Comment by root_axis
3 years ago
Congrats on the hard work, and the idea is fine, but the problem is that tech like this is a cheap commodity in a massively oversaturated space, and without a hook that makes the platform exceptional (innovative/clever/beautiful design, unique aggregation features, inherently interesting content, reimagined user/content/moderation dynamics etc etc), this kind of thing is dead in the water because it lacks a network effect. Add in the upfront subscription model and failure to launch is basically assured.
When I visit the root domain I shouldn't be greeted with a marketing splash page, you need interesting content in the user's face right away, entice their curiosity and drive the user to explore the site... even as a fellow developer, my first instinct is to abandon the page as soon as I'm greeted with the cliche startup marketing page. Consider the user experience when I visit reddit.com or news.ycombinator.com or any other link aggregation competitor. What you have now is a tech demo, not a platform. Sorry if that's a little harsh, but I mean well! Good luck!
Mostly agree. The screenshot in the top right looks good, like professional app I might actually use. But I want to actually browse the site and check it out without first slogging through a registration process. If it’s free to view/browse anyway, then enable doing that without registering. Register and pay if you want to post.
Edit: You can browse without registering after all, here’s the link: https://non.io/#all (didn’t see it on the landing page or OP post).
Oof, I clicked one of those posts and immediately lost all back-button functionality to an endless stream of history events.
I tried right clicking to open the link in a new tab, and found I couldn't. What is it with these bespoke browsers written in JavaScript?
Was it the "Daniel's Site" post? There's some weird interactions I'm finding with that iframe'd html upload and the history events.
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Also, when I visit the #all page I get two weird window.alert()’s, first says 5, second says 1. I’m on mobile Safari now so can’t really investigate, but is the site getting script injected??
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The marketing page is not readable on mobile either.
On Firefox Android, I could read the landing page and browse afyer creating an account.
I was not able to create an account. (I had to go desktop)
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The fact that this isn't on the landing page doesn't bode well for a 4 year old project.
Too harsh. That's normal if it's only now seeing light of day.
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The ui feels like it was designed for mobile as well, everything is on the far edges of the page and the center is entirely blank space unless you resize the window to be smaller horizontally
Aaanndd it's instantly overrun with spam
I think a lot of this is exactly the kind of constructive critique the OP is looking for, and I upvoted your comment for being high-value.
But I’m currently working on being a little more diplomatic, and too often I regret throwing in low-signal “this is a tech demo” type summaries next to my substantial remarks.
I hope this comes off as “fellow user working on this” and not a person in a glass house with rocks.
Yes! I made a little edit just to make it clear I'm not trying to dismiss the hard work, and even though it's a really hard space to compete in, someone has to try or there will never be alternatives.
If you're open for alternatives, framing it in in a way like "I know you're trying to accomplish X, but due to Y, I think the outcome is more along Z". So something like "I know you're going for a soft launch, but without providing a more concrete and demonstrative user experience, the current status of the project is more of a tech demo".
This approach acknowledges what the person is trying to accomplish, and lays out the obstacles before arriving at the conclusion, which then feels more natural. The recipient is able to follow your thinking and hopefully "arrive" at the conclusion along with you. When you start with the conclusion, you risk having a jarring moment where you start with something unexpected, and that can generate friction.
Hey, you responded better to that feedback than I probably would have!
Serious thank you for leading the way on high-value habits I’m still working on!
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As someone who has also built websites alone and on zero budget, I thank you both.
On the flip side, the fact that this is a crowded space means that there’s a demand for it. And this isn’t a Reddit clone, it has a business model which is pretty close to the best anyone could hope for in my opinion. In any case, I applaud any efforts that could unseat Reddit or make them reconsider their greedy hard line.
