5 ms·

Ask HN: Review my website

14 points by jaekwon 16y ago

Mithrandir 16y ago
I like it, but will there be a way to create an account instead of having to use Facebook to log in?
- jaekwon 16y ago
  I can, but i'm curious as to why you wouldn't use facebook to log in.
  - andymoe 16y ago
    Because I don't trust you and I don't trust Facebook. (Nothing personal)
    - Mithrandir 16y ago
      or maybe because I live under a rock and don't have a Facebook account, with no desire to get one?
      - jaekwon 16y ago
        ok if you're interested, send me an email at jkwon.work on gmail.com and i'll send an invite out for people who don't have facebook accounts.
lurkinggrue 16y ago
I don't have a fecebook account.
- jaekwon 16y ago
  ok. what do you have, openid? or just an email?
smalter 16y ago
neat! i imagine that the network effect issue will be the most important. is there a vertical where this type of economy makes particular sense?
- jaekwon 16y ago
  Good question. I wonder if it will work in education, in particular in a college setting.
NathanKP 16y ago
The biggest problem I see is that while I can log in with Facebook there is no easy way to log out without manually revoking access. Other than that I would be interested in seeing how the community progresses since each new member will bring in bounty points, so the people with bounty points to spare will end up being new members and old members who had won bounty points from new members. If you get a bunch of members it would be really fascinating to watch how the bounty points flow.
- jaekwon 16y ago
  Yeah I've been trying to fix that. Facebook isn't making it easy... if anybody is familiar with the Facebook javascript SDK holler. 200 points :)
  - NathanKP 16y ago
    I can help with that. Basically you just need to show the login button. It automatically turns into a logout button when the person is logged in. Or for a prettier solution you can use the following JavaScript attached to an onclick event handler on a custom logout button: FB.logout(); Edit: For reference I would recommend reading this page thoroughly because there are some other cool things you can do with the SDK: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/javascript/ http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/javascript/
    - jaekwon 16y ago
      Thanks, I need some direction here. I'm testing it out on my dev, and the login button is not turning into a logout button even when I am logged in via facebook. Also, FB.logout(); is logging the user out of facebook, which probably isn't desirable. Is this only happening on my end?
      - mileszs 16y ago
        Edit: Whoops. I didn't quite grasp what you were asking until I had already responded. I think that is the intended behavior behind FB.logout() (as opposed to only logging one out of your site and not out of Facebook). If you want to only log someone out of your site, you've probably got a session variable of some sort you want to destroy, right?
MichaelApproved 16y ago
At first glance I have no clue what the site does or what it's for. Can you add some text to explain what's going on? What's a bounty (meaning how do I put it up? Is it an arbitrary amount of points I decide? Is it something I have to pay for in advance to be able to offer it to someone else?) After looking a bit more at the site I have a slight clue but still very little idea about the site and its features. As a user, I'm unwilling to login with Facebook just to test it out and explore. Is this similar to an existing concept that I don't know about?
- jaekwon 16y ago
  OK, thanks for the feedback. When you sign up via facebook you get 200 points. I'll add a feature where you can create an anonymous account for less points so you can try it out. It's completely free, so you don't have to pay for anything. You can put up a bounty by creating a challenge. Hit 'Submit' on the top to submit a new challenge. Yeah it's an arbitrary amount that you decide.
  - ams6110 16y ago
    What's a point? What can I do with them? Why would I want to accumulate them?
    - jaekwon 16y ago
      Assuming popbub had users, would you do it if you could buy adspace on the front page to promote your startup?
- ams6110 16y ago
  I don't get it either. As an unknown product, you've got about 10 seconds to intrigue me enough to explore further before I move on. You need to say, on the front page, in a couple of clear sentences, what the point of the site is.
forbes 16y ago
Facebook has something like 500 million users, but that doesn't mean that everyone has an account. I don't and never will. Give people another option, including 'yet another account' for your site. The majority of users will not trust your site to connect with Facebook, Twitter, whatever. No one's dad understands OAuth or OpenID. And like everyone else mentioned, I have no idea what your site is for. Add a big headline "PopBub will make you rich or get you laid or both" and then explain how.
david_shaw 16y ago
Okay, full disclosure: I'm not a web developer. I did, however, create http://sleepyti.me http://sleepyti.me last month and have gone through extensive research and A/B testing to produce a nice, easy to navigate page. I get around 10k views per day, and the site generously pays for more than the cost of its hosting. First of all, as a couple of other users have said, I have no idea what your site is. Popbub.com doesn't exactly make the product obvious (although it does have nice potential), and there is pretty much nothing telling me what to do. Let's get some text in there! It astounds me that you expect users to "sign in with Facebook. Do it now!" when you literally haven't explained the point of anything. I'm not trying to be harsh, as this is supposed to just be constructive criticism. The design of the site is simple and although there are a few typographic errors it's definitely not bad to read. Get some descriptions in there, and maybe a screenshot or demo or SOMETHING so I know why I'm staring at the page. Good luck!
- jaekwon 16y ago
  thanks!
- smalter 16y ago
  David, could you give me a sense of your customer acquisition strategy for sleepytime? For instance, I googled "when should i wake up" and sleepytime didn't come up. But I see you have a ton of facebook likes. I'm trying to build an ad-based source of passive income so i'd be very interested to hear your methods.
  - david_shaw 16y ago
    Sure. I built Sleepyti.me as a free app, and did not expect to make money from it. As such, I am not interested in acquiring subscribers (I don't offer a service), or paying for traffic via AdWords. Startups with a product (for example WakeMate, which has received considerable HN coverage this week) have saturated this advertising space, and it's not really an area in which I'd want to throw money. In my case, the profit comes from sheer traffic. The more traffic I get, the more people will click relevant ads in the single banner AdSense unit I display after the information has been given to the user. Since my profit comes from traffic, it does not make sense to pay for traffic via AdWords in the traditional sense: the money would just go in a circle. It's repeated a lot, but the best way to drive traffic to your website is to solve a problem. Sleepyti.me is one way to solve the problem of waking up tired (a common problem, I might add), but there are obviously infinitely many problems to choose from. Once the tool/site is written, it must be tested to provide an elegant experience. Critique from other developers (some here at HN, but also over at [Proggit](http://reddit.com/r/programming) http://reddit.com/r/programming)) helped me a lot. Once the site launches, it's imperative to provide users an outlet to express their interest and show it to other people. Lucky for us, this no longer entails "enter a friend's email address here to tell them about us!" A simple Facebook like button allows the site to spread organically. Each time a user "likes" the page on Facebook, his or her friends will see the notification and have the opportunity to like it his/herself. Theoretically, this could spread through all of Facebook's ridiculous userbase, which would provide more than enough traffic. HN, Reddit, and more recently StumbleUpon have provided great outlets for traffic, and social media like Twitter and Facebook have allowed it to grow quite nicely. I'm (ambitiously) trying to launch similar sites at a rate of one project per month, given leniency for interesting bugs or project changes. Sorry if this post was a little exhaustive, but I wanted to make sure I included the necessary background information to answer your question :)
mashmac2 16y ago
So this is Mechanical Turk or Elance meets services bartering... i think?

