

Ask YC: Kingmaker- Our Political Game Site - ALee
http://kingmaker.politico.com

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ALee
We launched this product with Politico (our media partner) a couple weeks ago,
and we wanted to get YC opinion on it. Think office pools for the presidential
primaries and the winners earn Amazon.com gift certificates and a trip to the
White House Correspondent's Dinner.

This product was not our YC submission because we had already inked the deal
before submission.

What do you think of the app and the market? Be honest, we want criticism more
than anything. We've focused on political games, but found that political
consumers are huge news hounds (see huffingtonpost and drudgereport). Should
we spin off as stand-alone site and not be a vendor with other internet media?

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davidw
Nice! I think politics is a smart thing to get into in terms of sites. It's
easy to get people hooked, has broad appeal, and you have a bunch of new
content all the time in terms of what's going on, beyond just the user
generated stuff.

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daniel-cussen
Talking about the ease of use so much feels like you're insulting the user's
intelligence. If you just make it easy to use and don't mention it, maybe the
user will feel like a genius.

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ALee
Yeah, that's not me. It's the video blogger from the Politico.

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mig
There is no 'Sign up' next to the login. Are you guys still in private
beta/alpha? I am using flock 1.0.5.

~~~
ALee
Users just click Play Now. They don't need to sign in to make their initial
predictions. We only make registration occur until absolutely necessary so we
can save the prediction.

