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Ask HN: Review my start up please: List Central

8 points by marilyn ↗ HN
http://listcentral.me

A social network for list lovers that aims to become a new publishing platform -- somewhere between blogging, and micro-blogging -- to be known as list-blogging. List Central combines the inherent usefullness of lists, with social rankings, link & image sharing & content ownership to give the user a unique, list focused experience.

I would appreciate your feedback, and any advice you might have for List Central.

11 comments

[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 39.9 ms ] thread
spooneybarger
why would i use this instead of another service?

take the top coffee shops in vancouver... why wouldn't i use a service like yelp? why would i pay attention to someone's top ten movie list rather than a site that can take what i like in movies and make recommendations?

i can't see myself ever using a site like this.

from a design perspective, the site looks like something out of the late 90s. what is going on with the left side and bottom side of the recent comments?

minalecs
to me it seems like a crowdsourced version dave letterman's top 10. In that case, you should put like the best lists ever.. like the funniest ones to keep my interest in the site. The ones on the homepage are not that great.

Not sure how compelling the concept of writing lists are , as they are sort of time consuming to think about. Like the success of twitter is that its short things your supposed to write off the top of your head. The aspect of blogging is to write compelling content for people to read about. Not sure where this fits in.

edit: good luck with the site.

Scott_MacGregor
I like the layout, look, color and feel. Too bad listcentral.com and .net are tied up by someone else. It deserves a better URL than a "dot me".

Maybe you could find something else like listy.com or listbuddy.com. Something with a .com that you can build its brand on. It looks like .net and .org are just idling in someone's portfolio waiting for a buyer. I think a .com will add a lot of value to the company that a .me will not.

From just out of the starting blocks it looks good. I'm looking forward to seeing where you guys iterate to.

wanderboy
The first thing I did after reading this comment was check your profile creation date and your karma. To each his own, but I was totally unimpressed with this site.

I judge "start-ups" (really a Web app) in this case by a few metrics, but the first test is always this: does this start-up solve a problem? I don't think it does. Anyone who wants to create a top ten list can do it from any blogging platform and several other sites that do exactly what this one does.

Scott_MacGregor
To me, Twitter did not really seem to solve an existing problem at first, but people liked it, and it caught on. Same with Farmville. Personally I think the site has a good foundation as far as look and feel for a site aimed at the general public. This is just a new out of the box site. Let's see where they iterate to in 6 to 9 months. I think they have a good foundation to build on.
wanderboy
I can't believe I was such a dick in that comment above. Must have been a bad day. I still don't like the service, but I shouldn't have taken that karma police tone on.
bdickason
The ad up top is just awkward. It blends in a bit... but not well enough, so it sticks out like a sore, out of place, thumb!
famfam
Congrats on launching. I just watched a Mixergy interview with the founder of http://ranker.com. How do you differentiate yourself? They have quite a bit of traction now it seems.
marilyn
I really like what Ranker has going on, and have been keeping my eye on them.

Ranker employs the social ranking within lists, so the crowd decides what goes to the top of each list, while List Central does social rankings on lists compared to other lists. List Central also allows for private lists, so there can be both fun and useful lists.

Another major difference is that List Central is bootstrapped and Ranker has found Angel funding.

danl
Another site which might be a competitor:

http://www.makefive.com

Nicely designed but I don't think that they have a very large userbase.