Ask HN : What do you think about my idea?

3 points by quark92 ↗ HN
i am preparing to launch a website about for criticism in technology such as people can submit article to criticise x company for y issue .. they domain name will be www.techcriticism.com .. give me your opinion about my idea ?

5 comments

[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 22.5 ms ] thread
I did something similar a while back. Called it "What I'd Change" or whatidchange.com. Here's a post from a local magazine about the launch: http://m.edmondoutlook.com/archives/m.blog/27/power-to-the-p.... And my original post announcing WIC on my blog: http://www.briggsly.com/2009/11/anyone-can-change-world-here... (Note: posting those links for informational purposes, not shameless promotion; the WIC site is no longer live) It originally started out hoping to be "a place to talk about ideas to change the world." We had some cool ideas posted, but I couldn't code or design at the time and we'd spent all our money on launching version 1.0 so we wanted to get revenue before we added any new features, but we realized quickly they were badly needed. FAIL. Our problem was users didn't want to talk about ways to cure cancer or end poverty. What it became, much to my chagrin, was a bitch&moan-fest. Made the mistake of "testing" adsense ads and then getting my account disabled by Google for clickfraud (right before we would have received our first payout, no less). OpenX ad exchange was crap, and after 9 months of decent traffic but no ad revenue, I shut it down. Part of me wants to relaunch since I'm not as cash-strapped as I was back then, but I've got other projects that I'm focusing my time on. Tldr: People love to bitch about tech (most of the posts were either about tech or "people"). You'll want to focus on stupid-simple social aspects because most people do their whining on FB/twitter. Make it gorgeous, organized, tag-friendly, and ad-optimized (if you want ad revenue). I'd say go for it, but have realistic expectations of the quality of UGC you'll get. Much of tech journalism is just bitching about companies anyway, so you need to find a niche or way to differentiate yourself. If you want to chat about what what worked/didn't work for us, feel free to message me on twitter. @briggsly
Is it a subjective critique or a know bug? The name doesn't really communicate which one. If it's a subjective critique I don't see the value — but if it's a "known issue" that might have some value, but only if there's some sort of form of support.
it is subjective critique ..the articles on the site would be such as criticise x company for data breach for example ... criticise for better service only .. dirty articles wont be accepted ..something like this :)
There is a "dead" answer in this thread that you might be interested in too. (You can activate showdead in your profile.)
Is it safe to assume this would be like a Consumerist but with a tech only focus?