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Ask HN: Am I there yet? (Repost)

5 points by yousuffauzan ↗ HN
(This is a repost. Apologies in advance but I need some more advice.)

I launched CinEight, a movie recommendation site which helps user to manage their movies too, a couple of months ago. The response I got was not all that great. So I put it on the back-burner while I got busy with my job and other projects. Finally around mid december, I got some time to revisit the project and I decided to integrate it with facebook. I am not on facebook and have very little understanding of social networks in general.

Anyway, the app is finally out (http://apps.facebook.com/cineight). Its just my main site shown inside facebook. I do not know if this is the right approach.

The basic idea behind the app was to help people like me, who watch a lot of movies, find a place where they can manage their movie lists and get to know about which movies they may like to watch next. So apart from following people who I think have a similar taste in movies as me, I can also keep a track of movies I have watched in various All-Time best movie lists (Palme d'Or winners, TIme ALL-TIME 100, IMDB 250 etc).

It will be great if you guys would help me in deciding what features should my app have now that its on facebook (Social features, things that users like doing on facebook etc.)

The most important question is whether I should start spreading the word around or wait and add new features and polish the app some more. Basically, In your opinion, Am I there yet? If not, what do you reckon I should do, if yes, then what do you reckon I should do?

Thanks in advance.

http://apps.facebook.com/cineight

7 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 22.7 ms ] thread
retroafroman
I clicked through but I hate using Facebook apps, so I tried to go your standard website, but again I was frustrated that I would have to sign up. Is there no way for me to see if this looks like something I could use? So far, all I know about this app/site is what you've written above, and what was listed on the homepage. Neither of these can SHOW me nearly as much as a demo.

Also, if you haven't seen this submission, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2061359, I would recommend taking a look and trying to learn what the founder of that site did and the lessons that people take from it in the comments. Basically, faking a lot of user content is important. This ties back into the first point I made about seeing an example. I'd love to see some of the 'leaders' and their top recommended movies list. Maybe if some leader had a lot of the same picks as me, I'd be interested in signing up and following them. Otherwise, how can I know that I won't be the first person on the site? Showing that you have users (even fake ones) on the front page makes it seem more like a place I would be willing to spend time.

yousuffauzan
:) Thats a nice piece of advice. I never thought about faking users before (I do have about 4 accounts of my own on the site, but that was due to dev work).

I have created 3 top movie lists (IMDB 250, Palme d'Or winners, Time's ALLTIME 100) to help users get started. I will be adding more soon.

Also, I have lots of content that is not user generated ( around 50k movies). But I think, you are right in saying that user generated (even if fake) will be rather useful.

List of movies recommended by top leaders will be a good thing to add too. I do show top leaders on the home page of logged in users, but I guess it will be better if i can somehow show their movie lists easily too.

I will be glad if you try the app once. Here is a demo account cred: username: demouser@cineight.com password: demouser

revorad
You could take some hints from http://www.7bks.com. Tom's a friendly guy, I'm sure he will give you some tips.

You should be jumping on the Twitter #lessambitiousmovies bandwagon. Make a page on your site which lists the best ones. Or let people vote on them or something.

Have you seen http://moki.tv ?

Sorry I didn't try the app. The problem with a facebook app is that even to look at it I need to give it access to my intestines. Then if I don't like it, I need to go through a lot of pain to revoke access. I'm not such a big fan of movies or FB apps that I'd do that.

yousuffauzan
You can goto http://cineight.com

The facebook app is just this site inside an iframe (I was too lazy to implement something specifically for FB. I too am not on it)

I will look into the sites you mentioned and try to learn what I can. Thanks.

revorad
Ok, I tried it with my Twitter login.

I think it's a good idea. Some quick thoughts:

The Compare and Feedback tabs on the left are overlapping the text in the main window. I'd say just get rid of them. For a site like yours I doubt you are going to get much feedback in that way. I'm not sure what compare is for.

Don't give me a blank screen when I first login. Show me some films at least. The top ones, the latest ones, anything and ask me to like or dislike them.

Read people's Amazon wishlists or purchase history (is that available?) and get all the films they've bought or want. Do the online movie rental sites like lovefilm, netflix have APIs? Connect to them and pull in data.

Use markbao's http://threewords.me to describe movies in three words or something like that. Talk to him for ideas.

Pull in youtube clips of the films listed.

List movie soundtracks.

To get traction early, you might have to pick one aspect and turn it into a sort of game which can spread (like threewords). Favourite scenes? Famous oneliners turned into jokes?

You could try a completely different UI, say something like http://thesixtyone.com.

Basically, this is a huge space. Ideas are plenty, just keep churning and you will hit on something.

Next time you post on HN, link directly to your site (not an Ask HN post).

Oh and this is probably not the best forum to ask for advice regarding this. Find some movie buff forums!

yousuffauzan
WoW! Thanks.

Those are fab ideas. I will come back to you once I implement them. Thanks again.