I encourage the creator of Non.io to identify the key shortcomings of Reddit and improve upon them. Don’t just try to clone Reddit beyond the basic image/link board, otherwise you’ll just be playing their game. Change the game. There is a Folding Ideas video on this topic which has some great insights with respect to YouTube: https://youtu.be/r3snVCRo_bI
> “it has a business model”
What’s that story about the economist who was trying to concentrate but there were kids playing soccer below his window and being noisy, so he went out and offered them $1 each if they come back and played tomorrow. The next day he offered them 50c, then 25c, and after that 5c, and the kids got annoyed “we wouldn’t come here to play for a measly five cents!” and stormed off, and didn’t come back.
I’ve put many hours into Reddit and Stackoverflow for free, but if you take $24 from me for a year and then offer me $0.0193 for my efforts based on upvotes I might feel a bit cheesed off about it.
Being forced to face how insignificant I am feels likely to drive me away, free upvotes at least let me feel important and they cost nothing.
Or the people who knit clothes saying things along the lines of “I’ll do it for a genuine thank you, but $10 is an insult; if this is a transaction, that doesn’t begin to cover my costs let alone my time”.
I’m not sure. I think it’s an interesting experiment at least. My prediction is that it will encourage clickbaity behavior similar to YouTube, which also has a profit sharing mechanism. Long form content has little chance to compete against drive-by laughs and memes. Maybe donations would help.
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>but if you take $24 from me for a year and then offer me $0.0193 for my efforts based on upvotes I might feel a bit cheesed off about it.
is that how it works? I thought it was offering payments based on who creates posts or other community tools, not based on participation.
you are correct that 2 cents would be a pittance to me who doesn't even want to be paid to browse content. But if I and 1000 others gave that 2 cents to what we thought was quality content, that could make someone's day (not career per se. But $20 from random strangers feels good). At scale that's basically how YT/Twitch work, except they don't take money directly from us so much as time (for ads).
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Daniel Ariely had a great analogy for this:
Your grandmother cooks an amazing dinner each Thanksgiving, for nothing but your love and thanks.
If at the end of the meal you said, “Great dinner, Gran, here’s for your trouble,” and handed her a $20, how do you think she’d react?
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haha right, the cultural problem is that when one has to pay $24 one should loudly cry how expensive it is tirelessly, again and again, all day, every day, until the server is shut down but when one is paid $24 one should be offended by what little money it is and as elaborately and tirelessly explain that your posts are worth so much more. You took whole minutes worth of valuable time out of your day to write them.
What if you pump it up with VC money?
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"You see, officer, the reason I was paying children to play outside my house is because I didn't want them there! It's very clever actually! I got the idea from the internet! It's certainly not what it looks like!"
Overjustification effect in action.
That folding ideas video is excellent. I implore anyone who wishes to unseat Reddit or any monopolistic website to watch it, so they don't fall into the trap of creating a clone with the same architectural flaws.
Thanks for the reference on the Folding Ideas, great video!
100% agree with everything said here.
My original plan was to pay for ~100 users accounts and seed the site with content for a proper launch. Given what's happening today though, it felt at least pertinent to show off the current state and get some feedback.
The balance between splash page on landing / landing on content is a hard one, but I think you're right. I am worried though that without conveying the initial business model, it'll be harder for users to understand that this isn't a direct reddit clone.
I think if the product itself is a web page, then the root www.domain.name needs to point to the product itself, not a description of the product. Imagine if I went to www.amazon.com and instead of the store, that page was a marketing template listing Amazon's business case and a few screenshots of what shopping at Amazon looks like.
IMO the only good reason to have a marketing/business-case landing page is if the product itself hasn't been built yet. Once the product exists, move the marketing page over to /about
For a forum you could have a story/post be your about page and just sticky it initially.
An idea I mull over occasionally: what if you could spend your karma points to boost any given post? This would ultimately be another form of paid advertising, except that the currency used would be earned by contributing to the community. Then, allow people to sell their karma points for fiat currency. Companies would buy karma points directly from users in order to promote their self-promotional posts, but those posts would be subject to the same rules and moderation as any other post. That way you're actually paying your best users rather than charging them.
This has been tried in the cryptocurrency space, people start faking accounts to upvote their content and make money.
So basically what already happens with reddit/twitter/etc but amplified because you give them a direct financial incentive to upvote low effort crap.
