

Show HN: My "November Startup Sprint" Project - Create and Share Lists - dclaysmith
http://www.rankoro.us

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eggbrain
There are two thoughts I had as I browsed the site, and perhaps I missed
something, so feel free to correct me.

1) The biggest question I had as a potential user was "why should I care what
x had to say about y"? I'd most likely not care about what some random user
had to say about their top 5 Chick Flicks, but I would like to see the general
statistics for all users who had the same list. That part confused me as
well.. There seems to be a "top list" for chick flicks:
[http://www.rankoro.us/top-chick-flicks/?&t=28](http://www.rankoro.us/top-
chick-flicks/?&t=28), but I don't how how that list came to be: the other
users who had the same list didn't share several movies in common, for
example, so I'm left to believe it was arbitrarily picked!

Along these same lines, if I was interested in what a user had to say about
their ranking of chick flicks, I'd want to know why, and none of these lists
seem to let you give a reason why you thought "Sweet Home Alabama" was better
than "Blue Crush". Even if it was basic, like a user being able to select a
checklist of features for a movie (it was "thrilling", "funny","tropical")
might give me a good idea if I might like it as well.

2) It looks like you add Amazon links as a potential revenue model, but you
need to be smart about where to put the links . I probably will not be able to
find a "Swiss and Mushroom Hamburger" on Amazon.

~~~
dclaysmith
Thanks. Item #1 is definitely the biggest problem I faced (am facing).

Your view is really limited to those lists and comments provided by your
network so you won't really have to worry about what total strangers say about
things. (When you log in, you have a "Feed" of your networks recent lists and
comments). This raises problem problem #1 tho - there isn't instant utility
for 'pioneers'.

There is a "Top List" which is an aggregate of all of the lists, in the case
of "Top 5 Chick Flicks" there just isn't enough data to be of use (it's the
average of 2 lists). This will change in time and will lead to pretty good
data.

You said "I'd want to know why, and none of these lists seem to let you give a
reason". This is very high on the feature list. Just a short blurb or
justification on a per-item basis.

2) I recently added a "What is this list about?" pop up (you specify Movies,
Music, Food, People, etc from a select. This meta data is going to allow me to
target affiliate links better (and omit them in the case of hamburgers, etc).

Thanks for the feedback.

------
Udo
I think it's a great idea, and the site looks very refined. Just some quick
things off the top of my head:

I used the inviting big text box on top of the page right away, only to get a
"please register" message. That was disappointing. I believe you should show
that box only when it's actually working for a user. Better yet, allow people
to create some content before they have to register. Get them invested through
a little bit of interaction, then ask them to register. For example, allow
them to make a complete top 5 entry first. Then, when the time comes for the
"share" part of the process, ask for their account.

The account registration process itself is pretty standard, I believe this
will hamper your adoption rate. Provide an OpenID, Facebook, Google and/or
Twitter login option instead of or in addition to the traditional email-
password combo. Having to choose a username is tedious, so I would suggest
either getting rid of this (which may not be feasible) or at least putting
this part off until the user has opened their account. In a word: make signing
up easier, if possible, reduce it to one click.

~~~
dclaysmith
You are not the first person to bring up the desire to create a list before
you register. Looks like I have my next programming task.

Would like to add in Facebook/Twitter as log in options but I'll definitely
need a username and really want the email address and I dislike granting email
rights on Facebook to other apps. My thought was just to make a super short
signup form and avoid it. Whatever reduces friction tho so I'll definitely
look into it again.

Thanks.

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dclaysmith
Founder here. I'd love to hear any feedback you might have on www.rankoro.us
-- my nights and weekends project that started as a "November Startup Sprint"
project and is just now (atleast nearly) ready to show. The idea is to
cultivate conversations around Top 5 lists (evenually polls, etc.) Sort of a
"Quora for the rest of us" that isn't as intellectual and doesn't rely on such
a smart pool of people "answering" to be of use. Hopefully it'll be a bit of
fun for people.

Any thoughts on what would make it more engaging, problems, or bugs would
really be really helpful.

------
jk215
Pretty cool! At first I found myself wandering aimlessly looking for a "browse
lists" link to get a better idea of what kind of lists people were posting.
The only one I found was all the way in the footer. Also I would maybe give
some examples of lists under the main input box where it says "My top 5
___________ are". Maybe under it put (ex. beers, movies, etc..) just to make
it clear.

~~~
dclaysmith
Good ideas. Getting new visitors involved is definitely the challege (but have
got some feedback today that has given me some ideas). I think that the shared
lists/tweets/invites are going to be the most effective way it'll spread (ex.
Your friend John made his Top Albums of 2011 list, what are yours). Some of
those features are in place some aren't.

Like the idea of some example lists close to the actual list form.

Thanks.

------
kliao
How do you combine different lists for the same category?

~~~
dclaysmith
Can you explain? Categories are going to evolve. If two people make 'my top 5
action movies' (and the category is 'movies') then they in a way grouped
together. If you go to any list page you see comments for those people in your
network about that 'top 5'. You can also click on a friends picture to see
what their list is.

~~~
kliao
Sorry, I cannot view the site right now, because it is blocked. But, I was
wondering how you combine several users' lists. For example, say there are
action movies labeled A,B, ..., Z. Suppose 3 users have ranked action movies.
Their lists are A-B-C-D-E, Z-A-B-C-D, and F-A-B-C-D. How do you combine those
3 lists to form a master list? I've looked into this before and was just
curious what method you decided to use and why.

~~~
dclaysmith
Gotcha. For now a simple COUNT of the items, GROUPED by top 5 ORDERED DESC.
that works well if there are several lists. I think i'll eventually weight
#1's higher then #5's to make it more accurate.

