Yannect: geographically designed forums | Hacker News Reader

Yannect: geographically designed forums

4 pointsnilnull3 comments

I've written a geographically designed forum site called yannect.com (see e.g. Austin city https://www.yannect.com/us/tx/austin) but I haven't got much traction for the last year despite many different efforts. I implemented quite a lot of features like geographically based searches, state wide forums, option for threaded comments, mobile version, etc. Forums are AJAX driven but most of the site also works with Javascript disabled.

Before I shut the site down I'm looking for some suggestions and ideas what you'd do or try with such a site. What would you change or add? Why can't this site get traction? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

For those who are interested, I wrote it in Python and use Postgres for SQL and NoSQL.

I'll bite.

1. Yslow gives the main page a Grade D. I only ran the test AFTER I visited and it 'felt' slow. If you managed to get first time visits, this would most likely turn users away.

2. I don't see any analytics on the site. Without analytics, you have a limited picture of who does visit, and where they come from, possibly what they have done. Server logs handle a little of this, but nothing beats analytics.

3. I'm in Georgia. Thats not 'new york, texas or california'. You have nothing to offer me if I visited. So, you ask why this hasn't gotten traction? Because you have limited an already limited set of forums even more. A subset of a subset, if you will.

4. Browser forward/back behave oddly. Work down into a city, then hit the back button, and you don't actually go up a level, you leave the site.

5. City sorting is also odd. Spaces are a relevant char. Sanderson and Sandia should not be between San Benito and San Diego

My theory: Offers way to many options. Your Austin page gives tons of possible links to click, but IMHO the only really engaging ones are the recent discussions – one pane of 8, one column of 4. (and all of those are really dense with stuff). And the school boards probably have an different demographic than the city-wide ones. + for many people facebook groups probably have already taken that space (or /r/austin, + craigslist), so you probably have existing competition.

I totally agree with you

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