By the way, I have an idea for you as to how you can differenciate yourself. This idea will seem silly, but it's something I've wanted for a long time.
I use ask.metafilter.com. I'm a daily user. What is really the worst thing about it? There is no sense of community. The site forces you to stay relevant to the question, and you cannot interact with the users directly. You cannot go offtopic, even though many questions just BEG to go offtopic. Think of how usenet used to be. After a while, you knew all the regulars, you knew the personalities, etc. ask.metafilter does not have this because no real discussion is allowed, just answers to the question.
Of course, it's clear why they do this. If you allowed discussion, the answers will become irrelevant.
I have an idea how to solve this problem:
Make each user have a personal "space", "blog", "diary", "miniblog", "question area", "twitter" or whatever you want to call it. When an answer goes off topic, it's moved to the personal area of the user. There, the person can rave and rant as he wishes, and the threads can go in any direction he wants. People can also cross link their answers on frontpage items into their personal area.
This is going to unfocus your site, but you will create a REAL community. The frontpage Q&A will be just as relevant, but behind scenes, there will be a lot of general chatting going on.
A bit like the diaries of K5 or the journals of Slashdot.
Do so, and you'll have a winner. A BIG site. Don't do so and in 6 months, you'll have Alexa of 60.000 and having $700 a month.
And when you get big with this idea, don't forget to send the check to maximus klein at gmail.
And by the way, another idea you should follow up on: Occasionally, people post these really interesting questions about breaking up with their boyfriend or something. WE ALL want to know how it goes on. What happened next!? But it never comes, because we lose track of the question. One should have this question as a sort of miniblog or so, so people can post updates, and the interested stay subscribed to the blog. People get notifications that an update or so has been posted.
This is gold I'm giving you here. If you don't get it yet, someday, someone will, and that person will have a huge site.
The core philosophy I am pushing here is that you should not disassociate the person from the question. Human life is all about social interaction. Metafilter kills the social interaction. You should weave it in. Each question should have the capacity to be a mini story, leading to further questions and so on, till you have an interwoven mesh of question and answer, cliques and groups, and real friendships developing on the site. Mirror humanity where you want people to flock to.
I use ask.metafilter.com. I'm a daily user. What is really the worst thing about it? There is no sense of community. The site forces you to stay relevant to the question, and you cannot interact with the users directly. You cannot go offtopic, even though many questions just BEG to go offtopic. Think of how usenet used to be. After a while, you knew all the regulars, you knew the personalities, etc. ask.metafilter does not have this because no real discussion is allowed, just answers to the question.
Of course, it's clear why they do this. If you allowed discussion, the answers will become irrelevant.
I have an idea how to solve this problem:
Make each user have a personal "space", "blog", "diary", "miniblog", "question area", "twitter" or whatever you want to call it. When an answer goes off topic, it's moved to the personal area of the user. There, the person can rave and rant as he wishes, and the threads can go in any direction he wants. People can also cross link their answers on frontpage items into their personal area.
This is going to unfocus your site, but you will create a REAL community. The frontpage Q&A will be just as relevant, but behind scenes, there will be a lot of general chatting going on.
A bit like the diaries of K5 or the journals of Slashdot.
Do so, and you'll have a winner. A BIG site. Don't do so and in 6 months, you'll have Alexa of 60.000 and having $700 a month.
And when you get big with this idea, don't forget to send the check to maximus klein at gmail.