HN Explorer

Show HN: A gamified social network for passionate fans (youphenom.com)

9 points by Rafa1 ↗ HN
Hi HN, this is youphenom. A new platform created to address some shortcomings both in social networking and (professional) competitions/sports. Simply find the content you like, vote daily for your favorite team and help them win the monthly competition. Or even start your own channel/team and turn it into a winning brand with many fans.

Here are some of the problems that the platform solves for its users:

- To this day social media channels, content pages and chatrooms are like silos - each their own separate island/planet of content and interactions. The competitive element on youphenom acts like “gravity”, so these confined worlds become interconnected and influence each other.

- The rise of the Internet allowed most businesses to take what they do online - online stores for retailers, online banking for banks. But there is still no platform for the sports teams and athletes to do their business (to compete professionally) online. Now they can use youphenom.

- Before youphenom, no professional league or sport allowed the fans to score actual points for their favorite team or athlete.

- Also youphenom makes it possible for teams from different sports to compete against each other

There are many more benefits for all participants on the platform, so everyone can get more value and enhanced experience compared to what is currently available in social networking and sports.

Thank you for taking the time to check youphenom out

22 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 32.8 ms ] thread
semyonsh
I'm not sure if i fit in the group this is meant for but as a point of feedback: I really can't make up from your description and the front page what youphenom actually _is_ or does. The descriptions and examples on the website could use a lot of improvement to deliver the context and message, it's just too vague.

The general styling of the app and website look and feel a bit outdated, maybe a bit resemblant of how apps looked like on the early iPhone. I think this could be a big limiting factor in attracting new users for your platform.

I hope this isn't too harsh or blunt, I think the combination of games and social networking could work, but only if it's executed really well in order to attract the users it needs.

I can recommend organizing some feedback sessions with testers or users that are outside of your team or company and gather first impressions in order to improve on the above.

Rafa1
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughtful feedback. Bluntness and even harshness are appreciated as they help us to (re)consider what is potentially not well explained or not well designed. I’m pretty sure there is more to be desired from the description, but part of it is that such concept does not exist. Similar to how alien seemed to offer a service where users can upload pictures of their lunch or stay at strangers’ homes, it’s probably unclear why is this necessary/useful. Trying to simplify the description takes away some of the dimensions to it, but the platform is like a professional league for social media content creators. Another example, what the platform does: For example Nike had brick and mortar stores and great sales even before the Internet, but doing their business online greatly expanded their sales and brand awareness. Sports teams to this day don’t have this opportunity - to compete online (not just sell some merch). It would be too long to list all the ramifications/benefits from this, but they are similar to before and after businesses started to engage with customers on social media. As for the outdated design, we like to think of it more as classic, but we understand your point. We’ll definitely consider your recommendations Cheers
Rafa1
Not sure if the description is visible, so we’re adding it in the comments too:

Hi HN, this is youphenom. A new platform created to address some shortcomings both in social networking and (professional) competitions/sports. Simply find the content you like, vote daily for your favorite team and help them win the monthly competition. Or even start your own channel/team and turn it into a winning brand with many fans. Here are some of the problems that the platform solves for its users:

- To this day social media channels, content pages and chatrooms are like silos - each their own separate island/planet of content and interactions. The competitive element on youphenom acts like “gravity”, so these confined worlds become interconnected and influence each other.

- The rise of the Internet allowed most businesses to take what they do online - online stores for retailers, online banking for banks. But there is still no platform for the sports teams and athletes to do their business (to compete professionally) online. Now they can use youphenom.

- Before youphenom, no professional league or sport allowed the fans to score actual points for their favorite team or athlete.

- Also youphenom makes it possible for teams from different sports to compete against each other

There are many more benefits for all participants on the platform, so everyone can get more value and enhanced experience compared to what is currently available in social networking and sports.

Thank you for taking the time to check youphenom out

Rafa1
Although explanations like “X for Y” are kind of tired, it seems that our description confuses people, we’ll use it here to try to make the description (albeit incomplete) as succinct as possible, hope this doesn’t contribute to the confusion even more :)

Youphenom is NBA for social media content creators

JohnFen
Wait, I'm confused. I thought this was for sports people. Is it not?

I don't know how the NBA works, so that comparison doesn't help me any...

Rafa1
NBA is just an example. One can think of it as NFL, NASCAR, EPL, UFC, Hot dog eating contest, X-factor or any other (professional) competition. Although “sports people” are probably first that comes to mind when it comes to competiting, “sports people” are just part of those who would be interested in competitions (there are violin playing competitions, spelling bee competitions, etc, that don’t necessarily involve sports or sport people). This is where our platform comes in. Anyone that wants to participate can make a profile(+”team”) and they are in a (professional) worldwide competitive league. Thanks for participating in the discussion Cheers
MeetingsBrowser
It sounds like youphenom is trying to achieve lots of different things for lots of different people, and as a result people are having trouble understanding what it is and who it is for.

Who is the target audience and what problem does it solve for them?

If you walked up to a content creator and told them you made an NBA just for them, would they understand it is something they needed and want to check it out?

