I see potential in this. It's almost like walking into a room full of people all watching one TV. There's appeal to that; online video does have the watch-whatever-you-want feature, but a lot of times people just want to turn on a TV channel and watch whatever comes on.<p>If you really want to make this a startup, you should make it exactly that. Take control over the public rooms, feed them with quality content, and call them channels. Hire moderators to keep the content fresh. Show occasional commercial advertisements. I think the closer you make it to TV, the more willing people will be to sit through advertisements (random idea: sell to advertisers what people say during their advertisements). Voting is an ok feature, but you should limit that to private rooms.<p>I can see myself going to a "comedy central" channel and just watching whatever it has on, not needing worrying about what to watch next. Knowing that others are watching the same thing is pretty compelling.
Hey guys, I've been reading HN for a long time (since before it was called HN). I rarely comment or submit to HN, but I am really proud to finally submit my site here.<p>Would appreciate any feedback you have!<p>Thanks
Repeat after me: A website is not a startup.<p>It's bad enough that everyone with half a business idea calls it a startup, but now everyone with half a website prototype is joining in.
A fantastic simple idea. Video interaction is brilliant through gaming add-on. 3 comments:<p>1) Find a way to MAINTAIN gaming during the video (e.g. live comments adds of people in the room to the images?). That's because right now its fun to vote every 1:30minutes but then kind of boring to watch.. Althrough I stayed 3X more than initially planned ;-) This would allow maintaing people on site too since many people left/stopped voting after 1st video.<p>2) POINTS need to be prominent & STATUS linked: it's not about the money for me but the challenge & game. Many sites followed this model. When I win, the reward of points would need to incenvize me somehow. Make it big/prominent? What about leveraging STATUS with points too: status changes with results from say commoner to king to rock-star...<p>3) Consider Consumer Goods ads for site monetization: FMCG would pay to have their ads displayed (what about an ad of 10'' every few where people vote too???). I know that's old model but still there is something in the voting that could be a way for consumer research or brand 'interraction' of sort<p>Overall will be big, well done and keep it up!
I can't find a source now, but this reminds me of the story where Bill and Melinda gates would stay in touch when one of them was traveling by having an over-the-phone movie date night. Both of them rent a movie and start it at the same time, they call each other and chat throughout.<p>Edit: Here's a cite but it tells a slightly different story than I remembered. <a href="http://davis.foulger.info/papers/RelationshipEqualsSumMedia.htm" rel="nofollow">http://davis.foulger.info/papers/RelationshipEqualsSumMedia....</a>
Fun stuff! It's like being the robot on mst3k. The site has a real soul to it... I find the jankiness of the design endearing, I love that you assigned me the name "renny", and I like the random touch of having my name tag appear when I click to vote. It's fun to move around! I think frozenhot is memorable, it's fine.<p>Main thing: how are you going to bring people here?<p>A few minor suggestions: make the vote countdown shorter, allow me to click the x on the popover ad, add a "this video sucks, skip it" button, fix the damn lagging. Maybe add a way for people to ping the screen for additional lulz.
Couple questions after visting:<p>1) How does it work?
2) What does it do?
3) Why should I sign up for an account?<p>These are things that the front page should answer immediately. .<p>But most importantly, how do you expect to generate revenue from this project? Not having a clear answer to that question would probably eliminate this as being called a "startup."<p>Best of luck on your project!
I like the concept. It's sort of like watching TV with a bunch of friends. Interactive voting on the next video is very cool.<p>But, here's your biggest challenge: This concept doesn't work without a bunch of users showing up at the same time.<p>Tomorrow, when this is off the front page of HN, how do you plan to get people to come back? If you can solve that, you've got something.
Fun! Here's an idea for you to consider for getting money out of it:<p>display the two choices "coming up" and accept person betting either on one or the other. Don't show how many people placed a bet.<p>When the choice is done - the part that won takes the bets of those who lost.<p>If a draw - like "zero", the house takes all the bets and makes a random choice.<p>"Make money while watching TV" - could be an appealing tagline to some :-)<p>---
edit: creating custom rooms could be a killer feature. Think of how a VJ can be put into the mix above - maybe leave him the %% of micropayments or points from each winning vote, or something like that.<p>I think this could make it.
This very cool. One application I can see for this is for viewing video together with someone across great distances like the example you talk about - maybe even in a long-distance relationship. Can you move beyond using YouTube or is the tech based on some of the features exposed by the YouTube API?
Great implementation. I had the same exact idea for a while, but I didn't really have a feeling for it.<p>Suggestion: Run commercials during the 20-30 seconds in between videos (while users are voting).
Concept: Very interesting. Nothing more I can add that hasn't already been said by others.<p>Design: Very poor. Right now it looks unprofessional.<p>Looking forward to seeing where you go with this!
Love it. :D Especially being able to vote on what we view next. I'm just going to go ahead and say we have a winner here. I can't stop watching the Family Channel.
kind of fun, you need to somehow generate interaction .. by a gaming/voting system so its like a game.<p>oh, yeah.. analyze the chatlogs.. just discussing the whole thing in-chat ;)