Ze Frank’s Star.me Is Like Being In Kindergarten All Over Again

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/04/star-me/

by revorad • 15 years ago

30 27 15 years ago

techcrunch.com

joshu5• 15 years ago

hooray! i'm glad to see this finally launch. (i'm an investor)

revorad3• 15 years ago

Why did you invest?

joshu5• 15 years ago

I thought it would be fun to join Ze for the ride.

covercash• 15 years ago

Did you invest specifically in star.me or in Ze Frank Games?

joshu5• 15 years ago

I invested in Ze. I figured it would be amusing.

npr• 15 years ago

Why did you invest in such a dumb startup ?

jamesbressi3• 15 years ago

Yup, Josh has a history of dumb. I mean, who would invest their time in making an online bookmarking service when browsers had bookmarking capability? Yeah, like that would ever allow you to cash in...

I (like yourself) don't see myself having any interest in this startup--but I'm not the market. I see you are new here (if your account isn't a throw away), but amidst all the down voting you are getting, let me welcome you to HN and say don't build any animosity over getting down voted by the community. It's only because you didn't write a valid argument and instead slapped "dumb" on someone. I believe you have a good argument in you and are probably quite intelligent. I look forward to seeing you contribute on HN in your more capable capacity.

scalyweb2• 15 years ago

This is the product from someone with a doctorate in neuroscience? So much for moving the human collective forward. Now I don't feel so bad about the kids coming out with undergraduate CS degrees feeling like they don't know how to program.

I don't use Facebook but I do use Twitter. I do love games. What is it in regards to social networks, games and the idea of positive reinforcement am I missing with this project?

revorad3• 15 years ago

What.... am I missing with this project?

Umm, the fact that you haven't seen it yet?

scalyweb2• 15 years ago

Is star.me not accessible/visible to you?

JoeAltmaier• 15 years ago

Well, it is cloying and silly. But it has something many, many games do not: actual feedback. So many have none at all, or unrelated to real positive values.

I wonder if it will be 'gameable' - elementary school kids giving one another stars to pump their stats.

endtime• 15 years ago

I hate to be so negative about something so positive, but the only word that comes to mind is ghastly. I was actually thrown off a bit by the dissonance between the positive tone of the article and the product being described.

>themed Stars with messages like “UR CRAZY,”"UR CUTE,” “BFF,”"Frenemy”"Bromance,” and (!) “Mom Jeans.”

I don't think you're going to find too many adults who are really all that interested in embracing their inner 12-year-old girl.

>Both the actions of giving and receiving Stars cause new and more diverse stars to be unlocked

The reason games like WoW work, IMO, is because there's enough shininess to distract you from the TINO (time in, numbers out) nature of the game. If you distill that down to its core I don't know if people will like what they see. Kind of like how I'll enjoy broccoli smothered in butter or mixed into a cheese dip, because it doesn't really taste like broccoli, but eaten plain it's a chore.

Hey, I'd love to be wrong. I generally want people to succeed, and I'm sure everyone involved here is a nice person...but I'm not sold.

bitserf• 15 years ago

I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, though I don't understand it.

It'd be awfully dull if everything had to be optimized for maximum utility, the better to mechanize us.

njharman• 15 years ago

> I don't think you're going to find too many adults who are really all that interested in embracing their inner 12-year-old girl

If you look at Ze Frank's many past efforts you will see that is exactly what he's adept at finding.

gyardley• 15 years ago

Remember, people - just because it doesn't appeal to the typical reader of Hacker News, it's not doomed to failure.

There are many, many people out there with preferences different from your own. I suspect several of my family members would love this.

gfodor• 15 years ago

And so we continue to amuse ourselves to death.

pclark• 15 years ago

I wish people on Hacker News would be (much) nicer about peoples startups.

georgemcbay• 15 years ago

I would send you a UR NICE star for this comment but since HN doesn't have that you'll have to settle for an upvote.

seigenblues• 15 years ago

Did any of the haters on this thread watch his TED talks? There's the one linked to in the article (from 2004), and another one Ze gave last year (http://www.zefrank.com/ted/2010.html).

Having watched "the show" back in the olden days before youtube, i'm convinced ze is a genius. He's incomprehensible to HN because he really doesn't care how it works, he only cares about how it's being applied.

It's all about the application of technology to make a human connection for him. His only metric is the quality of that human connection -- which is weird to people who care about clean design, or scalability, or neat javascript "fade" effects.

Ze Frank’s Star.me Is Like Being In Kindergarten All Over Again

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