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Show HN: Pictorious - an app to participate in and create memes
- albertchung 14y agoPictorious is a game where you and your friends participate in and create memes. We're combining the fun game mechanics of social games (Draw Something, Words with Friends) with the ubiquitous activity of photo-sharing. Would love to hear the HN community's feedback on our little project!
- true_religion 14y agoI really like the concept of it, but I can't give feedback here on the app because I don't have an iPhone. I think initially people will be excited to play contests against one another, but the issue I've dealt with in the past is: (a) someone starts winning massively and the contest becomes stale or (b) there's too many contests, and the community is spread out too thinly.
- albertchung 14y agoThanks for the feedback... will definitely watch out for those 2 things going forward. Were the contests you were running for groups of friends or for the broader public? (we're experimenting with both)
- kylecp 14y agoAwesome!
- stephenjcho 14y agosweet idea!
- citroburst 14y agohmm.. this is actually pretty fun
- jonny_eh 14y agoSo it's like that episode of South Park? http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/411094/the-newest-meme http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/411094/the-newest-meme
- albertchung 14y agoHaha... this is great. I think I will use this in a presentation.
- peteysd 14y agoNeat idea. How do you plan to monetize?
- clarky07 14y agoSell to facebook for a billion dollars? Seriously, do you have any plans of how to make money? The server costs on this could get really high if it actually becomes popular. Then you have a hugely successful app that is actively losing you money.
- albertchung 14y agoYep, we have thought through a number of different monetization strategies including sponsored challenges, private games / events, virtual goods and paid / ad-supported versions. The most important thing right now for us, though, is building a product that people love. With that in mind, we'd love any feedback you might have from that perspective.
- clarky07 14y agoI'm not sure I'm your target market as I'm not much for photo sharing type stuff. That being said I think the app looks great and was pretty interesting for the brief time I browsed it. I'm just a bit annoyed at all the, "We'll get a few million users and then worry about how to make money." When I see a service I like that doesn't have any way of making money I'm scared it will go away. Note this isn't how the masses think, but it is how software devs think. http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/ http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/
- albertchung 14y agoI agree, I think it's unfortunate when services get shut down post acquisition. I also agree with you that all startups should have a clear path to monetization. I would assume that institutional investors would require as much before investing, but I think that would probably be assuming too much these days. However, I don't think that all startups should "turn on" the monetization immediately. For those us trying to build two-sided platforms, we need to get one side of the platform on first. Typically this will be the users as brands and retailers are still very much focused on reach and are very slow to make decisions.
- mindhunter 14y agoJust tried to register. Pop up appeared: "Password must be at least 6 characters long and can only contain numbers and letters." I'm fine with a length limitation, but limiting the character-set - WTF? Stop this right now.
- albertchung 14y agoHi mindhunter thanks for the feedback. I think we had put the same character limitation on the pw as we had on the username. Agree with you that shouldn't be the case and it will be changed in the next version. Welcome any other feedback if you have any.