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tweakers.net (a Dutch tech site that's been around since the 1998) allows you to spend your karma points in their Karmastore on things like custom-css, RSS-feeds in tracker and custom newsletter.
To be honest I don't completely agree. The business model itself is what makes thin interesting, not to users, but to creators. Take me for example, I write tech articles from time to time, and the occasional video, presentation, or coding live stream. As it stands I don't make any money on this, I just do it for fun. But with a site like non.io there's no reason for me _not_ to post my content there. As long as you get some publicity out there (like you're doing with this) creators should hopefully start contributing. And once the creators are there, so will the users be! I agree though that the splash page is a bit strange, maybe throw up a popup over the content for people who aren't logged in and haven't visited the site before? Or at least put this info in a sidebar. The business model is as you say the core value proposition here, so if people don't get it right away the interest could quickly fade.
Wish you the best of luck with this. And I'll look into posting my stuff on there as well, as I said there really isn't any reason not to
> As it stands I don't make any money on this, I just do it for fun. But with a site like non.io there's no reason for me _not_ to post my content there.
I’m obviously not targeting this at you but a business model likes this (paying fractions of a penny per upvote) is not likely to attract high quality content. In fact the opposite it incentives a quantity over quality approach (i.e. content has to be just good enough to get upvoted spending more effort is wasted)
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maybe make the first 10,000 or 100,000 accounts free for life?
you need to build momentum somehow
maybe summarise what your users need to understand in a sidebar or closeable top-bar?
You could also incentivize early adopters. For example, if you're in the first 100k users, your money/upvote goes twice as far. Something like that.
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Why not pin your business model as the top post for awhile until it catches on?
This right here is the way to do it.
For sure - striking the right design balance is tough. If it were me, I'd try to keep content in the user's face as much as possible, and maybe inform the user about the unique value-add with non-intrusive sidebars, header/footers or system generated PMs.
It's not easy, and the value of an expert UX designer really shines when walking the tight-rope between informing and annoying your users.
Also, consider investing in reliable A/B testing infrastructure if you haven't already. One of the biggest mistakes I've seen is trying to grow a product while driving half-blind based on napkin sql queries as metrics. Understand who is using the site, how often, when they are experiencing errors, and which types of changes actually encourage growth KPIs - but be careful, loading up the site with 3rd party trackers and intrusive js will introduce bugs and kill site performance - another balancing act hehe.
you should try and get an API that has full parity with Reddit, an app that does that will replace Reddit because all third party apps simply need to change urls for Reddit to your domain.
THIS. This is the pro move.
In a way this feels similar to nebula - nebula currently has no comment functionality and points to reddit threads for communities around their videos. Wonder if that group would be interested in experimenting given the heavy overlap in business model.
> this kind of thing is dead in the water because it lacks a network effect
Which is why launching any social network is a dice roll. You need that initial momentum to propel it further, or some 'lucky break' to get it popular. Many social networks got popular accidentally, typically because some VIP joined the platform and everyone went to follow the VIP, increasing DAUs / MAUs which is the only metric social media networks care about.
Also back in the day tech was moving fast (i.e. UX and frontend would become outdated in a year if not months) and you didn’t to compete with multi-billion dollar companies.
Another minor nit: the homepage isn’t really very mobile friendly. I think any Reddit replacement needs good mobile usability and the homepage not being too mobile friendly isn’t a great sign.
I absolutely love the project though! Will check it out now.
If you ask me to make an account before I can see your content (even if it looks interesting) that's a turn off and I'll go somewhere else. Maybe have a button at the top that says "explore as guest" or something like that?
Also you should advertise that this is an open-source project on the landing page, as that may cause more people to be interested in trying it out.
https://non.io/#all
> without a hook that makes the platform exceptional (innovative/clever/beautiful design, unique aggregation features, inherently interesting content, reimagined user/content/moderation dynamics etc etc), this kind of thing is dead in the water because it lacks a network effect
I think the ONLY value any of these these have is network effect. All those other things you listed are either irrelevant or come after the network effects kick in. The only other important thing is the visual/practical UX.
