Ask HN: Review my auto social network startup

[MotoBabble]

MotoBabble launched a few weeks ago. It's a full functioning auto social network with some work still needing to be done. It is all in house coding that we have worked on over the past several months. MotoBabble looks to take all of the functions of car forums and put them into one website where the user has a uniform experience.

MotoBabble allows the user to create albums and upload unlimited photos of their vehicle, create mod lists and set ups, invite friends and integrate with other social media sites, ask questions, answer questions, and vote on other answers, and start discussions in specific vehicle communities.

At the moment we are using grassroots efforts to spread the word and continue to implement new features on the site. I'd love to hear your thoughts and/or suggestions.

Link: http://motobabble.com

[jefecoon]

Hey Motobabble-

Disclaimer: I used to manage ad sales & operations at CarDomain.com, the largest social network in the automotive space.

I browsed your site but didn't create an account, create my own car page, or upload any pics.

Your site looks great: very nice photo browser, look/feel. Some hopefully constructive criticism:

a) having to login to read comments posted on a vehicle is a major barrier to users spending time on your site, and is going to limit the SEO value of your content => why not just show what people have to say, and provide more engaging content to the folks who happen to find your site via search? By showing this I think you'll increase both your SEO and likelihood of converting browsers => registered members.

b) what's the value of membership? what's your "club?" CarDomain, while it doesn't have the glossy look/feel of your site, has a very large membership (850k members/cars profiled last i checked), and vibrant sub-communities of conversation around trucks, donks/boxs/bubbles, tuners, etc etc -- what's your community, your niche? who are you catering to? where's your beachhead? You may want to consider catering to a specific community to help increase your traction, and expand outward once you're rolling...

c) are you going to police your content? browsed and noticed a couple fake-y looking profiles, e.g. http://motobabble.com/bearx/2012-a4 which is listed as an Audi (i <3 audis btw) & it's actually stock/OEM photos of a VW... if you're building a community they'll appreciate accuracy & authenticity. The blog staff @ CarDomain invests a lot of time doing this, and their community really appreciates it... nice to know if you ask someone about how their Bugatti Veyron handles that they actually know.

As @dif points out i) one reason CarDomain & others remain so strong is the amazing amount of content and membership they already have. How can you quickly build a community? Hmmm, if only you could... be the car-talk/car-photo-share app on Facebook... integrate with some existing auto sites to make photos "easier"... many, many angles to pursue.

ii) foster / cultivate specific communities: truck folks like trucks, Chevy/Ford truck folks like similar, and Scion folks will like to converse with Scion folks, etc etc... not that they won't talk to each other, but birds of a feather def'ly flock together. Perhaps this ties to the 'beachhead' point above.

And actually, reach out to CarDomain/Streetfire -- they're great folks. They'll be difficult to steal traffic from too because they're amazingly good at building fostering their own community, but I'd be surprised if they weren't pretty cool frien-e-mies to talk to.

Good luck- --JeffC

[MotoBabble]

Awesome post Jeff! We have already pushed the view of the comments to the public to the next update. SEO should gain considerably.

As far as specific communities, we are currently pushing to specific markets and are making our way to some influential content producers.

We are currently working on increasing the policing of spam type content and profiles. We also have a few ideas that will revolutionize the industry in cutting down spam.

And as far as cool frien-e-mies... we play well with others :)

[dlf]

It's a good idea in general, but the reason that these automotive forums have persisted virtually unchanged since 1998 is because they're sitting on a tremendous knowledge base that you can search.

If you can figure out a way to get these forums to migrate to your platform (yes, make it a platform), then I think you're on to something.

The other option is to just create the communities from the ground up and let the users fill in the gaps in knowledge.

People tend to have particular tastes when it comes to cars, so I think it's good to form communities around makes and models early on, or more general categories like hotrods or european sports cars.

Of course, I usually only go to car forums when looking up how to do a repair or something on my own car. It's a classic Saab, so the forums are simply the best place to get information on repairs.

[dlf]

Wait... I believe I just answered part of my feedback. I see it automatically adds a category once I add a car. That's cool.

In that case, that should be almost the first thing the user does. The form when you sign up is really scary looking. I would just have a modal that let's you enter the cars you own, and maybe a few that you would like to own, then let the user take it from there and play around in the communities.

[MotoBabble]

Thank you for looking! Yes, we understand that knowledge is what will drive this type of site. We are working on making everything simpler and to interact in a seamless way. We automatically add a community based on the car they enter so that the user may talk to like minded people right a way but if they have interest in other areas, they can jump around.

We are going to look at our sign up form and make it simpler to get in and get active.

[dlf]

Maybe a bigger submit button for updating the status. It's kind of hidden down in the corner below the share links.

[MotoBabble]

Yes, we do need a larger submit button. We also have some things in mind that will make submitting easier. Thanks for noticing!

[tar]

Link: http://motobabble.com

[MotoBabble]

Thanks for the link add!

[dlf]

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