Union Square Ventures' new website
usv.comSaw that yesterday, and I find it weird.
Twitter login and author info, standalone posts (submitted links/stories), and Disqus comments.
It feels broken already, using a strange mix of identity from one communication tool and the interface from another ✝.
What I like is that by connecting to Twitter and using the USV team's accounts as the source you get a great idea of the character and interests of the VC team and fund.
What I dislike is that by opening that up to anyone, the front-page just becomes a mini-HN and the insight into the character of the team is immediately diluted.
I also dislike that they use Twitter identity as the author for a conversation/debate, but then use Disqus as the medium for the debate. This has two effects:
1) It breaks the feel of the audience, people present themselves slightly differently to different groups, for example how many HN profile pages carry identical info on the individual's Twitter page?
2) It splits the debate across Twitter (where some will reply directly to the author) and Disqus.
I also find the blog post placement weird. All of the design hints on the blog posts (the grey squares to the right) make me think that they are stories, just "Hot" stories that are being featured. Not the case though, grey squares are blog posts that are masquerading as submitted stories (the design consistency of the block).
It's a weird experience overall. I liked the effect that was achieved early-on of gaining insight into what the team are following and debating, but it feels confusing. Ultimately I think the best thing to do is just to follow interesting people on Twitter to gain this insight, follow trends and interests.
✝ Should probably be pointed out that Twitter and Disqus are both portfolio companies of USV, and perhaps that's why they chose to do this weird mashup. Makes me wonder about the comedy gold or real opportunities that might be achieved from mashups of other portfolio company offerings. Code academy lessons that start where you left off, every time you get a cab using Hailo?
yeah, we've talked a lot about having two identity systems on usv.com. it is not ideal. but twitter doesn't have comments and disqus doesn't have the user base that twitter has, yet.
we are thinking about ways we can connect the two together in a tighter way to reduce some of this
as you point out, twitter and disqus are USV portfolio companies and we love using and supporting the products our portfolio companies make
Well, I think you are onto something in terms of making the Tweets and things you're interested in as an individual and as a team more visible.
On that... nail on the head.
It would be good if you could add a subtle addition of highlighting the things on the board in that a USV team member has contributed.
I think of VC firms as akin to a curator of interesting companies and opportunities, and that the sum of the portfolio reflects strongly the personal curation of the VCs. It'd be ace to see that shine through this new board.
The only conflict in that is whether you see this board as becoming more than USV, or giving an insight into USV. If the former than you'd be right to hesitate about highlighting the team's contributions, if the latter then do it already.
I really like where you're going with this, and I honestly don't mind the use of twitter for authentication. You've already addressed the double sign-in thing, but I think my biggest issue has come from Disqus loading time.
At least 25% of the time that I've clicked on a comments link, I've had to sit around (after the page has loaded!) waiting for Disqus to load the comments (what I actually came to see). Sometimes they don't even load at all and I have to refresh the page. I completely understand that you guys love supporting your portfolio companies, but it seems like this type of site isn't quite as well suited for Disqus.
Just my two cents. I'm excited to see how you guys improve on this, and other than these issues I think you've done a great job so far.
You could invest in buro9's http://microco.sm and just use it for both those things instead. Problem solved. :)
checking it out now
Do you expect difference in the topics shared on USV to the ones on HN/reddit/etc?
I think you could benefit more from automatically analyzing links from many sources than to implement a sharing service yourself.
yes we do think it will be different
but only time will tell if we are right about that
I'm honestly surprised Twitter never came up with their own blog commenting system, a la Facebook and Google+. Although, Facebook neglected theirs, so I assume there might not be a demand.
I am too. I wrote up a brief note about how that might work here: http://tomvladeck.com/2013/10/04/twitter-conversation/
I always suspected that was the reason behind disqus.
we once tried to play in a corner of that space as well (focused more on expertise/ context), but it is clearly a chicken & egg situation.
How would that work? Wouldn't it essentially be replying to a master tweet from the website (assuming the website auto-tweeted new submissions, something that many sites do now)?
It could just be a comment thread 1 level deep, a la the current Twitter Conversations implementation. The website can prompt the user to syndicate the Tweet to their stream. (This is also how Facebook Comments work.)
would you really use a commenting system on your site in which people can only reply with 140 characters?
