“Just when you thought there was no room for any more “Hot or Not” web sites, along comes one which lets you vote on how good a web site looks…”
“David Sifry, who founded Technorati as a family blog in 2002, can probably claim a share of that jackpot.”
Technorati founder David Sifry has just launched a website with investor friend Martin Varsavsky that is, in so many words, a “Web Hot or Not” for websites.
On his blog, Sifry bills it as “a fun game to play with your friends when you have got a few minutes to waste”.
It really is all about how a web site looks, because only very large text can be read on the screenshots.
“Web Hot or Not touts a simple interface that shows in image screenshot of the website in question, radio buttons to select your rating.”
The site is about as barebones as they come — there is not even an “About” page yet. All you get is a screenshot of a site and below that a scale of 1 to 10 of how “hot” it is — simply rate how good the site looks on a scale of one to ten, “1 being not, 10 being hot,” then see the average vote on the next page.
If you have ever used the actual Hot or Not site before, it is exactly the same. Once you vote, you are taken to a new site’s screenshot to vote on while the last one you just voted on has its “official rating” updated in the upper left hand corner. Best of all, you do not have to register to vote (it is not even an option).
The fun of all this is that you do not have to give anything up. This is not a “judge and be judged” approach to rating websites based on their physical appearance. And that encourages you to really let loose.
“It is also possible to comment on the sites being displayed, which could lead to some interesting exploitation.”
While Sifry has indicated that Web Hot or Not is one of those fun little ideas that he threw out there “just to see what happens,” but, it is no wonder if the site and all its ratings will be used for real purposes?
“There is a fair amount of surface data that can be compiled from such biased opinions of a site’s look, and this can be used in its own right for market research, especially if one would like to look to the comments for metadata.”
In the same way that StumbleUpon takes the approach of recommending new and interesting sites to users based on the collective interest of others, so too can “Web Hot or Not,” enabling a search & discovery aspect that has got a rather narrow focus on a site’s aesthetic appeal.
Sifry hints that it might be a lark, and if that is the case then it is all game and fun to take a look; it should provide seconds, maybe even a minute or two of interest.
You can vote for Web Hot or Not on Web Hot or Not here:
http://webhotornot.com/site/webhotornot.com/