Rafa1
Thank you for your valuable input. We agree that what you outlined and the questions raised (about targeted audience, problem solved, etc) is something that every business/startup should define very clearly for them selves first, so they can convey that to their customers/users. We are really trying to do one thing only - a professional competitive league for anyone that may find it useful. While “anyone” seems to lack clear targeted audience, it’s just the nature of the social networks: FB, YT, IG, X are all for “anyone” by design. If we have to be extra succinct about the problem that our platform solves and why the content creators would need it - turns their followers into passionate fans. As for the followers - if two TV channels show American Idol, but on one of them is the classic format (where there is competition and a winner) and on the other, the exact same singers perform (concert-style) without competing, it is rather safe to believe that there will be significantly more people tuning in on the first channel. And this is the added value we deliver to our users compared to traditional SN. There is a lot more to the benefits from our platform, but when the explanation gets too long it starts to become confusing Thanks again Cheers
henjodottech
Looks like habitica
Rafa1
Just downloaded the habitica app, but it’s not even similar in concept or design… Sorry, if our description does not clearly enough make sense of what youphenom is. Like any new concept it might be confusing in the beginning to exactly pinpoint what it is (initially people had hard time to grasp what the Internet is, for example). If you have followers on the social media or you are a performer of some kind (athlete/team, celebrity chef, singer, competitive hot-dog-eater) you’d most likely benefit from our platform. Thanks for the comment
MeetingsBrowser
As others have said, after looking at different pages on the website and reading the description here, I cannot really tell what youphenom is.

> About Us

> We could say that Youphenom is a fantasy league.

> We could also say that it's an e-commerce website.

> We could probably say that it's a popularity contest...

From the description posted here it solves the following problems:

- interconnects content pages and chatrooms

- allows teams and athletes to do their business online

- score actual points

- allows sports teams to compete against each other

I don't really know concretely what any of that means.

Rafa1
Thank you for taking the time to contribute to the conversation. Fair criticism on the about us page, but again, what we introduce (albeit combining existing concepts) is materially distinct from everything that currently exists. We’ll try to address some of the points that you highlighted below: -“interconnects content pages and chatrooms”: The way NBA “interconnects” the basketball teams (which otherwise would be separately practicing teams), the same way youphenom “interconnects” social media channels/pages, which currently are separate/confined “rooms” and nothing enables interaction between them. (And just to reiterate, that youphenom is not strictly sports oriented, virtually any activity/talent can participate in a competition, take America’s got talent for example). Which brings us to the next point: -“allows teams from different sports to compete”- in the real world the Yankees could never play against the Lakers, or the Patriots vs mrBeast, but youphenom enables exactly that. -“score actual points”- in the real world no fan is ever invited on the court to take the next free throw in an official NBA game, but youphenom is based exactly on that - only the fans vote/score all the points for their teams to determine the winner. We hope this clarifies somewhat our concept and thanks again for pointing out areas that may use improvement or clarification Cheers
vunderba
You desperately need a concrete demo in the form of an interactive demonstration or a YouTube video showcasing actual usage.

Like everyone else on this hacker news post I simply cannot understand what this app / social media network / etc. does.

It almost sounds like you want to combine twitch style raids with interconnected "Facebook brand page-like" social networking?

Rafa1
Thank you for contributing to the discussion. It is painfully clear by now that we are not doing any good job describing and explaining our platform. There are some videos on YouTube, but they basically are showing the same steps as the website. We’ll try to upload a fresh one hopefully more clear.

The most succinct description we could come up with is: Youphenom is NBA for social media content creators.

It is far more interesting to have the basketball teams competing in a league, compared to just having each team showing entertaining skills in practice separately. But currently all social media content creators are doing just that - showing entertaining skills/content separately. This is why we built a platform were anyone (sm content creators, real teams, not-real teams, etc) can join and compete. As in most social networks and in sports, on our platform there are two groups: the content creators and the fans. 1.As a fan you find pages/teams that you like and you “upvote” them (which gives them points). 2.As a content creator you compete for the fans’ attention and affection (doing very much exactly what you’d be doing on other sn). 3.All that “packaged” in a pro-league-style competition (at the end of each month we have a champion and at the beginning of the next month the new season starts). We’ll work on that video and will ask admin if allowed on this thread Cheers

Rafa1
Here is a test account if somebody wants to try the website out, without having to create a profile U:TestHN P:HN2024
3np
Your GoDaddy firewall blocks tor: "Your IP address is listed in our blacklist and blocked from completing this request."
Rafa1
No error message on our end, everything works fine
3np 

    Block ID: BLACK02
    Server ID: 19015
The block is consistent despite rotating exits with different IPs.
Rafa1
We’ll check it out. Thank you for bringing it to our attention
cdstamper
would be nice and IMO appropriate for this forum to hear how you got to launch! I seem to remember talking to you guys way back in 2016 (as "Phenom") so I'm sure there's an interesting story to be told.
Rafa1
It seems there is some confusion. We looked up Phenom(.com) and it is a HR tech company. Although it seems like a nice prosperous company, we are not related in any way to them. Just name similarities Thanks for taking part in the conversation Cheers