
Ask YC: Need feedback on my startup - iamwil
http://www.mobtropolis.com
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mechanical_fish
I think the site has real potential for fun, but it needs more focus. It's too
vague right now. I couldn't really understand what it was for by looking at
the front page _or_ the help page, and that's bad.

Consider this tag line:

"Mobtropolis helps you find interesting life experiences, document them, and
show them." [1]

 _Life experiences_ is a fuzzy and abstract phrase -- "challenges" or "unusual
experiences" would be better, and a specific mental image like "strange foods"
or "something you've never done before" would be better still. _Document_ is
an abstract phrase -- what you really want to say is "describe" or
"photograph".

The help page... is not much help, I'm afraid:

"Mobtropolis is a tool to find, map, and share interesting experiences in the
local world around you through peer pressure and simple game mechanics."

 _Peer pressure_ and _game mechanics_? This sounds like an abstract from an
academic sociology paper. People who aren't game designers don't want to hear
about _game mechanics_ , they want to play games!

Compare this to a (hypothetical) Flickr tag line: "Take a bunch of pictures
and share them with the world." Or the Twitter tag line: "What are you doing?"

Your own introduction right here on news.yc is a vast improvement over the
site itself: "An easy way to think of it is as a photo scavenger hunt or photo
dare site." Yes, that's absolutely true, and your site should _say_ that. Just
sticking the words "photo scavenger hunt" on the home page would improve it
tremendously.

Or something like this: "Challenge yourself. Take photos. Then challenge
others." (Your "help" page, or the "about this site" box on one side of the
home page, can go on to expand this tag line into a three-step numbered list
-- kind of like the help page does now with its three sections, except that I
would explicitly _number_ the steps. You want to teach people that _doing all
three steps in order_ is what the game is all about.)

[1] Note: I fixed this English up a bit. :)

~~~
davidw
Here's a simple tagline: "Mobtropolis - try something new today".

Oops, that seems to be the tagline of a big grocery chain in the UK. Maybe I
should be in advertising:-) Maybe you can work from it and create something
similar that creates that idea. I think what I like about the site is it
encourages you to try things that are readily available (well, to some people
in some places at least), but you might not have considered before. I could
see looking at that from time to time.

~~~
iamwil
Huzzah! I'm glad that part came across (albeit with difficulty). This
originally came about because I felt like I was stuck in the office chair all
day, and all any of my friends ever could think of to do after work was eat at
a restaurant, watch a movie, or go to a bar.

There's lots of interesting things to do in the world, from the extravagant to
the everyday that you might pass over. But it's hard to be spontaneous on the
fly, so having something like this would help.

Huh, yes, you all should work in advertising. The taglines that you came up
with are vastly better than mine.

~~~
hollerith
it is probably longer than a tagline, but it would have got the point across
to me if near the top of the home page it had said, "The purpose of this web
site is to coax you to have new experiences, and perhaps to take pictures as
proof."

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iamwil
Hi all, I've been working on my startup, Mobtropolis. It's a service that
helps you find, record, and share interesting experiences in the local world
around you. An easy way to think of it is as a photo scavenger hunt or photo
dare site.

It uses social news and game mechanics to help coax you to experience the
world and take pictures as proof. Photos can be submitted through your camera
phone or through the web from your digital camera.

It's at a point where I would like some feedback from YCers, so any feedback
or insight (positive or negative) is welcome, so I can keep improving it. And
if you know of other specific groups of people that would find it useful or
fun, please let me know. Thanks. :)

~~~
whacked_new
womper.com?

~~~
iamwil
thanks for the heads up. It's some validation, at least.

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davidw
I would put something else in place of the first two, "make out with a
celebrity" and "pick your friends nose". They aren't very compelling in terms
of the site's content if you're trying to attract users.

It's kind of a cool idea though.

~~~
iamwil
Thanks. As with any community orientated site, while I can reject submissions,
I can't change what they submit. I've had submissions for "hug a policeman"
and "watch nancy drew in the theaters alone" Despite that, there are
interesting ones, like "fire a weapon", "eat ootoro sushi", "drink an obscure
soft drink"

What kinds of things would you consider more compelling?

~~~
NoBSWebDesign
Of course the obvious solution here is to sort them differently. You don't
have to reject anything. Just sort the front page by popularity instead of
"hotness" and give a link to recently popular. (on a side note, picking
someone else's nose is listed 3 different times in the first two pages with
the same photo). Or, you could make the top of the page a "Most Popular of All
Time" box and the start listing the "hot" ones under that.

Your first thought may be that many of the social news sites sort by recent
activity by default. And this is true, but they also have users that check
back several times a day. Your site, while interesting and promising, probably
will not have that kind of user. Maybe once a week or even once a day.

Or another possibility is what I did on my site (ratemystudentrental.com).
Sort by what is most useful to first time visitors, but then once the user
logs in, make the home page sort by recent activity.

Also, while I do think this is a pretty cool idea, I have two other
criticisms.

1) The design leaves much to be desired. I thought I had been redirected to
some static placeholder page, or maybe some subdomain of your blog when I
first clicked the link. This is also partially due to the fact that your
homepage redirects to mobtropolis.com/scenes/hot, instead of just giving me
mobtropolis.com.

2) This would be way more freakin' sweet if it integrated with Facebook. You
could have an app that pull my "adventure/dare" pictures into my Facebook
profile. You could also allow users to determine the difficulty of each
challenge and give awards to users who compile the most difficulty/popularity
points by proving they've accomplished those challenges with photos.

