ASK HN: Thank you messages are lost in the cloud?

[erkany]

We believe that thank you messages are lost in the cloud and people are not getting enough recognition for their contributions on the internet. We plan to solve this problem by developing a "thank you button" ( similar to FB like ) which will be embedded under the blog posts and other places like forums, social media sites etc. The button will collect some meta data like the post URL,Title etc. and users will be able to submit an optional thank you note with optional tags.

People will have a thank you score and a profile page with a "thank you feed" which links back to their contributions.

How does it sound?

[CanBug4AnyCode]

First a question: Do you also think to categorize/tag the posts (give user the opportunity to choose the tags) (eg: the Q&A section in linkedin)?

Use case: If there are categories, you can (optionally) show user's strengths in the profile page. (eg: user has posts under "DIY stuff", "cooking", "gadgets", "coding" ....)

With that profile, I also would like to see the average thank-rate of the user, and see his other most thanked posts that might interest me.

Ranking: I'm not sure about the ranking, but you may consider to provide also "top" lists for the categories, so I can also the most appreciated posts of a domain/category of my interest

Finally: If there would be a way to see the "top" lists, there also should be a way to prevent abuses by bots/automation etc

There are many other ideas that might be linked to yours, it's worth to give it a try :)

[taha_bayrak]

Categorization: yes, we do think to give user the opportunity to tag its post/thank you message. We're also planning to create an 'auto-tagging' mechanism based on the type of page that our 'thank-you' button is placed.

Ranking: Yes, we will provide "top" lists for the categories. But the ranking algorithm may include other variables than the "# of thanks" to make it more accurate.

[erkany]

Thank you for the feedback.Very helpful!

As you said there are many ideas/features that may be added to the product but we would like to keep it simple.."dead simple"

[sixtofour]

It sounds interesting, but how would a Thank You be different from or better than a re-tweet and similar actions?

[erkany]

thank you for the feedback. Fb-Like and Re-tweet promotes the post itself rather than the author. ( Of course it links back to author profile or blog post but not directly ). In our system "thank you" messages will be linked to author which will accumulate a score and will help indicate the influence of the author. In other words the user will be in the center vs the content.

[reecepacheco]

sounds pretty good

i like that it's based around 'karma' in some sense

not sure where it goes or the best way to get adoption, but generally feel that internet denizens are pretty 'thankful' people (at least here in NYC) and it could be worthwhile regardless of biz opps. my $.02

[erkany]

Thank you Reece,

Adoption is the key. Lets see if NYC people are indeed 'thankful' :)

[CanBug4AnyCode]

"Karma" sounds a good point to promote:)