I hear your point, but I think in some ways the network effect is intrinsically linked to the capabilities of the platform, they are kind of like two sides of the same coin. Consider a platform like discord where the quality and capabilities of the software product have allowed many massive communities to be built because of the beautiful design (for its niche) and the empowering community features. Platforms like teamspeak and ventrillo had the network effect but were eventually crushed by discord because of the product's capabilities.
For a site to work it either needs to
a) seed itself with tons of j referring links. At the end of the day people come for the content not the platform.
b) target moderation groups and convince individual smaller communities to transport themselves wholesale. Go down the dark list and start marketing to each mod team one by one.
Option b would work so well this month. Hundreds of thousands of motivated users and moderators just waiting for that better option.
The font on the root domains is also really small, at least on a desktop FF. You also can't really interact with anything except for the (very small) "log in" and "register" buttons at the top right corner, which is really frustrating if you are looking for some actual content. In fact, there seems to be no way of getting to the content at all via link. Lastly, the image in the top right is distracting, because it drags the user's focus there and away from the left side where the text starts; your eyes aren't really sure where they should be looking.
> cheap commodity in a massively oversaturated space, and without a hook that makes the platform exceptional (innovative/clever/beautiful design)
instead do unimaginative, stupid and ugly design. Reddit will shut down old.reddit within the next 16 months and when that happens there will be a gap in the market to grab the most dedicated of reddit's audience with something that looks as ugly but works as great as old.reddit does.
Only start charging when the sub or channel becomes large enough (something like boosts)
But yes, it needs a new capability that is the hook.
Maybe it's the ol' HN hug-of-death but I'm getting a mostly blank screen on the #ALL page with a single post from 'Krazy', contents a single < symbol, and nothing else. Browsing tabs doesn't change the main screen, seems to be no content here.
If it helps, I'm on Edge v.114.0.1823.43, Windows 10.
Great concept though, I like the idea of subscription money going to popular content creators but worry this simply encourages lazy posting of popular meme content, basically a monetised karma farm. The capitalists that we are, many will find a way to optimise post engagement against the algorithm and many will be pursuing hard cash rather than social interaction.
> .. but the problem is that tech like this is a cheap commodity in a massively oversaturated space, and without a hook that makes the platform exceptional (innovative/clever/beautiful design, unique aggregation features, inherently interesting content, reimagined user/content/moderation dynamics etc etc), this kind of thing is dead in the water because it lacks a network effect.
How about said hook being? "absence of dark patterns" .. which is possible because of stable funding, so there's no enshittification dynamic needed to make money.
This is definitely the idea, but are there enough educated consumers willing to spend money to avoid being trapped in shittified experiences? That's the question that matters.
“Enough” is relative, how many do you really need to sustain the site?
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Funneling money toward karma farmers is a dark pattern.
What is it about insanely great user experience design that's hard to "open source" in the same sense that engineers are able collaborate on software, like Linux, and achieve massive distribution?
I dont think UX is "harder". But the kinds of people that can realize a launch like this need to be technically minded, tend to work alone, and lean a lot more on the "Linux" side of this than the UX side. It's like trying to find the perfect Programmer/Artist hybrid to make a game with; it's simply two different mindsets that rarely get taught together.
As an example, look at most of Linux Distro's UX since you brought it up. They aren't meant for the layman the way Mac/Windows was. the deeply technical audience, for better or worse, puts up with a lot of UX issues for their tools. That doesn't work the same way for a general audience website or app.
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But that's from the "why can't programmers art" side of the argument. Of course, that begs the question "why can't programmers find artists to work with them?"... well, there's a dozen different reasons. Culturally, historically, socially, and so on.
But to list the one big reason; there aren't stereotypes about programmers being short on cash and needing to commissions out programs after their full time job just to get by. (a few) programmers do all that just for their own self-fulfillment or for their own goals, with no expectations of a big payment most of the time. Because many are already financially comfortable.
