Ask HN: Took your advice, successfully! Let's try it again.
My start-up is www.talkburst.com - review anyone by name and location. Categories such as "Professors & Teachers" and "Lawyers & Attorneys" allow easy reviewing of professionals - but reviewing your neighbor or co-worker is okay too!
In the last thread, the most valuable advice I was given was that you didn't want to sort through categories with hundreds of thousand reviews, sorted by last name.
I created a "custom feed" or "custom homepage" thing. Once you customize one, which consists of choosing the locations you care about and categories you care about, the homepage will display the latest reviews in your areas of interest.
What do you think of it?
Let's hear what you think it needs next.
15 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 38.6 ms ] threadIt's pretty easy to make your point, even a negative one, without being libelious/hateful/rude, which is the way it should be done.
How about the privacy laws in Italy - check what just happened to some Google Execs...
This could end up as a great "get rich quick" scheme for the lawyers.
Sorry to come on as a dampener but this is risky territory.
The amount of information in the more than 1 million reviews that would be considered "private" is less than what you would already find through available avenues such as a Google search or even public records.
Fortunately, I don't live in the UK, so their laws don't apply to me, even if they say they do.
It's more generally called "forum shopping" but specfically it would be "libel tourism".
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?stor... might open your eyes a little: >The most famous example is the case of Rachel Ehrenfeld, an American who wrote a book about the funding of Islamic terrorism. It sold a mere 23 copies in Britain, over the internet. But a Saudi businessman sued her in a London court and was awarded over £100,000 ($160,000).
>> Despite its track record of successfully defending cases brought in U.S. courts, in July 2003 a default judgment was entered against the site in the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court High Court of Justice for EC$27,100,932.00.[4] The award, made in Eastern Caribbean currency rather than U.S. dollars, has not been recognized or enforced by any U.S. Court.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripoff_Report
Things like this seem to give a small minority of people anywhere on the globe the ability to basicaly terrorize and shake down companies and people in our industry.
I beleive that some kind of international free-harbor provision would be benificial to the internet and allow it to continue to grow freely.
I've had several very successful websites and I was always dealing with people and companies trying to "shake me down." I think it's just part of the game.
I clicked on the "more" link for entrepreneurs, then, on the next page, had to choose the checkbox for entrepreneurs and click continue. You should automatically recognize which "more" link I clicked. Save the category checking for people who come to that page wanting to do a search or browse by category.
On the next page I had to put in two locations. I'd go with one and let the user add another one if they want.
Then I was asked to create an account. Why? I just want to browse your site. I stopped at this point, so it just became a waste of time.
The account simply narrows down the results for you based on your selections of categories and locations. You can enter just one location and it will still work, it just doesn't tell you that.
The account is barely an account, just pick a username and e-mail address, click, your password is in your inbox. Simply used to remember your preferences since it's pretty heavily customized (narrowed down) for you, to be relevant.
Now that I've explained it a bit more, do you have any suggestions?