Show HN: RichestOnTheWeb - my submission to Hacka2thon

http://richestontheweb.com

by rjvir • 15 years ago

38 41 15 years ago

richestontheweb.com

jacobwg• 15 years ago

Care to elaborate on how this works? I couldn't find any about page (and the site's down now).

From what I could gather, this looked like "person-who-just-spent-their-fortune on the web". :)

suivix• 15 years ago

Maybe you should make it the newest bidder can leave a message?

rjvir5• 15 years ago

Yup, thats coming soon! We will show the newest bidder's most recent tweet.

latch2• 15 years ago

If I understand it, it's a pretty horrible idea. For a lot of reasons. But, the most obvious, is how easy it'll be for you to game it. When someone makes a bid, you can simply outbid them but not actually pay any money.

rjvir5• 15 years ago

I see your concern, but we haven't done this yet - we have no reason to. There is no actual reward for being the "richest", we could care less as to who claims the title.

If we ever auto-outbid people, they would find out right away, and wouldn't return to the site.

latch2• 15 years ago

  we could care less as to who claims the title

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auction#Chandelier_bidding

Also, how would people find out? You just need to "be smart" about it. Don't always use the same username, change how long you wait.

Kenan• 15 years ago

On Firefox 7.0.1 on Windows 7, the bid overlay automatically comes up and blocks the leaderboard with no way of dimissing it. Works on Chrome 15.0.874.120, though ;)

rjvir5• 15 years ago

We used Twitter Bootstrap for the overlay, with the understanding that it may be unreliable. I'll look into a fix as soon as I can.

treelovinhippie• 15 years ago

Oh gawd, please remove yourself from the Internet. You're disqualified.

rjvir5• 15 years ago

Ok, I'll try!

desireco42• 15 years ago

I love the idea :) some of the comments from 'haterz' kind of make sense, let richest person leave a message

Urgo2• 15 years ago

The real richest on the web is you from this. Reminds me of Million Dollar Homepage. Great idea :)

Finbarr• 15 years ago

First thing that came to my mind. Really gimmicky idea that could see the creator make a pretty penny if it catches on.

Urgo2• 15 years ago

Exactly. I mean I'm not bidding on it. But I wasn't one of the people who helped milliondollarhomepage.com reach its goal and then some either :) I'm just calling it like it is, a really good idea worth trying :)

prodigal_erik2• 15 years ago

It's very disturbing that a dollar auction on absolutely nothing isn't even the most unethical tactic I've seen … this week.

rjvir5• 15 years ago

We are transparent about the fact that there is no tangible benefit to bidding.

prodigal_erik2• 15 years ago

If only the winner pays, it's just a silly game. But when the losers also pay, it becomes a genuinely abusive exploit of human irrationality which most people are not aware of. Please take it down.

http://www.mediate.com/articles/noll1.cfm

http://www.heretical.com/pound/dollarl.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/mind-over-money.html

itsnotvalid• 15 years ago

The "RichestOnTheWeb" would then always be the hosting one as they always get the sum of all bids.

Of course who actually cares to bid?

thigbee• 15 years ago

I think it's a fun idea. I do think there should be a FAQ or About page or something.

hendzen2• 15 years ago

If the money went to charity, this could actually have some potential.

Arro• 15 years ago

All these negative comments are a good thing. You've made something that polarizes people. I'd take that any day over something that makes people say "meh".

jasonostrander• 15 years ago

Very similar to http://www.thebigballer.com/

d3x• 15 years ago

You should rename it to dumbestontheweb

LVB• 15 years ago

To those of you who are just dying to type your credit card information into a website right now, I'd like to suggest http://www.kiva.org instead.

run4yourlives• 15 years ago

pfft... Kiva doesn't tell me I'm rich! For only a buck and a quarter, I can get my name on the site!

inuhj• 15 years ago

Similar to the "I am rich." app released on the app store so long ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich was art. I'm not sure if I think your site is imitation or art as well.

artursapek2• 15 years ago

I remember that as the best news story when the app store launched.

artursapek2• 15 years ago

The background is funky in the top 20 pixels or so. Also, this is a really unattractive idea.

nxn• 15 years ago

Why did the price go up when vowelnoun and netspencer were retweeted? https://twitter.com/richestontheweb

dylangs1030• 15 years ago

I don't mean to be critical, but your idea doesn't have any real point. It isn't selling a service or a product, which is a requirement of a startup company, especially in technology sectors. So I'm not saying it has no point, but what do you intend to do with the website? Where is it going?

hendzen2• 15 years ago

I didn't make this site, but this is something whipped up for a hackathon, not a real attempt at a company.

MrFacepalm• 15 years ago

Rename it to 'richestFOOLontheweb'!

chintan100• 15 years ago

First of all, congrats for polarizing crowds. :)

This can be a good way to increase your Twitter account visibility and hope to gain some followers through this site.

Right now, the bids are low but if this idea sustainable or not needs to be seen. You can hope to make it big if businesses find it a good way to advertise and promote products and product launches.

simonbrown• 15 years ago

You're asking people to enter their credit card details on a non-SSL page?

Tichy3• 15 years ago

Some time ago I registered 100EuroTweets which I guess was kind of a similar idea: you would be able to send messages to that account by paying 100€. Presumably people would follow the account to see who would be crazy enough to pay, and in turn the tweets would actually get some exposure for their money.

I never got round to implementing it, because I wanted it to be fully automated (checking a bank account), which is slightly complicated in Germany.

Anyway, it was just a silly idea in the spirit of the Million Dollar Page, for fun - just like yours, I guess. I actually like your variant better, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be quite successful.

Tichy3• 15 years ago

If people have been paying in 1 cent increments, that site already made 80$ - not too shabby for a Hackathon project :-) (126*127/2 was my calculation).

Show HN: RichestOnTheWeb - my submission to Hacka2thon

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