Spiritedd: Share your favourite drives online - Your feedback?

[V28VX37]

Hi all,

this my first post here but I've been fairly active at the LS1 forums over the years : I'd like to share something the company I run has been working on recently to get your feedback on it.

(This is a repost from LS1, I hope you don't mind. Moderators, if you feel this is an inappropriate topic for the Ford Forums feel free to remove this post. I don't want to step on anybody's toes.)

I like my cruises and weekend drives just as much as the next enthusiast. I work on the web and had this idea last year for an online service where you could post and share drives for the benefit of the wider driver community. We have just launched the first public beta:

Spiritedd - Inspiring drives for spirited drivers

Here's a screenshot:


There's limited content on the site as yet but I hope you get the idea.

I'd really appreciate your feedback:
- What do you think of the concept?
- What's good and bad about Spiritedd in its current form?
- What would you change, and why?
- Would you use this yourself?

Thanks heaps in advance!

Cheers, Jussi


Ps. Here's a blog post explaining the background in a bit more detail.

Disclosure: I am the designer behind the Spiritedd site. We are also looking at ways on how to commercialise the service in the medium term - the plan is to always provide free service for end users but sponsorship, advertising or other revenue will be necessary to cover ongoing development, maintenance and other costs. :

[Mr Brooksy]

Hey I like it, mind you having a website that tells people where to find a great drivers road is a sure fire way to attract boys flogging around in their rice bubbles and subsequently ruining it for those of us who enjoy a good cruise! Hope it works, but maybe make it a premium membership site, say a basic site with some good roads but a few $$ to give you 2 - 3x more options so car clubs or something can access this info only?

[The Monty]

Thats and awesome concept. Im always trying to find new places to go for a nice drive.

[BIGJB]

This is a great idea.
The potential for this is huge. Well done.

[mrbaxr6t]

ok guys I am posting the below on behalf of an individual that doesn't have an account on AFF in regards to this - bit of a sobering read

Originally Posted by vortex

Firstly, the site looks good. Very well designed and hopefully well developed. Now I have to say something on this though, as I had this exact idea about 18 months ago and got a few opinions from people before I actually went ahead and built it (I'm a developer so building it would have not been hard for me) and the general consensus was that like you're seeing - it's a great idea, but it has it's downsides.

I didn't see it when I thought of the idea initially, but many people mentioned that it would lead to increased police presence on these specific roads - the exact thing we all wish would not happen. Personally I would hate it if all of a sudden my favourite twisites were all of a sudden filled with kids in R31 Skylines who think they're masters of the winding road, and the police attention that would follow.

Secondly, I could see people using the list for purposes of organising battles on the street. Sure they will do this anyway in some cases - but for me - if it was found that someone organised a race on the street and used 'MY' website to set that up and then it turned out someone was injured or killed - I didn't want that on my concious. No way.

I wish you luck with the idea, and great technologies such as Google Maps allow really cool things like this to be developed relatively easily. For your sake I just hope you don't actually run into the things that stopped me from actually going through with the idea

think this through guys

[V28VX37]

Thanks a lot for the feedback guys!

Originally Posted by Mr Brooksy

Hope it works, but maybe make it a premium membership site, say a basic site with some good roads but a few $$ to give you 2 - 3x more options so car clubs or something can access this info only?

That's an interesting idea. A big part of the concept is to provide an open service to everyone, however this is not to say that there couldn't be added functionality or content for 'premium' accounts later on. I do think though that for something like this to fly you'll need a critical mass of users and content, something which is probably harder to reach with paid accounts.

Originally Posted by vortex

Firstly, the site looks good. Very well designed and hopefully well developed. Now I have to say something on this though, as I had this exact idea about 18 months ago and got a few opinions from people before I actually went ahead and built it (I'm a developer so building it would have not been hard for me) and the general consensus was that like you're seeing - it's a great idea, but it has it's downsides.

I didn't see it when I thought of the idea initially, but many people mentioned that it would lead to increased police presence on these specific roads - the exact thing we all wish would not happen. Personally I would hate it if all of a sudden my favourite twisites were all of a sudden filled with kids in R31 Skylines who think they're masters of the winding road, and the police attention that would follow.

Secondly, I could see people using the list for purposes of organising battles on the street. Sure they will do this anyway in some cases - but for me - if it was found that someone organised a race on the street and used 'MY' website to set that up and then it turned out someone was injured or killed - I didn't want that on my concious. No way.

I wish you luck with the idea, and great technologies such as Google Maps allow really cool things like this to be developed relatively easily. For your sake I just hope you don't actually run into the things that stopped me from actually going through with the idea

Thanks for this Vortex, exactly the kind of feedback I was after! Some very good points in there, and I can see where you are coming from.

Obviously the idea is not to turn roads into race tracks, far from it. We actually posted our definition of spirited driving on the site to clear it up. This said, there's certainly the possibility of people misusing the site organising "battles" or other dubious activities. However we also have to assume that everyone using the site is a smart adult (unless proven otherwise ) who can and will take responsibility for their own actions.

In regards increased police attention, I'm not sure if this is such a bad thing. The whole point is to enjoy driving nice roads in a good car within the legal limits - we definitely don't want to encourage "hooning". And if people feel that they want to keep their favourite piece of road to themselves they're obviously more than welcome not to post it up. We're also planning on having more powerful "report this drive" type functionality in the future should any of the drives start to become trouble spots.

Thanks for explaining the thoughts and background behind your similar idea, too. We didn't actually do much 'market research' prior to implementing the concept, it was more like a "hey that sounds cool, let's try it out" type thing. I think oftentimes it's pretty tricky to anticipate how an online service turns out before it's "real" and out there, and I wouldn't be surprised if Spiritedd was very different in 6 or 12 months time to what it is today.

Regarding the technology, Spiritedd is built on Ruby on Rails. There's some additional info on the copyright page and if you're interested in further details feel free to get in touch.


Thanks for the compliments The Monty & 99GHIA too!

I'll be more than happy to hear other people's thoughts, as well.

[Rangas GTP]

20 years ago this concept would have been great ( if internet was available), but in current times 1 accident on any road mentioned on the site and the media will crucify you and label it as a "HOON SITE". Don't mean to be a spoiler but I honestly believe you are putting yourself in a position to be made an example of. God I miss the old days

[V28VX37]

Originally Posted by Rangas GTP

20 years ago this concept would have been great ( if internet was available), but in current times 1 accident on any road mentioned on the site and the media will crucify you and label it as a "HOON SITE". Don't mean to be a spoiler but I honestly believe you are putting yourself in a position to be made an example of. God I miss the old days

Well maybe so. Call me naive but I still feel most people will be smart about using a service like this. Perhaps a few miscreants will have the power to ruin for everyone else, but this remains to be seen. Fingers crossed this is not the case!