For comments, it would cut off the display on Twitter at 140 characters, with a link to view the full comment on the external site. This would also encourage site owners to adopt the system, as Twitter would push tons of traffic.
I wouldn't necessarily want every comment I write to become a tweet. Like this one, for example
None of the links off the main page seem to work.
Honestly, the page looks pretty decent. It seems less of a clone of HN, than just a page where you can comment and vote on links, which frankly, wasn't a concept created by Hacker News.
HN has been going downhill for a long time; while I think the YC team know this it's not something that they have had time to try and improve.
Voting rigging is the norm, companies flag posts about their competitors, there's zero transparency about moderation or flagging. The community has become a lot more negative, less supportive and less startupy.
There have been a number of attempts to build HN clones/rivals but generally the people creating them have focused on the technology rather than the community which is the important thing. USV is someone who could potentially build a great community and we should applaud them for trying.
we are not trying to compete with HN. We use it every day and find it invaluable.
what we are trying to do is open up our link sharing to the public so everyone can see what we are thinking about, reading, and discussing
and while doing that, we thought it would be great to let others do the same
i did give PG a preview of this about a month ago in case he was upset about it. he replied to me and did not seem to be
That's why you're more likely to attract HN users than the sites which are trying to compete directly :)
HN used to have a lot more in-depth "AskHNs" before Quora came along. Quora never tried to compete with HN, but rather it solved the problem that people were using HN for.
Plenty of people who use HN want curated startup content and intelligent discussion and will go wherever that's found.
In any-case more high-quality startup communities are good for everyone (YC, VCs, founders, etc.) so I don't think that competition is likely to be a significant issue for anyone.
It would be useful if someone can tag the topics.
HN is useful to see what is hot. Hot does not mean it is relevant to all of us. If I am raising money, I would be interested in topics tagged to raising money - the fact that you (fred wilson) posted, up voted, commented the topic is a good signal that topic is relevant.
I also like the idea of commenting system that rapgenius and medium deploys. I believe that the idea of seeing the most up voted comment is broken. You might have something to say on a particular sentence in fund raising article- I'm interested to see that. Others may have interesting things to say about other sentences. If USV can pull content online and allow people to comment each sentence, I believe this would really add value to our community.
USV does have a tag system on the full body of the post submission.
Will you be releasing the core engine for other niche discussion sites? HealthTech and neuroscience come to mind.
yes, we're considering open sourcing all of the code, if that's what you mean
in general we're very pro-open source
I don't see this as an HN clone. If anything is a clone, HN is a clone of Slashdot->Digg->Reddit. Not that I think any of these sites have an exclusive claim to a threaded discussion board.
AAARGH.
Who edited the title? You just took a discussion of how this was a clone of HN website and half way through turned into... into what exactly?
The submission was about USV and HN designs being similar, not that USV got new design. You just nuked the context. Seriously, mods, get your shit together.
> You just took a discussion of how this was a clone of HN website and half way through turned into... into what exactly?
Considering the conversation was "it's not a HN clone" I think the mods have their shit together.
Sure looks like one to me. HN is a tech startup focused link sharing and discussion site. So is this. The one claim to the contrary by those involved in this thread doesn't even contradict that, they say it is for sharing the links they are browsing. Basically the same except they have more power on their site than here.
I wouldn't call it a HN clone. It's not like HN was an original idea - it's just a news voting site (Reddit, Digg etc.) with a specific niche. The important part of each of these sites is the community, not the idea.
And the niche in this case is exactly the same...
We'd like it to be differentiated. Discussions on how we view things can be quite different from how the tech community at large does. So we think there's value in other people seeing a discussion from that angle, as well as being the first online community in which you can directly engage in a discussion with a VC
I just registered using Twitter and submitted a post of my own content. Seems to work, although I'm curious if it will get deleted since I'm not cool enough to associate up-and-center with the venture crowd.
Unlike HN, you must submit text in the body of a submission. Which is somewhat redundant.
our thought process was that if you can't write something interesting about the link, even just a sentence, it's probably not worth posting
it also has the benefit of engendering more of a discussion. i'm more likely to comment on a post if the OP has already commented on it him/herself
but yes this is something we talked about internally
In my case, I just copy/pasted a sentence from the article itself, and that seems to be the case for many of the current submissiosn to USV.com.
it won't get deleted if its not spam
and everyone gets a vote up or down so the best links will rise to the top
Pretty sure it's a digg/reddit/hn/whatever clone.
