Ask HN: Review my startup, Wehgee
More about the site - Wehgee is a weekly topic based content sharing site where users post in content categories (like Audio) related to weekly topics (like #OneHitWonders). Users of the site are challenged to complete the "Weekly Wehgee" - filling their wedge circle for the week by sharing their opinions, thoughts, or spin on each of the six topics. We think connecting people by putting out topics for discussion is an untapped arena - "trending" topics/tags don't necessarily unite or entice involvement.
Premise - We wanted to make something fun, that becomes interesting by connecting people across common conversations. We also believe there is a good base of the public that won't post often on social networking sites because they "don't know what to post about"
3 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 19.7 ms ] threadThat said, I think you're focusing too much on what/how people post content on Wehgee, and not nearly enough on the benefits people can expect from sharing content this way. For example, Twitter's landing page says "Find out what’s happening, right now, with the people and organizations you care about", and Facebook "helps you connect and share with the people in your life." — both of these are very direct ways to introduce the product.
In contrast the way your describe yours seems purely functional: I know that with Wehgee I'm suppost to share stuff in 6 weekly topics, and that by doing so I'll be "shaping the conversation" but that has no relevance to me whatsoever and doesn't communicate a benefit to me of any kind.
Also, I think you need to be clearer about the distinction between a category and a topic. Initially I thought that the hashtags were the 6 categories, but it took me a while to work out that this wasn't the case, and that the two were separate. I think you need to first make it clear what categories of content there are, and then find a way to distinctly communicate what the current topic is for that category.
Another point: How do I know when one week's topic ends and the next begins? Is it on a Monday? Sunday? Can I revisit topics/discussions from past weeks?
I think there's some serious potential to giving people a framework of topics/categories to use for posting content, I just think you could find a clearer way of articulating the benefits of this approach.
Re: Our description - I think this is a valid point and a great idea, we will consider wording like "connect with people by discussing the same things" type of benefit.
Re: categories vs. topics. - we will work to make this more clear as well. It should be very clear if you "Take the Tour" on the homepage, but we will work it into the homepage wording as well.
Re: Topics run Mon 12EST to Sun 12EST. Currently, you can view topics/discussions from previous weeks, but not go back and comment on them, lets say. These are outlined in the detailed site pages...I don't know that we can work this detail into the splash page itself, but valid thought that we will explore