

Show HN: ChatVoting - American Idol-like voting for everyone - consultutah
http://ChatVoting.com

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consultutah
I've finally reached MVP stage for this and would really love to know what HN
thinks.

What do you think I should change on the landing page, or in the app?

It is built with Sinatra running on Heroku and uses Twilio for SMS services.

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revorad
Is there a way to try it without paying first? Or is there a demo video?

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consultutah
There isn't. A demo video is definitely on my roadmap. I'd love to find a way
to offer a free demo too, but I'm trying to bootstrap this and twilio charges
me for phone numbers and msgs.

Maybe I could allocate a few numbers and let people demo with one of those for
a little while.

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revorad
I understand it's hard to offer a free demo. But then a video is really
essential. I think patio11 offers a free demo on his Appointment Reminder
site, which also uses Twilio. Maybe you can ask him how much it costs to see
if it's affordable?

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gus_massa
Is it affordable to give a demo poll, which closes automatically when you get
5 votes?

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consultutah
The SMS msgs themselves are cheap, it is getting the numbers that might add
up. What I'm thinking is allocating a block of numbers, maybe 5-10 for now and
many more if/when this takes off and then letting you create a poll with one
of those. The interesting part will be not letting numbers be used in a close
enough time period that someone would skew someone else's poll results.

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Steve0
It's my impression that those voting things are a way to make money for the
company that initiates the voting. In your concept it's the other way around.

I'm curious who your customers will be.

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consultutah
My original thought was just conventions. If you are running a convention and
wanted to have a poll on which of the top finalists had the best booth, you
would use this.

But I staggered thinking that it could be used for about anything: Beauty
Pageants, chili cook offs, etc.

Flame-Bait: Jason Calacanis could use it to find the most popular startup at
the next LAUNCH.

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ninjastar99
You use the word "Lean" about 4 times on the page. Spell check! ;)

~~~
consultutah
Ha ha, that was in the template I bought from ThemeForest... I should have
noticed. :( Fixed.