Design is artistic and artists don't collaborate well due to art being a personal endeavor? Unless it has a 'decision maker' at the helm like a film or it is intensely personal like a band.
Just a idea to get some ideas from others -- this does not necessarily represent how art or artists feel or operate since I am not one and don't actually know.
The difference is that you can see it. If you have two highly skilled contributors with very different programming styles, they can still collaborate within the same codebase given a goal and the end-result is the same for your users. When a code contribution is marginally better or worse in its approach than another the difference is negligible to the project as a whole. By contrast, users notice when a single color is different for design elements. And they complain extremely loudly about it.
On the contributor side:
- Visual style guides require much more time and skill to create (relative to style guides for code) and still generally fail to achieve anywhere near the aesthetic unity of a single great designer with total control.
- If you commoditize your design elements to the point where it is easy to contribute them, then it is no more difficult to do it yourself to begin with.
- Delegation of design work still requires that you funnel it somewhere to be judged on qualitative measures, rather than the pass/fail nature of code
Generally the best you can do is collaborate very, very tightly and then funnel it through a single person in the end anyway a la Python's BDFL in a very trial and error fashion.
The difference is that you can see it. If you have two highly skilled contributors with very different programming styles, they can still collaborate within the same codebase given a goal and the end-result is the same for your users. When a code contribution is marginally better or worse in its approach than another the difference is negligible to the project as a whole. By contrast, users notice when a single color is different for design elements. And they complain extremely loudly about it.
On the contributor side:
- Visual style guides require much more time and skill to create (relative to style guides for code) and still generally fail to achieve anywhere near the aesthetic unity of a single great designer with total control.
- If you commoditize your design elements to the point where it is easy to contribute them, then it is no more difficult to do it yourself to begin with.
- Delegation of design work still requires that you funnel it somewhere to be judged on qualitative measures, rather than the pass/fail nature of code
Generally the best you can do is collaborate very, very tightly and then funnel it through a single person in the end anyway a la Python's BDFL in a very trial and error fashion.
100% -- I'm not creating an account if I can't use the app, demo the app, or otherwise get a proper idea of what I'm signing up for, in order to see if it'll be worth my time to begin with.
There is https://non.io/#all
Should be the homepage.
HIre writers and or friends and create tons of posts with tons of comments ... true or not. Though nowadays you could get something like Chat GPT to create all the fake posts and comments until you marketed where a few users come and interact with the AI content then a few more and more and more and then less AI fake crap and more authenticity.
Im pretty sure this is how Reddit and many popular sites started. Fake it before you make it! Without interesting content you DOA.
Not to mention the marketing page is not responsive for mobile. Doesn't really feel like a modern design, either. Doesn't tell good about the site's mobile UX.
The hook is that it's not run by spez, IMO.
And I'm not trying to pile on, I'm just saying there's value to people in that fact.
That being said, how far can you drive a service purely based on "we don't have <person> working here"?
I'd be willing to wager a good chunk of people don't care who runs their platforms so long as they can talk to the majority of their friends / see large swathes for new content / etc. - see Facebook, for example.
It doesn't even work on mobile.
Indeed. At this point, you need a reason to not put that $2 in the ChatGPT subscription bin.
I love the idea. Reddit was the best of the social media platforms. That it's open source, means we can help fix these things. I'd love to help.
Instead of a splash page, I'd recommend making a box that shows as like, top 2 posts introducing the site and welcoming the user to create an account and stuff.
Charging to post is also pretty much a non-starter.
Twitter is edging on charging to post if we consider exposing content related to blue checkmarks.
Twitter has a massive existing user base and still isn't there yet.
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The hook is called „Reddit becoming more ans more aggressive with monetisation”
Its really enough for ppl to start looking for alternatives.
I agree with most of it and the mobile layout sucks for the marketing page.
The paid upvotes idea is unique.
Also, don’t neglect the role of moderation.
I tried browsing, but the top post is a photo of Hitler with the title “A man who did nothing wrong” and several upvotes.
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