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Now I see Yahoo cricket is also coming with Predictopus (more sophisticated with huge prizes)
Not sure if this is good or bad for my app. Looking forward to HN community for advice.
"At Viaweb one of our rules of thumb was run upstairs. Suppose you are a little, nimble guy being chased by a big, fat, bully. You open a door and find yourself in a staircase. Do you go up or down? I say up. The bully can probably run downstairs as fast as you can. Going upstairs his bulk will be more of a disadvantage. Running upstairs is hard for you but even harder for him.
What this meant in practice was that we deliberately sought hard problems. If there were two features we could add to our software, both equally valuable in proportion to their difficulty, we'd always take the harder one."
In addition, I would say: (1) provide extremely good customer relations (any post submitted to your site blog or email sent is answered in half an hour max) and (2) use your personal network, Yahoo is not a person, so it doesn't have any friends, you do. Use them and their friends.
An advantage you have is people who are already invested in your site. If they have a good ranking going or some friends on the site they won't be very interested in packing up and going elsewhere. You could try and make the site as viral as possible (wall integration, send to a friend, etc) to try and snowball your users into more users.
Secondly, you can use it as a real marketing opportunity. What I mean is, with a product from Yahoo, there's going to be all sorts of press and many cricket fans talking about their product. That's your cue to show up (without being spammy), and get the word out about yourself. You could get some media attention at the very least, as well as word of mouth (people talking about Predictopus will be told by their friends about doosracricket).
An advantage you have is people who are already invested in your site. If they have a good ranking going or some friends on the site they won't be very interested in packing up and going elsewhere. You could try and make the site as viral as possible (wall integration, send to a friend, etc) to try and snowball your users into more users.
I am also counting on it but the rewards Yahoo is providing to the winners is huge and will draw lots of attention.
Your new homepage design is a lot better than your first. Get someone to edit your copy. "Compete with friends or world" should be "Compete with friends or the world". A professional copywriter will probably write something like "Challenge your friends!".
Yahoo Predictopus gives users 1000 points to start with. I see most people on your leaderboard have 0. Give them 10,000 each.
Your target market is Indians. Use Hindi slang words where it's appropriate (without offending the south Indians!). I doubt Yahoo will do that. Your name is a good example.