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Interesting take on a social networking site

49 points| jcapote | 17 years ago |notadouche.com | reply

27 comments

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[+] unalone|17 years ago|reply
I never thought I'd be flagging my own site.

As happy as I am to find this here, I don't think it's particularly relevant to Hacker News. I figured Adam and I would write something about our reaction to how quickly this site got big - 36 hours and 2800 sign-ups and still escalating - but I dunno if the site itself is particularly hacker-relevant.

One comment, though: it's hard to say just how thrilling it is to see this thing appearing all over the Internet. I'd never have expected this to go so far. For us, this was just an experiment in web design with a snarky theme. Waking up yesterday to see 100 users, or going to PHP class and seeing a hundred new people every 20 minutes while I was working on classwork, was a pretty incredible feeling. I'm glad so many people enjoy it.

[+] jcapote|17 years ago|reply
You've completely eschewed the conventional norms in the "social networking" scene while still maintaining the core essence of what makes them awesome (especially the "25 things about me" facebook phenomenon); If that isn't relavent to hacker culture, I don't know what is.
[+] psyklic|17 years ago|reply
great site -- how many of those 2800 sign-ups filled out the entire profile? I wouldn't be surprised if most of them did!
[+] snprbob86|17 years ago|reply
Very neat. I had fun answering a bunch of questions. Although, I was really hoping for a dating site with a sister site called http://www.notabitch.com/

I think this would make a great addition to a lot of social networking and dating sites. Post a few new random madlibs to users every so often to keep them and their friends interested. Up the stickiness.

[+] unalone|17 years ago|reply
It was suggested that we create a series of sites. Notawanker, notacunt, notaspaz... not sure how good that would look on a resume. "Douche" is edgy but not quite offensive; "bitch" crosses some line that "douche" doesn't.
[+] jacquesm|17 years ago|reply
You've made a fun thing there !

But I really think you should go and flesh out the theme a bit, just answering a bunch of questions does not make it a social network, there is a bit more to it than that.

[+] unalone|17 years ago|reply
Well, that was part of the joke. Somebody on #startups submitted it to Digg as a "nonsocial nonnetwork." That pretty much sums it up. It's why we didn't exactly expect the traffic we're getting. (We're up to nearly 3,800 users, up another 800 in about 4 hours, so growth hasn't stopped yet - and that was in the dead of night.)
[+] herval|17 years ago|reply
...but where's the business model????

(just kidding)

[+] unalone|17 years ago|reply
http://cafepress.com/thenadstore

We're old-school: merchandise only, baby!

(We're getting a few artistic friends to make posters, so hopefully we'll have something really worth selling. I also really like the look of the "nad" logo.)

[+] dpeq|17 years ago|reply
Simplicity wins here! You can add all sorts of fun stuff later once you have a base of returning users (and you clearly don't lack creativity for that).
[+] spyrosk|17 years ago|reply
As an experiment in a different approach in getting user info it's really good. I too had fun signing up. But if there is something more to it, I can't say I've spotted it. Why does the user benefit from this service? It was kind of vague for my taste at least. On the other hand maybe I missed something.. :)

Just a technical note, I couldn't get it to work with Opera 9.51, after entering my name I was redirected to the first question and then instantly on the end page. You might want to fix that.

Kudos for the idea though..

[+] psyklic|17 years ago|reply
now that was cool -- i (for the first time ever) actually had fun filling out my profile!
[+] hwijaya|17 years ago|reply
Great concept. It gives me a very enjoyable way of signing up. You guys actually make us re-consider some aspect of our own registration form. We might borrow some of your idea. Thanks a lot.