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A platform for AMAs

6 points by kaushik_ ↗ HN
Hey guys I created a site for online amas. Checkout http://www.ama-live.com/ and please give me feedback about where I can improve. A friend told me about this community a while ago and I'm new here. Anyone interested to give an AMA btw ?

17 comments

[ 128 ms ] story [ 1072 ms ] thread
jjoe
What does you ama platform provide? I need to know more about your website before I sign up and in.
kaushik_
It enables a person(celebrity probably) to create a room(We verify him currently by mail). Other people(who want to ask him questions) can join the room and start asking. There will be two separate threads for answers and questions to reduce the noise and give clarity. Its very simple actually, I wish I could post a screencast. Please check it out !
MalcolmDiggs
Adding that explanation and a short screencast/teaser-video to the homepage would do wonders. Some users are naturally cautious and skeptical, so giving them a little more to go on (before asking them to authenticate) might raise your conversion rate quite a bit.
kaushik_
Hey, we fixed it. Now you no longer need to login to see. You will have to if you want to post any content. checkout ama-live.com
eecks
Why is it behind a login screen? It would work better if I could just lurk.

What is your plan for getting big names to do AMAs? Surely they'll just go to Reddit?

kaushik_
Sorry. But for now we din't enable an email checker, so that everyone can take a look at it. We'll do that soon. Actually we are talking to a few and they seemed to like the idea, for example I asked https://twitter.com/CrazyLeoNet and https://twitter.com/dasjoshua . But I still don't know, we launched it just yesterday. I personally love reddit, I see it as a great discussion board but not for AMAs. Once you take a look at ours, you'll feel the same.
eecks
I won't take a look until I can see it without signing in
andy1900
You are not going to get any validation this way.

If your product is ready, I would create a landing home page, which shows a video demo or at least a screenshot of what it looks like, before I can be persuaded to sign up.

If your product is not ready, say the truth on the landing page, add some fake screenshots (how the software would look after it was ready).

I am perfectly fine with helping you validate your idea before you write any code. In fact, I would suggest everyone do that. But not this way - just a simple login / create account form makes me think that this is just a scammy way of lead generation for you.

kaushik_
Ohh okay I din't think that far. But it actually works and we have over 100 users. I like your idea about the screenshots. I'll add a screencast of its working on the background. Will that work ?
gull
I liked the idea a lot. I wish I could use it without a login.

If paying attention to people is more important to paying attention to ideas, it's strange that HN has a Show HN section but no AMA section.

Why should only sama get an ama?

kaushik_
Hey now you can view content without logging in, checkout ama-live.com
panjaro
name, displayname, email blah blah.... I don't know why people still make signup process so annoying !
kaushik_
We removed the login, however you'll have to if you want to post content.
billconan
needing to register is a turn off for me.

I don't want to register unless anyone I'm interested doing an ama right now.

kaushik_
Hey we removed the login now. You'll have to however login if you want to post content, checkout ama-live.com !
debacle
How are you going to compete with ask.fm? Or reddit? What's the utility in using your software over either of these services?
kaushik_
Not really. ask.fm is a random ask and answer but ama-live.com has different rooms to ask different people and have ama sessions for an hour or so. Reddit - I use it a lot but I think its much of a discussion board, its not meant for AMAs in particular. Too much nested commenting creates noise and its usage is not simple. Plus the discussion is controlled by moderators of the subreddit which is not a good way of doing an AMA. My two cents.