WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]

dawalker's comments

dawalker | 2 years ago | on: Launch HN: Lumona (YC W24) – Product search based on Reddit and YouTube reviews

A couple of ways from my understanding. We have different focuses in our UX and UI as we, for example, feature reviews directly next to the product and show products 1 at a time instead of a listing view. We also place more emphasis on having a semantic search where you learn about the products being offered and how they're relevant to your specific situation instead of a keyword based search. From a business standpoint, we're also affiliates of Amazon and Stylevana while Looria isn't.

dawalker | 2 years ago | on: Launch HN: Lumona (YC W24) – Product search based on Reddit and YouTube reviews

Fair. The best solution we've seen is building the product in some way where it's somewhat defensible, either through data, features that bigger players won't build, etc. and then using a subscription based model if users are willing to pay for that and value the searches high enough or using an ads based model if you're optimizing for traffic rather than pure value on each search.

dawalker | 2 years ago | on: Launch HN: Lumona (YC W24) – Product search based on Reddit and YouTube reviews

Great question. This would be a bigger issue if we were only aggregating results and summarizing them, but because we both aggregate and show (in our opinion) the highest credibility reviews from YouTubers (and other sources like blogs once we add them), our idea is that while the general mass opinion can be shifted through campaigns like that, the top end of the spectrum should hopefully still remain pure.

If on the other hand the top end of the spectrum is corrupted, then hopefully the masses can compensate for that. If both are corrupted and all of the data sources available are, then it really comes down to our ability to filter out LLM or promoted content which comes down to how well they can hide it. AI detection tools have been scaling alongside models, so it's also a question if that will continue over time. We'll think of some more advanced things if that becomes a bigger issue for us :)

At the end of the day, if a company can do a coordinated advertising campaign across the internet over months to block out any negative opinion, it's a big deal for both us and the social media/data sources we pull from that's going to be a challenge we have to deal with.

dawalker | 2 years ago | on: Launch HN: Lumona (YC W24) – Product search based on Reddit and YouTube reviews

Thanks! We just watched your review together in the living room, and we really appreciate your thoughts+detailed feedback. The list of items is an interesting idea that we'll think about how to fit into the ux. Comparisons is definitely something we want to add later down the line as well.

The idea of restaurants, like you mentioned, would be really great to have. It's not an immediate priority, but once we get Tiktok/short form videos on the site and integrate it well, it'd be really exciting to make and use.

dawalker | 2 years ago | on: Launch HN: Lumona (YC W24) – Product search based on Reddit and YouTube reviews

Is the implication here that you need to charge and users will leave you once you do? If you can make a product that's significantly better, then you should be able to charge. The thing I'd note for affiliate marketing as a business model is that for it to generate significant revenue, you need to have a lot of traffic while other business models can generate that much faster (subscriptions) or make you money based off of that traffic (ads) instead of how many products are purchased.

dawalker | 2 years ago | on: Launch HN: Lumona (YC W24) – Product search based on Reddit and YouTube reviews

Very true. It's interesting how Reddit has maintained a relatively high trust within most people though. It's also worth noting that while this is happening, there aren't many other places that most people go to where the site is mainly text-based and there is a higher level of trust that I know of. Personally, I'd trust Reddit over a random blog from a Google search, but that isn't a high bar.

All of that being said, I think this will be a much bigger problem with misinformation generally on all of the internet as AI gets better, especially considering the election later this year.

page 1
more