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Ask HN: Evaluate my idea

8 points by famfam ↗ HN
Simple idea; website checkins. You visit a website every 24 hours and get points/badges etc. I'm not sure if checkin would be automatic (via 3rd party cookies) or if you would have to hit a button etc. Think of it as Foursquare for websites. I recognize that it would be easy to game/script.

Goals:

New traffic driving for websites. (Our website will give you a list of sites supporting checkin)

Make traffic stickier (visitors can return every 24 hours to checkin)

Fun for users through usual psychological mechanisms (points/badges/mayorships etc).

Websites can acknowledge (reward?) users' loyalty through jsonp/api mechanisms.

Questions:

Is it too close to MyBlogLog/EntreCard/Facebook Like?

Would this be an open system (anyone can check into any domain) or a system where you can only checkin to sites that support it?

Are there privacy concerns?

Do you think anyone would be into this? (I'm assuming no one on HN would be into it as a user, although hopefully some HN people would want to use it on their fledgling sites to drive traffic)

Thanks for the feedback!

11 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 38.8 ms ] thread
faramarz
I really like the thought. Very fresh!

First things that come to mind are based on the User Experience. How will it function without being obtrusive? Can you build a relationship with the Check-in user and the publisher/content provider? This is something Facebook cannot currently do with it's like button.

I.E. I click the Like button on your site makes it visible to My friends, but it won't create a "personal connection" between Me and you. Can your check-in mechanism solve this?

I'm bookmarking this, cause I'd like to see where this goes. It's certainly an intriguing proposition.

famfam
UX wise, I figured that the user will travel around with a 3rd party cookie from our main domain. The site operator will install a simple <script> tag. The script tag will fire off a jsonp request to our server. If there's no cookie present, the resultant js will either do nothing, or at the site operator's discretion invite them to join our system. If the cookie is present, and a valid session is detected, and they haven't logged in in the last 24 hours the resultant js will popup a small "notification" (or just use html5 notifications if available) that you've checked in. If there's a cookie, but no session, the js will, at the site operator's discretion, either do nothing or invite them to login (inline) and claim their checkin.

I'm not sure what you mean by relationship, but we will know who the user is and what the site is, so we would obviously be tracking a relationship there.

Thanks for the feedback!

myoung8
The issue with this is that it rewards users for generating pageviews instead of taking an action.

In the real world, when someone checks in at a business, odds are they are buying something, creating that virtuous feedback loop.

The only way to make this really pay off for website owners is to tie it in deeply with a more robust rewards system, but that requires fairly custom integration...which gives me an idea!

If you could build something like MixPanel meets Foursquare (i.e. develop a JS API that makes it incredibly easy for developers to build a rewards system) that would be a big win for everyone.

famfam
I agree that it only generates pageviews. I don't think it would be a huge leap to adapt it to optionally reward actions. The technical trick there would be a secure (e.g. ungameable) way to do it in JavaScript only... which I can't think of. Right now what I have in my head would definitely require some server side integration, which is no good.

As a note, are you sure Foursquare is actually generating actions e.g. transactions? Or do people just passively check-in because they're already there. I would assume the latter.

Thanks for the feedback!

aymeric
From a first impression it sounds like a great idea.

The "karma" score you get on some websites could be extended to more websites rather than contained in each website separately.

I actually think that providing a Karma/Gaming API could be a great idea. I'd surely use it on my websites if it can integrates with my user authentication system.

famfam
Thanks for the feedback. I'm curious -- I understand the gaming angle, a hosted badge service (isn't someone here doing that? can't remember) -- but not sure I understand how you see a "shared" or "distributed" karma system working. If I have 10 karma on site X, what do you (site Y) care about that for? Do you trust it enough to accept the karma in the domain of your own application? Or do you look at it as more of a traffic driving karma network where people visting site X will want to visit your site Y in order to "get more karma"?
mikeleeorg
Back in the day, before the dot-bomb, there was a site that did something similar. A few sites, actually. I think one of them was iWon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IWon), which offered points for performing certain actions on various websites. Others followed a treasure hunting model. You had to find certain pieces of content, or perform certain actions, to get points. They monetized by signing up partners (since this generated visits) and advertising.

That being said, I think this is an interesting idea. With Foursquare, Gowalla, and others having popularized the "check-in" idea, the market could be ready for this kind of a service again. If you can build a system to prevent gaming, you'd have a good, defensible product on your hands.

I think it's definitely worth a try. You can even scoop up some of the previous ideas (treasure hunt, rewards for actions, etc) and incorporate them too.

Good luck!

[Edited & added some more info below]

Ah, I just recalled a few other attributes of the iWon system. They started with a portal page and rewarded you for clicking on certain links. This obviously is different than visiting a website whenever you wanted and checking in - and I think the latter model is better.

They also had a time restriction. You could only perform a certain number of clicks a day, and perhaps even a certain number for hour. Those may not stop people who write scripts to game your system, but it's an element you can consider.

I'm guessing you've already considered the social aspects of this too, yea? For example, check-ins could appear on Facebook, Twitter, etc. If your system included a friends concept, I could see which websites my friends like to visit, and perhaps go there too.

BTW, if you can pull this off, you'll also end up with a great database of user behavior. You'll know who the users are (Since they signed up on your site), you'll know which offers & sites they like to visit, and you'll know how frequently they do so. Not that I'm highly recommending this, but such a list of users could be very valuable to marketers.

As the website owner, I'd love to be able to contact my visitors. Some sites may want to offer visitors free content, free stuff, easter eggs, etc. As a marketer, I'd love to know who visits my competitors, or related sites, so I could offer them incentives to use my service instead.

P.S. I wonder who'd become the mayor of Hacker News ;-)

imp
It seems like a cool idea. I remember when I was in high school applying for scholarships, there was a scholarship website that had something similar. I had to browse around their website looking for coins or something like that. When I found enough coins I got entered into a drawing for a scholarship. It was kind of fun, and probably could be generalized to other types of websites.
jeffepp
I really like this idea and have discussed it in detail with a few buddies.

I even have the URL cheqd.in if you would like it please let me know.

My thoughts were to make it the anti-location based check-ins.

So TV (watching) Books (reading) Internet (surfing) etc..

jeffepp
^^ not an attempt to sell the URL for a profit - I would obvs give it to you for free.