We have created Ballotter as an online (live/recorded) video debating platform to bring the discussions worth sharing on an online stage. Ballotter has just came online and is at the beta stage. We hope to gather a collection of amazing debates and people who want their voice heard with spectators voting and sharing.
Couple of questions for HN:
I was thinking about the same idea but for coming up with more interesting political candidates. The current candidate pipeline is stagnant. Could this be repurposed as a competition + publicizing platform for political candidates. From local to National level. The biggest hindrance is validating up/down votes in my use case.
True, Ballotter very much matches the political debating scene but it is whatever users make it to be. To narrow it down to political area we would need to know many politicians to provide the content. We do not know any politicians willing to debate live yet.
Don't require WebRTC on the landing page. Apple browsers don't support it but I can't imagine you want to prevent those people from even learning about your product.
You are right, by using WebRTC we are ignoring Safari users. Since this is a prototype we are looking forward to get majority browser users involved (Safari is around %3.5).
I had literally the same idea. I had actually started researching webrtc. the tech looked a little fragile so I decided not to go forward. I hope you can work out your kinks and get it running, because I would be interested in giving it a go. It's like trying out my idea without putting in any of the work!
Hello. I really like this idea and just watched a debate and did enjoy it.
I do like the idea of it of aggregated and real time feedback from the viewers however, My only suggestion is to make the cheers and jeers a little less intrusive. I'm just not that interested in the peanut gallery and, (for me) it interferes with the fluidity of the very short time frame people have to talk.
Great work though - I'm very interested to see how this does.
We are aware of the issues on mobile. We think an app would be required which we will launch if more debates are made via Desktop users as we think they are the major users.
The big suggestion I have for your team is to structure live sessions with television-like scheduling. Early-on, a live experience web site does not have enough usage to generate a good time for users. I learned this while running rapt.fm, a live web platform for freestyle rapping.
Have a calendar and use twitter or other means to announce upcoming events to concentrate the attention of users. Create well-promoted "prime time" slots, later add in regular programming, and overall make it clear to the users that all other times are "down times" and not likely to have a lot of debates going on.
(not OP of course) This is a really excellent idea, thank you. I've never thought of arbitrarily creating scheduling as a way of improving engagement, as previously the thought of old fashioned "tv show scheduling" would make me very uneasy - with that said, low population makes it much harder not to have events/etc.
This seems like a big boon for an active community site. Interesting!
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 62.2 ms ] thread- What is your take on Ballotter?
- Any suggestions on the product?
- Any suggestions on user gathering?
- It's down but the reload button had a nice, blue color
- Maybe do a little more load testing?
- Don't be down.
We think a specific app would be required which having it on both iOS and Android requires resources.
Do you think the current MVP shows the potential of the idea?
Out of interest how would you have done your idea differently?
It is not OSS yet. May go OSS later though.
I do like the idea of it of aggregated and real time feedback from the viewers however, My only suggestion is to make the cheers and jeers a little less intrusive. I'm just not that interested in the peanut gallery and, (for me) it interferes with the fluidity of the very short time frame people have to talk.
Great work though - I'm very interested to see how this does.
What do you think?
Have a calendar and use twitter or other means to announce upcoming events to concentrate the attention of users. Create well-promoted "prime time" slots, later add in regular programming, and overall make it clear to the users that all other times are "down times" and not likely to have a lot of debates going on.
This seems like a big boon for an active community site. Interesting!
You might want to look for supporting https://www.temasys.io/plugin/ for Safari and IE, though rumour has it that Apple is planning to support WebRTC.
Also honored to see that you're enabling Redux DevTools Extension, so we can look inside the processes there.