

ASK HN: Thank you messages are lost in the cloud? - erkany

We believe that thank you messages are lost in the cloud and people are not getting enough recognition for their contributions on the internet. We plan to solve this problem by developing a "thank you button" ( similar to FB like ) which will be embedded under the blog posts and other places like forums, social media sites etc. The button will collect some meta data like the post URL,Title etc. and users will be able to submit an optional thank you note with optional tags.<p>People will have a thank you score and a profile page with a "thank you feed" which links back to their contributions.<p>How does it sound?
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CanBug4AnyCode
First a question: Do you also think to categorize/tag the posts (give user the
opportunity to choose the tags) (eg: the Q&A section in linkedin)?

Use case: If there are categories, you can (optionally) show user's strengths
in the profile page. (eg: user has posts under "DIY stuff", "cooking",
"gadgets", "coding" ....)

With that profile, I also would like to see the average thank-rate of the
user, and see his other most thanked posts that might interest me.

Ranking: I'm not sure about the ranking, but you may consider to provide also
"top" lists for the categories, so I can also the most appreciated posts of a
domain/category of my interest

Finally: If there would be a way to see the "top" lists, there also should be
a way to prevent abuses by bots/automation etc

There are many other ideas that might be linked to yours, it's worth to give
it a try :)

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taha_bayrak
Categorization: yes, we do think to give user the opportunity to tag its
post/thank you message. We're also planning to create an 'auto-tagging'
mechanism based on the type of page that our 'thank-you' button is placed.

Ranking: Yes, we will provide "top" lists for the categories. But the ranking
algorithm may include other variables than the "# of thanks" to make it more
accurate.

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sixtofour
It sounds interesting, but how would a Thank You be different from or better
than a re-tweet and similar actions?

~~~
erkany
thank you for the feedback. Fb-Like and Re-tweet promotes the post itself
rather than the author. ( Of course it links back to author profile or blog
post but not directly ). In our system "thank you" messages will be linked to
author which will accumulate a score and will help indicate the influence of
the author. In other words the user will be in the center vs the content.

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reecepacheco
sounds pretty good

i like that it's based around 'karma' in some sense

not sure where it goes or the best way to get adoption, but generally feel
that internet denizens are pretty 'thankful' people (at least here in NYC) and
it could be worthwhile regardless of biz opps. my $.02

~~~
erkany
Thank you Reece,

Adoption is the key. Lets see if NYC people are indeed 'thankful' :)