14 points by jaekwon 16y ago

Mithrandir 16y ago

I like it, but will there be a way to create an account instead of having to use Facebook to log in?

jaekwon 16y ago
I can, but i'm curious as to why you wouldn't use facebook to log in.
- andymoe 16y ago
  Because I don't trust you and I don't trust Facebook. (Nothing personal)
  - Mithrandir 16y ago
    or maybe because I live under a rock and don't have a Facebook account, with no desire to get one?
    - jaekwon 16y ago
      ok if you're interested, send me an email at jkwon.work on gmail.com and i'll send an invite out for people who don't have facebook accounts.

lurkinggrue 16y ago

I don't have a fecebook account.

jaekwon 16y ago
ok. what do you have, openid? or just an email?

smalter 16y ago

neat! i imagine that the network effect issue will be the most important. is there a vertical where this type of economy makes particular sense?

jaekwon 16y ago
Good question. I wonder if it will work in education, in particular in a college setting.

NathanKP 16y ago

The biggest problem I see is that while I can log in with Facebook there is no easy way to log out without manually revoking access. Other than that I would be interested in seeing how the community progresses since each new member will bring in bounty points, so the people with bounty points to spare will end up being new members and old members who had won bounty points from new members. If you get a bunch of members it would be really fascinating to watch how the bounty points flow.

jaekwon 16y ago
Yeah I've been trying to fix that. Facebook isn't making it easy... if anybody is familiar with the Facebook javascript SDK holler. 200 points :)
- NathanKP 16y ago
  I can help with that. Basically you just need to show the login button. It automatically turns into a logout button when the person is logged in. Or for a prettier solution you can use the following JavaScript attached to an onclick event handler on a custom logout button: FB.logout(); Edit: For reference I would recommend reading this page thoroughly because there are some other cool things you can do with the SDK: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/javascript/ http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/javascript/
  - jaekwon 16y ago
    Thanks, I need some direction here. I'm testing it out on my dev, and the login button is not turning into a logout button even when I am logged in via facebook. Also, FB.logout(); is logging the user out of facebook, which probably isn't desirable. Is this only happening on my end?
    - mileszs 16y ago
      Edit: Whoops. I didn't quite grasp what you were asking until I had already responded. I think that is the intended behavior behind FB.logout() (as opposed to only logging one out of your site and not out of Facebook). If you want to only log someone out of your site, you've probably got a session variable of some sort you want to destroy, right?

