Show HN: I'm Creating the Next Big Social Media Platform – Rated

[razasekha]

Hey all, I've been working hard on my side project and will be trying to turn it into my main project now.

Rated is a social rating platform for media, places and products. By having everything in one place, its easier to add friends, follow and compare ratings.

There are cool data features like similarity scores between each users and predicted ratings for every item. The main aim is to help people discover the best content in a fun and social way.

I've made a website (not that pretty yet) and launched on the app stores, but there's a long way to go. Still haven't properly validated the idea and need to get some users.

I would love feedback on the idea, landing page and if you are interested in trying it out - feedback on the app itself.

[akshayKMR]

The page has some CSS issues. The hero copy and some elements are cut off, there seems to be horizontal overflow as well.

https://imgur.com/a/Pq56geu (Firefox desktop)

[razasekha]

Thanks, I'll fix that

[slater]

You might want to do something about the combined ~15 megs+ of PNGs (rated_screenshot_pair.png, rated_screenshot_pair2.png, feed_screenshot.png) you have on your landing page before you blow through bandwidth quotas :D

[razasekha]

Didn't realise, will address that ASAP!

[wizzerking]

How are you going to prevent commercialization like reddit ? How are you going to prevent a path like digg ? I used to be on both now they are wastelands, just advertisinng portals

[razasekha]

Good question, I think there are quite a few different revenue methods which can be done without much disruption to the user. For example companies paying to get more control over their page and profiles.

One of the nice things is that advertising can be in-app rather than external, for example ads for a restaurant/hotel will direct to the product in the app rather than an external link.

Only after getting a solid userbase will I start to actually implement any monetization.

Also planning to put some measures in (if the app gets big) to make it so that fake-looking users or users with just a couple of ratings don't have their ratings count towards averages and predictions.

[perihelion_zero]

I've wanted to see something like this, but as a browser add-on with a crazy amount of connectivity between sites allowing search/discovery. If you do anything "social", it either has to be useful to the 1st user or you have to bribe people onto the network. Building a search/recommendation engine is a good cheat to not have to bribe people to show up.

[razasekha]

Hmm good idea. I am thinking to try and scrape other websites ratings to have a strong recommendation system without any other users required. Do you think that would help?

Definitely struggling with getting the first users.

[atmanactive]

In my personal opinion there will never be a trustworthy social media site until we reach absolute transparency, meaning, every account is backed up by government ID papers. As long as we have this sock-puppetry with account creation, internet will stay a scam playground and nothing more.

[KetoManx64]

This already exists, it's called WeChat, run and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, who will delete any posts that go against the narrative and then send some nice gentlemen in uniforms to your house to check up on why you're spreading anti government narratives.

[razasekha]

I agree, especially on a rating site like this.

My plan is that when/if the app gets big, each account need to have ID verification (similar to what is done in gambling sites and such) in order to be a public account.