Ask HN: Review their startup - icount.com | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Review their startup - icount.com

5 pointsvyrotek6 comments

A startup I worked closely with over the summer just launched and is looking for feedback. I've talked to them about the HN community and told them to sign up but haven't seen them do anything yet. Hopefully some good feedback would encourage them to join us!

icount is a social network for politics. They help you find the issues that matter to you and help you connect with your representitives. From what I understand, they are working directly with many politicians to make this their main communication platform.

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The core idea is certainally a good one. Creating a closer connection between the voters and the politicains is needed. If politicians are willing to take it seriously then it has great potentional.

Some initial impressions is I wold second it dosn't seem fully polished. The left menu wasn't actually links in IE8 and the most apparant search is a search for other users. It would seem most beneficial to have it be searching for Elected Officials. I did see the search in the top right that would search Officials, Candiated, and users which is of help. I also noticed that the summaries on Legislations is showing as straight text so you are seeing HTML code.

It also would be beneficial to have some filtering options. Such as sorting by Legislation Type(what it effects), Where a candidate/Official is located and what level of the Government are they apart of.

With a little UI work it can grab the users and has great potential. However these little things can stop from getting a more casual group which is what the site will need to reah that potential.

Just some initial impressions.

Great idea! Hope this means politicians will start listening to their voting base rather than special interest groups.

I think the idea is interesting, I just want to see the UX developed. It's all really rough right now. The y definitely didn't wait to release before it was fully polished ;)

The big thing I see is that it's really hard to figure out what you're supposed to do on the site - or what they even expect you to do.

Clicky - http://bit.ly/icount

The link will auto connect you with me. Follow some issues and say hi. They could really use feedback on the registration process, UI and usefulness of the idea.

The UI needs some work. Especially on the "left navigation" area to make it more useful. But I really liked finding my elected officials when I validated.

This is an interesting idea. Something needs to happen to get politicians listening better.

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