My first thought was, "ok, what does this do?" I then tried to figure out the site's purpose based on the limited posts but that wasn't sufficient. I then had to click to the About page. In my opinion, that's way too much thinking to just figure out the purpose of the site. Don't make a user think too much upon the very first time entering the site.
Maybe you could add a small bit of copy under the title briefly describing why the site is there. Or perhaps some catchy slogan that describes the purpose.
well said, exactly the same experience here. I looked all over that first page for an idea of what it did before clicking on "About." In general, leaving a page to figure out what it does is simply not what I expect to do anymore.
I don't feel your concept is compelling. Assuming I did feel the concept was compelling, I would use a text file as suggested, and not your site. The page feels extremely bare, which I imagine is due to my having enabled Adblock Plus.
I'm of the opinion that 99% of web startups that are ad based are doomed to fail. There's nothing here that could be packaged into a freemium/subscription model, so forget about that. Perhaps merchandising could work out (get your successes on a T-shirt), but I wouldn't count on it.
As a fun weekend project, I'd say it was a success. Plus, if it works for you and you like it, that's awesome. It's a stretch to call it a startup.
lots of advertisements makes me feel like you made a cheap site to make money. sure, it looks 2.0-ish and has a nice personable reason about why i should login, but now that i've added an achievement only to be rewarded with a new set of ads, that thin vaneer has become dirty. i feel used. you can do better.
Just want to add that I love the design. Very clean, nice colorscheme, it's gorgeous. Only nitpick would be that the body text in those boxes could be a tiny bit bigger.
(disclaimer: adblock user and the product itself is not of interest to me)
make an iPhone app where users can share there karma's with their friends/everyone it might be a successful business. Being a website, I doubt a lot of people are going to use it.
Maybe you could add a small bit of copy under the title briefly describing why the site is there. Or perhaps some catchy slogan that describes the purpose.