MichaelApproved 16y ago

At first glance I have no clue what the site does or what it's for. Can you add some text to explain what's going on? What's a bounty (meaning how do I put it up? Is it an arbitrary amount of points I decide? Is it something I have to pay for in advance to be able to offer it to someone else?) After looking a bit more at the site I have a slight clue but still very little idea about the site and its features. As a user, I'm unwilling to login with Facebook just to test it out and explore. Is this similar to an existing concept that I don't know about?

jaekwon 16y ago
OK, thanks for the feedback. When you sign up via facebook you get 200 points. I'll add a feature where you can create an anonymous account for less points so you can try it out. It's completely free, so you don't have to pay for anything. You can put up a bounty by creating a challenge. Hit 'Submit' on the top to submit a new challenge. Yeah it's an arbitrary amount that you decide.
- ams6110 16y ago
  What's a point? What can I do with them? Why would I want to accumulate them?
  - jaekwon 16y ago
    Assuming popbub had users, would you do it if you could buy adspace on the front page to promote your startup?
ams6110 16y ago
I don't get it either. As an unknown product, you've got about 10 seconds to intrigue me enough to explore further before I move on. You need to say, on the front page, in a couple of clear sentences, what the point of the site is.

forbes 16y ago

Facebook has something like 500 million users, but that doesn't mean that everyone has an account. I don't and never will. Give people another option, including 'yet another account' for your site. The majority of users will not trust your site to connect with Facebook, Twitter, whatever. No one's dad understands OAuth or OpenID. And like everyone else mentioned, I have no idea what your site is for. Add a big headline "PopBub will make you rich or get you laid or both" and then explain how.

david_shaw 16y ago

Okay, full disclosure: I'm not a web developer. I did, however, create http://sleepyti.me http://sleepyti.me last month and have gone through extensive research and A/B testing to produce a nice, easy to navigate page. I get around 10k views per day, and the site generously pays for more than the cost of its hosting. First of all, as a couple of other users have said, I have no idea what your site is. Popbub.com doesn't exactly make the product obvious (although it does have nice potential), and there is pretty much nothing telling me what to do. Let's get some text in there! It astounds me that you expect users to "sign in with Facebook. Do it now!" when you literally haven't explained the point of anything. I'm not trying to be harsh, as this is supposed to just be constructive criticism. The design of the site is simple and although there are a few typographic errors it's definitely not bad to read. Get some descriptions in there, and maybe a screenshot or demo or SOMETHING so I know why I'm staring at the page. Good luck!

jaekwon 16y ago
thanks!
smalter 16y ago
David, could you give me a sense of your customer acquisition strategy for sleepytime? For instance, I googled "when should i wake up" and sleepytime didn't come up. But I see you have a ton of facebook likes. I'm trying to build an ad-based source of passive income so i'd be very interested to hear your methods.
- david_shaw 16y ago
  Sure. I built Sleepyti.me as a free app, and did not expect to make money from it. As such, I am not interested in acquiring subscribers (I don't offer a service), or paying for traffic via AdWords. Startups with a product (for example WakeMate, which has received considerable HN coverage this week) have saturated this advertising space, and it's not really an area in which I'd want to throw money. In my case, the profit comes from sheer traffic. The more traffic I get, the more people will click relevant ads in the single banner AdSense unit I display after the information has been given to the user. Since my profit comes from traffic, it does not make sense to pay for traffic via AdWords in the traditional sense: the money would just go in a circle. It's repeated a lot, but the best way to drive traffic to your website is to solve a problem. Sleepyti.me is one way to solve the problem of waking up tired (a common problem, I might add), but there are obviously infinitely many problems to choose from. Once the tool/site is written, it must be tested to provide an elegant experience. Critique from other developers (some here at HN, but also over at [Proggit](http://reddit.com/r/programming) http://reddit.com/r/programming)) helped me a lot. Once the site launches, it's imperative to provide users an outlet to express their interest and show it to other people. Lucky for us, this no longer entails "enter a friend's email address here to tell them about us!" A simple Facebook like button allows the site to spread organically. Each time a user "likes" the page on Facebook, his or her friends will see the notification and have the opportunity to like it his/herself. Theoretically, this could spread through all of Facebook's ridiculous userbase, which would provide more than enough traffic. HN, Reddit, and more recently StumbleUpon have provided great outlets for traffic, and social media like Twitter and Facebook have allowed it to grow quite nicely. I'm (ambitiously) trying to launch similar sites at a rate of one project per month, given leniency for interesting bugs or project changes. Sorry if this post was a little exhaustive, but I wanted to make sure I included the necessary background information to answer your question :)

mashmac2 16y ago

So this is Mechanical Turk or Elance meets services bartering... i think?