~~~
iamwil
I had originally thought that as volume grew, it would catch up to update the
front page more often, even if a single individual checked it less often than
social news. But when you put it that way, you're right that the frequency of
visits changes what should be on the front page.

1) I'll fix that. 2) Dutifully noted. You'll be the first to know.

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rokhayakebe
verdict. the idea is good, but i think you can improve your description and
make it more interesting. the second improvement is the layout. just by having
another digg layout you are putting yourself in a "us-too" category. an
interesting layout would be to have stories placed randownly as squares (like
modules) and instead of having them placed from top to bottom you could be
creative and increase/dedrease the font size of the letters as it gets
more/less votes. don't require registration (maybe you don't) .

~~~
iamwil
I had briefly entertained the notion of organizing it spatially, rather than
linearly, but threw it out as being a bell and whistle. I'll think about it
some more. I've tried to keep as much out in the open as possible, but it's
generally tough to tie an action to no one if you want to do something with it
later. Maybe OpenID will help in this regard. Have to look into it.

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apgwoz
I like the idea. It's very similar to 43things, except for it's not goal
oriented. However, you might get some ideas from checking out 43things. I
think they've been pretty successful...

~~~
iamwil
Thanks.

Yes, I was a user for a while, but I found it a bit lacking in some regards.
While it has a good community to encourage you and cheer you on, there isn't a
sense of urgency to do things nor an easy way to share with people where to go
about doing it.

Mobtropolis can geolocate photos and scenes, so once someone has done
something and posted it, you can see where most people have done it. Gives a
good clue as to where to go do it.

~~~
apgwoz
I've always thought there was something lacking in 43things, and I think
Mobtropolis is and will be better.

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wastedbrains
I think it is interesting good luck with the site. I think having tags so you
could filter to experience you are interested in would be good. Like sports,
travel, relationships or whatever. Then if I know I don't care about say
sports, I could more easily find things I am looking for.

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hugh
I'm confused by the distinction between "scenes" and "safaris". Personally I'd
like it if everything were called a safari, cuz going on a safari sounds like
much more fun than... making a scene.

Oh, and how about a "random challenge" link?

~~~
iamwil
That is partially historic. The name scenes comes from the phrase "mob scene"
(I didn't know what else to call it) When I was first working it out in my
head, I wanted something where people can do the same thing at the same time
in the same place (like a mob). But as it evolved, each scene didn't have to
be time and place specific.

A safari came later. I wanted to group scenes together like a list, or trail
that I can check off as I completed it, or that others can complete as a
walking tour since scenes can be location specific. As you can see, safaris
are still less mature than other parts of the site. I'll have to do more work
to make the two more distinguishable.

What's a "random challenge link"? You click on it, and every time, you see a
different scene?

~~~
hugh
Random challenge -- yes, exactly. I'm thinking it would be good for people who
are really bored. Also, it's good for new users who are trying to get an idea
of what kind of things are on the site.

Terminology probably does need work, I think the history is holding it back a
bit... as you can see I'm calling your things "challenges" or "things" because
"scenes" just doesn't work for me.

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xirium
I like it. It encourages people to participate in something active, or at
least fulfilling.

I'd definitely organise stuff geographically. I can bake a cake anywhere but I
can only visit an attraction if I'm in that part of the world.

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kajecounterhack
A little too random. My first reaction (without realizing what it was) -- went
to the site, read a few of the "interesting" things that people
recommended...and left. Hmm.

~~~
iamwil
What would make it gel more for you without the benefit of this forum? Themes?
A blurb? Testimonials?

~~~
kajecounterhack
no I think its just the overall design. Perhaps the opening page shouldn't be
a blatant "here are some cool things you can do" -- rather if you see flickr
or twitter or facebook's front page, its usually an "About" sort of thing or
login, y'know?

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utnick
make it look more like iminlikewithyou, less like my physics303k homepage

definitly needs more flash, bigger pictures, better graphics, make people want
to stay around and browse people and their dares and whatnot. I didn't really
look around enough but if u dont have flickr and twitter integration, get it
done

~~~
iamwil
Yeah, I have to admit graphic design is lacking, though I've just been doing
what's passable.

I can see how flickr integration would be a boon. How does twitter figure into
it? As far as I can tell, you can't post pictures in a twit.

~~~
sammyo
I thought the graphics were fine, but I was confused about the purpose at
first. Seed it with a wide range of interesting stuff, I almost found
something interesting (not the armpit licking) and the map mashup was good,
but wrong city for tonight. I'd work on seeding, filtering and showing
connections before I'd worry about the 'sheen'.

Hmm, a points system for new things, how cool/hard/prestigous and and points
for doing one. But then be careful to moderate dangerous options. Hmmm, yea,
lost an arm, but whoa I got a lot of points... Don't wanna see that comment in
your forum, eh?

~~~
iamwil
Yes, I worried about that at first. Someone's going to post something like
"steal a cop car", and some fool's going to try to do it.

I'll do more work on the things you suggested, especially something more local
for everyone. Thanks.

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shafqat
Hey, I like it! Creative, wacky, something different. Good luck! Don't get how
the name is related though...

~~~
iamwil
Originally, it came from the idea that people were doing the same things at
the same time, like a mob scene. So, "mobs in the city" became mobtropolis.

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bayareaguy
I didn't get what the vote thing does. At least it didn't have any effect for
me.

