I've been thinking about putting a spin on social news and I decided to put up a prototype to test my idea.<p>The idea/twist is simply this: <i>Use full sentences as a subreddit name.</i><p>So instead of subscribing to subreddits:<p>- worldnews<p>- technology<p>You would 'subscribe' to:<p>- I am interested in world news.<p>- I am interested in technology news.<p>You can subscribe to other 'full sentence' subreddits like:<p>- I love Star Trek.<p>- I need a student loan.<p>- I enjoy rock climbing.<p>- I am worried about the global economy.<p>Thus, submitting a link would look like:<p>- <i>Title</i>: Greek tremors continue to rock markets - CNN.com<p>- <i>URL</i>: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/05/05/...<p>- <i>Target this link to people with this profile</i>:<p><pre><code> -- I am interested in world news.
-- I am interested in technology news.
-- I am worried about the global economy.
</code></pre>
The difference may look minor, but I think it provides an interesting twist on submitting links.<p>For example, here's another possible submission:<p>- <i>Title</i>: Star Trek club is more than ‘stereotypical nerds’<p>- <i>URL</i>: http://www.cw.ua.edu/2010/04/22/star-trek-club-is-more...<p>- <i>Target this link to people with this profile</i>:<p><pre><code> -- I love Star Trek.
-- I enjoy rock climbing.
</code></pre>
If you want to play around with submitting a link, you can use any of these demo accounts:<p>hn_demo1<p>hn_demo2<p>hn_demo3<p>hn_demo4<p>The password for all of them is: hacker
I'm not sure that that is a large enough differentiator.<p>If I understand correctly, you're changing 'topics' into sentences. Is that correct?<p>the nice thing about not having a sentence to assign as a subject is that it is faster for the person adding the link, and doesn't take up as much real estate when navigating.<p>I was having some serious usability issues with your site.
The colors made it VERY difficult to focus on what I was supposed to be looking at.
As well, the layout didn't really direct me as to where I should be looking.<p>Most important, I kept looking at the Social News section, expecting to see the submitted links. Then I thought that maybe i needed to answer the questions before getting the links.<p>It took a bit before I realized that the links where in the 'recommendations for you' section.<p>Overall, you've put a huge number of roadblocks between the user and the content, which is a big no-no.