Twitter without that or any problem.

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trendspotter
So far Startup Revolution is crap. I was neither able to edit my submission
there (title,description) after posting, nor was I able to delete my own
submission. And when posting the same link again, it wasn't detected as a
duplicate and organized in such a way.

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jqueryin
For those interested, there's also a post on Tech Cocktail describing Brad's
vision for the community:

<http://tech.co/brad-feld-startup-revolution-hub-2012-12>

~~~
Udo
" _The audience is different – I’m focused on entrepreneurs who want to engage
in discussions about creating the companies and startup communities, having an
awesome life, and exploring better ways to be effective as entrepreneurs,”
Feld tells Tech Cocktail. “I’m less interested in all the current tech news /
issues discussions._ "

Sounds like they are going to concentrate on what I would characterize as
fluff stories. I realize those are important to a lot of people, but some day
I would really like to discover a friendly hacker community where the focus is
on, well, hacking and making things.

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orangethirty
I'm having a hard time understanding how that website is any different from
reddit.com/r/startups. Sure, it looks different, but the content is the same.
The reason I visit HN is for the people commenting here, not the actual posts.
Even the simplest thread can spark an interesting discussion from physics to
business. I fail to see how that site will try to build such atmosphere. The
desgin is also too busy, looks like a wordpress blog with one too many plug-
ins.

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theshadow
This is slightly offtopic but there used to be a clone of Hacker News that
someone created. It was HN without all the startup stuff, instead focusing on
hardcore technical topics. I lost the bookmark a while ago and have never
found it again. If anyone has a link, it will be greatly appreciated!

~~~
billturner
Was it this? <https://lobste.rs/>

~~~
sjmulder
That’s really interesting, thanks. Looks like I’ll be frequenting that one.

By the way, the name reminded me of the uploaded lobsters from Stross’
Accelerando.

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justhw
No. I hate x ways to do y articles (lists). Hate social media expert-esque
posts.

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benhebert
I don't know that I would have lead with "Brad Feld" while he's certainly a
respected entrepreneur it takes away from the news-esque site that wants me to
earn rewards. No thanks.

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dudurocha
For some odd reason, www.about.me/myusername is not a valid webpage. I'm a bit
pissed with the sign up. Third time in a row I can't sign in.

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mrgreenfur
Why are there "rewards" and why can't I register?

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alexbenzer
What problem are you having with registration?

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tzaman
While I think HN could use some UX improvements, this attempt adds too much
noise while adding little value.

~~~
greyboy
Also, confusingly (after browsing HN), clicking the link title on the home
page brings you to the 'Comments' page (just as clicking '# comments' will).
Then, on that page, click the title takes you to the actual article/page.

Not quite what I'm used to.

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chris_l
Can't stand that pink for very long :(

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robot
A "pink" revolution?

