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Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

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Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#61

Post by dabent »

hugh3 wrote: post #48
dabent wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://icanhascheezburger.com/ http://www.hotornot.com/

Those at least give you neverending variety. There are novel thousands of new variations on the lolcat theme every day, and no end to the slot-machine-like fun of rating people hot or not in the hope of eventually getting to one who is either particularly hot or hilariously not. But once you've posted in a sample of your own writing, gone "Hahaha, I write like Mario Puzo, hey guys, guess what?", I find it hard to ima…

That is true. There's a lack of stickiness to the original poster's app as it is. It might be interesting to see how other people's writing was rated.

The newsletter addition was a good idea. I have a feeling many "writers" would be upset to learn they wrote like Dan Brown, no matter how many novels he's sold. Possibly a "From Brown to Updike: How to Improve Your Writing" course.

The OP's idea is darn viral, however. I love the success he's had.

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#62

Post by kapranoff »

First, congratulations.

I think your first goal now should be encouraging users to return later.

I would definitely promise right on the results page that more writers would be added regularly and algorithms would be improved so that people had reasons to bookmark you or to subscribe to your twitter/facebook waiting for their favourite authors.

I would also make local pages for all writers you have. Link to Amazon in that place is unexpected.

You could also encourage showing off by enhancing badges. That could be percentages (e.g. I write like 7% of users) or cool portraits or even something like "I write like Stephen King - I could have written The Stand".

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#63

Post by mindcrime »

You might consider pinging somebody at Lulu (print-on-demand self-publishing company). They might be interested in partnering with you in some fashion... since they specialize in helping authors get published, there might be some synergy there; even if it were no more than a Lulu advertisement on your site. Other self-publishing outfits (CreateSpace, SmashWords, etc.) might have a similar interest.

Disclaimer: I'm a former Lulu employee and still like those guys a lot, which is why they came to mind first. :-)

Also, if you're interested and need any help making a contact there, feel free to email me. I still have a few connections left over there, I think.

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#64

Post by hugh3 »

theboos wrote: post #55
ComputerGuru wrote: post #38

I know you said you're not discussing the algorithm, but to me, the biggest proof of silliness (I won't say "nonsense") is that when I entered 7 different blog posts of mine, I got 6 different results.

My results were actually consistent. I pasted in parts of an unfinished novel four paragraphs at a time and I got Dan Brown each time.

Does that make you happy or sad?

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#65

Post by AmberShah »

jonafato wrote: post #3

How about then giving the user a list of works by that author via amazon? If the users really do want to read more of that writer's stuff, this might be a good way to get some affiliate business. You could possibly even point to specific works that they "write like". You might also take a look at the goodreads api ( http://www.goodreads.com/api ) for some possible social networking aspects? Maybe you could show peopl…

I second this just because the first thing I did was go search for books by that author on Amazon.

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#66

Post by pbhjpbhj »

dchest wrote: post #20
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I presume you mean cheques of money sent you from Amazon? If it's too much hassle to cash potentially huge affiliate checks then you're rich enough, give the site to someone else that wants more money. Seriously FB has 400Million active uniques. If you capture one-hundreth of a percent of those and then of those 1% convert and you make $1 on each conversion that's $400. Even if it took me a whole day to organise cash…

I'm in a new country (Montenegro), haven't got residence permit here yet, don't have a permanent address, and don't speak the local language to figure out how to cash checks. Anyway, I've added Amazon affiliate links now, maybe I'll cash out with gift certificates.

Perhaps you have a friend or family member in the US that would take the money and pay you ...

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#67

Post by nedwin »

dchest wrote: post #18
patrickmclaren wrote: post #16

Obviously this would be something that would mean a lot more work, but how about.. Tracking a users's blog feed, parsing each post and see how their writing style evolves over time? This would certainly increase the longevity of your app.

This is a great idea. I'll do this when I have time, thanks.

on that note checkout 750words.com. Basically you write 750 words a day and it analyses the text to tell you about what you have written - whether it's extroverted, self-centred, positive etc. These stats are then displayed with nice graphs.

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#68

Post by fragmede »

Depending on how well it's done, I could imagine 'niche' writing analysis doing alright. What 18th-century philosopher do you write like? What CS textbook writer do you write like? Which Doctor Who do you write like? Etc.

Re: Ask HN: What to do with this meme?

#69

Post by mirkules »

It would be interesting to see a comparison graph of other users. For example, I would be interested to see how many other people write like Vladimir Nabokov, and maybe even what the top 10 writers are.

Congratulations on your success!

P.S. You said you're in Montenegro but don't speak the language -- just remember "pivo" (beer) and "poshto?" (how much) and you'll be fine ;)

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