"Rap Genius for Code" might be an amazing pitch for avid users of Rap Genius. I wouldn't know. I don't know or care exactly what Rap Genius is, even though I remember there was a recent controversy involving Rap Genius. (It's got something to do with rap music and lyrics? Not my interest.)
If you can explain your site in words that don't require very specific domain knowledge, I think that might broaden appeal.
I think this way of pitching is dangerous for two reasons:
1. Many potential users of the product (Kurikku) will not know about the thing it's being defined in relation to (Rap Genius), and will not understand that they should check it out
2. Those that do know might make a different comparison than you. I might say "It's like Github for music!" and you will think "Oh, so you put in scores and people can collaborate -- just like with code on Github!", but I was thinking "You store your personal music library in the cloud and you can clone it to all your machines -- just like with code on Github!" While you intend the comparison to be a way to explain a lot with just a few words, in reality it might be interpreted all wrong, giving users entirely unsuitable expectations when checking it out.
So, please try to communicate clearly about the thing you have made using every day words. Good luck :)
I usually have questions regarding specific lines in songs (I'm not american, so I miss a lot of pop culture/slang references), and Rapgenius provides an easy way for me to understand why something was said.
Here's an example, from Nas' It ain't hard to tell:
"I drink Moet with Medusa, give her shotguns in hell"
I know Moet and Medusa, but I didn't know what "giving shotguns" meant. So I go to Rapgenius, click that line and it says: "To “shotgun” is to inhale from a pipe or other smoking device, followed shortly by an exhalation into someone else’s mouth."
Ah! So he exhaled weed smoke into Medusa's mouth, effectively stoning her. That was smart. Cool.
----
So imagine I'm reading official documentation, say "10 minutes to Pandas"[1]. I come across this line:
df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randn(10, 4))
And I don't know NumPy. The tutorial doesn't explain what np.random.randn is doing, because it's not a NumPy tutorial. Of course I can search for that online, but in a "RapGenius for Code" all I would have to do is click the line.
Nothing revolutionary, but it is a valuable idea and worth a shot. Of course, RapGenius could just launch CodeGenius and get that market instantly.
Rap Genius = crowd sourcing explanations of rap lyrics (and poetry [1], and other literature). It's brilliantly useful, loved by many, and has great traction.
Kurikku = crowd sourcing explanations of computer code. Also brilliant useful, probably won't have as much traction as Rap Genius just b/c there are many more people in the world interested in lyrics than in computer code, but it will probably find a StackOverflow-level popularity, which would be quite a success.
I still believe that "Rap Genius for Code" is the best pitch for the HN demographic. I instantly knew what it was about and I presume a lot of active users here will. The unawareness rate is probably small compared to something like "Source code with annotations" which doesn't really tell what it's about.
If you can explain your site in words that don't require very specific domain knowledge, I think that might broaden appeal.
I think this way of pitching is dangerous for two reasons:
1. Many potential users of the product (Kurikku) will not know about the thing it's being defined in relation to (Rap Genius), and will not understand that they should check it out
2. Those that do know might make a different comparison than you. I might say "It's like Github for music!" and you will think "Oh, so you put in scores and people can collaborate -- just like with code on Github!", but I was thinking "You store your personal music library in the cloud and you can clone it to all your machines -- just like with code on Github!" While you intend the comparison to be a way to explain a lot with just a few words, in reality it might be interpreted all wrong, giving users entirely unsuitable expectations when checking it out.
So, please try to communicate clearly about the thing you have made using every day words. Good luck :)