I call them linkdumps.
At least the USV site looks good on mobile unlike the pinch to zoom nonsense needed for HN.
Ironically, this post is currently #1 on there.
I loved their 404 page - http://www.usv.com/404
This is an attractive design and it's always good to have another place to discuss things.
My biggest problem, on first impressions, is that the design gives the most emphasis to the least important part: the submitter. What I love about HN and Reddit is that I can get through someone's 600-word comment and be thoroughly enlightened or angered and not care or even notice that it was authored by tptacek or some long-time lurker with just 50 karma. It's only because I've read HN frequently that I quickly associate tptacek's handle (if I stop to look at the handle) with having karma...otherwise, he's just some other commenter with something very insightful or aggravating to read...HN's design rightfully de-eephasizes the authority given by identity to a comment and submission, letting the content stand for itself. This is the exact opposite the USQ forum's current design, with Twitter handles overpowering everything else, even the already too-large and boldened headlines.
Edit: I don't mind the use of Twitter handles. I think the avatars should be axed, though, and perhaps the handles should be moved to the far right so that the user has to read the headline before being able to notice the submitter name. Yes, I realize this would make it very close to a "HN ripoff" but big deal...copy the best parts of HN.
There have been studies showing pictures with articles increase interest. Even GMail and Google search have been moving that direction. GMail on Android now has pictures next to the emails. Google search now checks the site author information and shows pictures. So USV is inline with modern best practices, HN isn't on this. You have good ideals wanting no pictures and to decide everything on text, but if your ideals make the site only good for techies, it isn't a good change for getting users and interest and contributors in general.
USV.com post about this HN post: http://www.usv.com/posts/union-square-ventures-new-website-i...
HN post about this USV.com post about this HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6558580
I think it's okay to be an HN "clone". They're taking a clearly successful model and using it for a community. And it's an existing community, which makes it all the more workable. Kudos!
Disclaimer: I "cloned" HN when making http://lifestyle.io. I didn't have a preexisting community, but a small handful of people find it useful. Is there a lot of overlap in content? Sure. Do I discover stuff I might have missed on HN? Yep.
I just wish I were a better community organizer.
Wow. I just hope their EIR didn't come up with this. Otherwise I would feel very disappointed. What surprise me is the lack of identity. Why? Why would they even want to do this? They are USfuckingV. One of the most aspirational and important funds and yet they do this. Meh. Instead of us posting stuff on their WhateverTheyCallNewsSite we should be reading them and learning how to do stuff.
this is not about you reading us
this is about us reading you
"What's going on?!
Not your fault, we're experiencing a server error. Try again in a moment! Fail-Fred "
face plam thats all I get when I click on comment.
Fixed!
404 was a surprise from Nick.
I think we'll see a trend of VCs creating HN clones. Wouldn't be surprised if they are already working on them.
Brad Feld already tried starting a HN clone and didn't pan out. http://tech.co/brad-feld-startup-revolution-hub-2012-12
I don't think USV's case is any different.
maybe, but he didn't put in on the front page of foundry's web site.
we've been using this internally for a while to share and discuss links and we find it very valuable
so if a community doesn't develop around this, it will likely just be a public page where USV posts and discusses links, which in and of itself should be useful to entrepreneurs to see what we are interested in and talking about with each other
Very weird approach by one of the most recognized and respected venture firms in the industry.
Other than connecting people to unique content, I don't really get what's going with the whole redesign and HackerNews-esque feel.
We wanted to take conversations that we have internally and share those with the community. Opening it up for others to create and join conversations.
Fair enough.
Haha, I liked the old title better, "Union Square Ventures' new website is an HN clone". Much more informative and the first thing I thought when I followed the link anyway.
Well, what do you think of this French site : http://news.humancoders.com/ ?
(not mine)
At least it's responsive aka mobile friendly.
The webfont used for the boxes down the right hand side seems to render really poorly in Windows w/Chrome.
Amusingly, this thread is the top story.
HN clone without any real userbase at all.