Ask HN: Please review my new project, Film vs Film

by chaosmachine • 17 years ago

23 29 17 years ago

This is an idea I've been working on for the last month or so. I wanted to make a fun and addictive site with a low barrier to participation. After iterating through a few prototypes with friends, I opened the site to the public last week.

Some data so far: The average visitor generates over 50 page views, and stays for longer than 5 minutes. There's significant click-through to Amazon, which is how the site generates revenue. People seem to enjoy the site, but only a few seem to be sharing it with their friends.

I have a Facebook Platform app in the works, which I hope will help to increase the site's virality. In the mean time, I'd be grateful for any feedback you could provide.

louislouis• 17 years ago

Average of 50 page views is great, but whats the % of returning visitors? I think u've gota find/create a reason for users to return. Neat idea nonetheless.

oneplusone• 17 years ago

This webpage has a redirect loop.

The webpage at http://filmvsfilm.com/ has resulted in too many redirects. Clearing your cookies for this site or allowing third-party cookies may fix the problem. If not, it is possibly a server configuration issue and not a problem with your computer.

chaosmachine4• 17 years ago

Thanks, this should be fixed now.

davidw• 17 years ago

Nice, but to keep me interested for longer, I think it would have to have a bit more to it.

matthias• 17 years ago

Good name! We could never come up with a descriptive title for this at http://www.greatmovieexperiment.com/ The name seems so obvious now. Our goal was to create a list of the top films by showing all the pairings of films randomly. I presume a "top fights" page on yours will be forthcoming?

NEPatriot• 17 years ago

Got me hooked. I just kept clicking until I realized... hey what are you doing? Stop clicking! So that part is done.

But then what happens?

chaosmachine4• 17 years ago

In theory, you're supposed to think "hey, I've got a great idea for a match-up" and then head over here:

http://filmvsfilm.com/make

In practice, most people don't seem to discover that part of the site, or aren't interested.

RyanMcGreal• 17 years ago

If there's a "make your own match-up" link on the page, I didn't notice it. Granted, I wasn't looking for it, but there you go.

joshfinnie2• 17 years ago

You could always have a counter or something that will trigger a popup (or new page) that hightens the awareness of making your own match-up. If this is a goal for this website, it is definitely something to look into.

ahpeeyem• 17 years ago

I noticed it, but am too lazy to create one. Love the site though it took restraint to not keep going, there's some great match ups.

Also, it would be cool if it showed which film is winning out of a given pair after you vote, like hotornot shows you a person's score after you vote on them.

ANH2• 17 years ago

Yeah, building a population of contributors is hard, as I'm discovering ( http://payload42.com ). There might be some decent suggestions at http://meta.stackexchange.com where folks are trying to figure out better ways to seed Q&A sites.

fara• 17 years ago

yet another kitten war? http://kittenwar.com/

joshfinnie2• 17 years ago

I thought puppy war (http://www.puppywars.com/) was another kitten war?

Disclousure: I am not sure which one of these actually came out first and I don't care to look.

paraschopra• 17 years ago

Thanks for not calling it startup. No offence to anyone, but I genuinely like it when people call their projects as projects.

haydenchambers• 17 years ago

there were some films too close to call but I wanted to see the result.. eg "lost in translation" vs "adaptation"

also would be good to have a filter eg "only show most controversial" or "only show scifi"

JoeAltmaier• 17 years ago

More details from the movies - tag lines, famous scenes, remind me of the movie - the box isn't enough.

gcb• 17 years ago

that's useful. I'm brazilian, i've seen most of those movies in my childhood, with the title translated (i.e. f*!&$d up). the DVD cover might not give much detail to figure out the movie in some rare cases.

alexandros• 17 years ago

why don't you structure the whole thing like a league? films that 'win' a match, get paired to each other and so on until you find the 'greatest film', Granted, many will disagree, but it should make the project a bit more substantial and may make people come back.

ovi256• 17 years ago

Yup, provide a time-limited contest : "December 1st (or whaterver), come back to see the winner!".

This could create quite a viral loop.

Also, try to provide a sense of tribe : make people sense they belong as fans of a certain movies. This will greatly increase their participation.

quizbiz• 17 years ago

I found myself voting for movies I wasn't familiar with. The link to skip isn't strong enough.

ivenkys• 17 years ago

Addictive, very low barrier to entry - but where's the stickiness ? Why would i go back and more importantly what is there to make me remember my fights of which film won or lost ?

alex_c• 17 years ago

I've set up a similar voting site with moderate success (about 3.5 million page views in a bit over a year):

http://www.bestsporecreature.com/creatures

A couple of points:

- The biggest hurdle is that you need to have watched both movies to really decide between them - with a simple image voting site, the judgement can be instant. Movie buffs will likely enjoy it, more casual movie watchers like myself probably won't get far.

- related to the above: it needs to be easier/more obvious how to skip a pair.

- to really make it sticky, you should offer something to the hardcore set. In a kittenwars, that's pretty obvious - people can upload pictures of their cats, and keep coming back to see how they do. It doesn't translate very well to movies, because people don't really add "their" movies - and there's even less emotional attachment to a "pairing" of movies. It's mildly interesting, but not something you want to check obsessively throughout the day. You need a way for people to keep score and know when they're "winning".

Which movie is better IS an interesting argument - but the point is often to show off one's knowledge of movies, which this site doesn't really let you do.

How about this: when you create a fight, you can state which movie you think is better, or estimate a percentage win for each movie. Then, your "score" is how many people agree with you through the blind voting on the home page. The more matchups you add, and the closer your initial guess, the better your "score". Add a leaders list, and you're getting places now.

vorador• 17 years ago

There's something I don't understand : why is everything based on opposition ? I mean, why not create a connection website ? What connects "breathless" ("à bout de souffle") to "la scala" ?

bemmu• 17 years ago

I agree with others that there should be some kind of scoring. It's surprising how addicted people get to trying to improve their score, especially if there is some leaderboard present. Just give people points for the activities you hope they will do.

You could give points for correct guesses (maybe with time limit) and give even more points for creating their own fights, possibly depending on how "good" the combination of movies is (not sure how to determine that).

When using this site, it beat my expectations in that I actually found some movies I intend to watch after using it. Stuff I had forgotten exists, like I had watched Evil Dead 3 but skipped 1 and 2. Thanks for reminding.

petesalty• 17 years ago

Sorry, this isn't really good feedback, but I think others have covered most of the points. I loved some of the match ups, like the one between The Professional and The Littlest Mermaid. I couldn't decide.

jeroen• 17 years ago

Have you considered moving the "Pick one!" column to the middle? It might be more obvious there.

Why is the about-page styled differently from the rest of the site? It also has a stray </a>.

More (minor) html errors: http://vldtr.com/?key=filmvsfilm.com

chaosmachine4• 17 years ago

I did try putting the column in the middle, but I didn't like the result.

The about page is borrowed from another project of mine, I didn't want too spend much time on it, it's more of a placeholder than anything.

Fixed those validation errors, thanks.

ANH2• 17 years ago

I can dig it. The functionality is right there as soon as you arrive. Fun to compare movies I'm familiar with, but also kinda cool to see juxtapositions of movies I have seen with ones I haven't.

Suggestions? I dunno, maybe a big fat arrow to skip to the next pair instead of the text "skip it". For some reason it took me a little longer than it should have to locate that element.

Ask HN: Please review my new project, Film vs Film

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