

Show HN: Phrot, a more social way of blogging. - Stevenup7002
http://phrot.com/

======
dools
Sexually suggestive names notwithstanding, why don't you make this a blog
aggregation platform?

Almost every blog in the world has RSS - why not make it "social RSS"?

I mean, there are already blogs around and many people put ads on their blogs
and post links to reddit and HN and get an audience and whatnot.

What I'd like to be able to do is come to Phrot and submit a link to
workingsoftware.com.au/rss and know that whenever I post a blog entry it'll go
on the home page for people to see. Tagging would obviously be a good way to
automate the categorisation, people could upvote and comment just as you have
now and Phrot would become another source of "reactions" on the internet
through backtype so I would still have that conversation hosted on my blog.

The people should be able to favourite bloggers they like, and plug the feed
from Phrot into their favourite RSS reader, and share their favourites and
have friends and all that sort of malarky that goes along with the most
ridiculous internet buzzword of all time (social).

But forcing me to blog _in_ Phrot won't work for me.

Oh, and while you're solving all my problems, another thing I've always wanted
was a way to see what _people i know_ or care about are saying - not a list of
massive comments on a blog but just like a chat room that spans the entire
internet (not sure if Disqus already does this - if they do it's not
particularly obvious but they sure as hell should I reckon!).

~~~
Stevenup7002
Thanks for your feedback.

------
throwaway4
As a gay guy, I've got to say that "Phrot" is the worst name imaginable.

[NSFW] <http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=frot>

~~~
Stevenup7002
Oh dear, thanks for pointing that out. I've never heard that term used in
conversation though, is it common?

~~~
socialmediaking
Well it's not the worst thing ever...I mean the website is kind of about
people rubbing their stories with other people's stories, and I'm sure it will
cause a lot of excitement...

~~~
Stevenup7002
That's an... interesting way to put it, but yeah, I guess we can use that as
an excuse if anyone brings it up ;).

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itsnotvalid
Kind of look like reddit/hn or whatever, only now they also host your blog
(and for people who want to earn a little money via ads, that won't cut).

Wondering if they would also add the "readability" button, who get the shares
of those up-votes?

So just as the recent posts about hacker news and how to solve them
([http://al3x.net/2011/02/22/solving-the-hacker-news-
problem.h...](http://al3x.net/2011/02/22/solving-the-hacker-news-
problem.html), hn:<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2252152>) it seems that
there are a few more cases where people would like to make new things with to
solve them once and for all.

For this case, I wonder if there are any tagging system implemented to sort,
the topics are just too board.

~~~
Stevenup7002
Thanks for your feedback, sure, if you want ads on your content then by all
means use something like wordpress for that, we may offer some revenue sharing
model in the future though. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by a
readability button, could you elaborate?

A tagging system is a pretty good idea, we will definitely consider
implementing something like that.

~~~
itsnotvalid
<http://www.readability.com>

They offer a revenue sharing model for subscribed users.

------
cabalamat
The confirmation email the app sent me went into Gmail's spam folder -- maybe
this is related to the domain name you're using?

AIUI, the idea is that people's friends will also be on phrot so that when
somone writes an entry, their friends will see it. If this is the case, do you
plan to add friending/following options?

Out of interest, what's it written in?

~~~
Stevenup7002
Hmm that's odd, gmail hasn't given us problems before, as anyone else had this
issue?

We don't have plans to add friending/following options at the moment, but it's
certainly a possibility in the future. The site is written in PHP with a MySQL
backend.

------
makeee
What's the advantage of Phrot over competing blogging platforms?

~~~
Stevenup7002
When you set up a blog on a traditional platform like Wordpress with the
intent of looking for feedback on an idea, to share a story or just to start a
conversation, or even just to share an idea with a large amount of people,
there's not really any immediate way to do it, unless you market your blog and
actively advertise it to get readers, and if you want to keep the interest of
those readers, you generally have to commit yourself to your blog.

A lot of people just want to write something without having to spend time
marketing it. It doesn't make sense, why would you want to do that, when all
you want to do is write one or two blog posts in a year? Phrot is a very
community centric site to blog with. It's designed for the person that wants
to write about something, and wants it to be read, but doesn't want to have to
go through all the hassle of promoting it.

This isn't designed to replace other blogging platforms like wordpress, just
to provide a more suitable alternative for people who want to do things a bit
differently. I hope this answers your question :).

~~~
jamesjyu
Just to play devil's advocate here: let's say Phrot takes off and becomes
wildly popular. Then, isn't it harder to get attention for your posts, since
it'll be lost in the crowd? Basically, then you're back to having to market
your blog posts heavily on Phrot to get it notice, which is the original
problem Phrot is trying to attack.

At a higher level, I disagree with your point that you can get away without
the "hassle" of promoting your content. You'll always have to do some kind of
promotion of your content, even if it's really good. And, if it's bad, no
amount of promotion will get it anywhere.

IMHO, the main point I'm driving at is that there is no "free lunch". You'll
always have to promote your content in order to gain a followship. It's just a
fact of the web.

~~~
Stevenup7002
If it does take off, I'd be happy to begin subdividing the site into
categories in order to help it scale better. By subdividing, there would
always be a manageable stream of content within those categories for
discovery.

Regarding your point about this not completely eliminating the promotional
aspect of gaining a followship, that's not what Phrot is ultimately about. I
agree if you really want a followship, you do have to work hard to build it
up, and if you're publishing content on a daily basis, that's not what Phrot
is for, you can use a wordpress blog or something similar for that. I should
also make it clear that we're all about promoting and rewarding good content
that wouldn't otherwise be discovered, not giving a chance in the spotlight to
everything that gets submitted regardless of how good or bad it is.

------
cabalamat
I suggest that on your introductory video, you remove the music. It's
distracting, and made it a lot harder for me to understand what you were
saying.

~~~
Stevenup7002
Sorry to hear that, we didn't think adding music would cause any problems,
thanks for the suggestion.

------
Cpsgames
I like the idea, and really hope this takes off.

~~~
chopsueyar
You're talking about the blogging platform, right?

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geekytenny
Use javascript to correct '1 comments' like it is done on this site.

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ibdknox
How is this any different than what hacker news essentially is now?

~~~
Stevenup7002
This is a blogging platform, not a "hacker-news-like" site.

