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Does anybody have any information about the types of things that twitter did at first to market themselves? This is a problem for me doing thingist (http://thi

by blhack 16y ago

Does anybody have any information about the types of things that twitter did at first to market themselves? This is a problem for me doing thingist (http://thingist.com http://thingist.com)... the people who have found and signed up for it seem to have really liked it, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to get more of those people. (And I am an admittedly horrible marketing person)

notyourwork 16y ago
Care to provide a bit more on thingist? I clicked through and at first glance have a few ideas of what it is but not totally sure what I would use it for. Without an about page or any precursor I would not sign up for something on a whim. Interested in checking it out though! Also side note: The bottom pagination links do not work for me. I can click next page and get next page but if I select a number be it 2, 3, or 75 I get an empty page?
- blhack 16y ago
  Sure :) Thingist is kindof like status updates, but with more context (and more available space [You can include a description of why you're posting it). Instead of a big bucket called "status", you separate things into different lists. For instance, I have a list called "Good Bars in Phoenix" (http://thingist.com/t/list/65/ http://thingist.com/t/list/65/) or a list called "Adventures in Nerdery", which is mostly projects I'm working on (http://thingist.com/t/list/139/ http://thingist.com/t/list/139/) There are some global lists like "songs I like" (which get added to people by default when they register) (http://thingist.com/t/global/38/ http://thingist.com/t/global/38/) The example for a use case I always use is finding music that you've posted into the internet. I've been posing songs I like into facebook for 5 years, but as far as I know there isn't a simple way of pulling them back out. Thingist [tries to] solve that. But it's more than just status, at least it's a new approach to it. Somebody joined a few days ago, and started posting "things on the menu at a nerd themed restaurant". This resulted in neat sort-of back and forth between us: ( http://thingist.com/t/global/2944/ http://thingist.com/t/global/2944/) (also: fixed the pagination buttons, oops)
l0c0b0x 16y ago
How about telling us (and everyone) what thingist helps us with. That'd help!
- blhack 16y ago
  This is an excellent point. "Create an about page" is at the top of my list of things to do as soon as I get off of work. I made this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1rOJJWyU2s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1rOJJWyU2s but it was wayyyy too long.
  - iamcalledrob 16y ago
    No – don't make an about page. Well sure, make one, but it probably won't help a great deal. You need to be showing people what it's about, the instant they visit your site. I saw your page, thought "hmm, not quite sure what this is" and left. I'm not going to stick around to read an about page.
    - uxp 16y ago
      How about a list of reasons why thingist is awesome, or a list of what it can do that will solve or fill some need, promoted to the front page?
makeee 16y ago
If I were you I'd add a facebook like button to each thing and allow people to create lists of things they love just by clicking the facebook like button (no registration required, just save their list to a cookie). Then if they signup they can save their list. This makes it easy for users to jump right it in, and may bring in a lot of traffic from facebook. Of course, some users may not want to share each thing they like on facebook, so you'd probably want a normal "love this" button as well for logged in users.
- blhack 16y ago
  There are like buttons on the item pages... (like here: http://thingist.com/t/item/4720/ http://thingist.com/t/item/4720/) I tried putting them in the feed, but they looked really out of place (it made things look really really cluttered) I really like the idea of [optionally] importing facebook likes... Hmm (As a sidenote: can I just point out that facebook's API is freaking awesome?)
  - saranagati 16y ago
    > (As a sidenote: can I just point out that facebook's API is freaking awesome?) No you may not. Facebooks API is horrible. I was just implementing the like buttons on my site and realized that they have to be iframes (even the FBXML or whatever its called creates iframes). This turns out a bit ridiculous on pages such as yours (if you put them on the feed page) and mine where you Twitter on the other hand allows you to just gives you a URL which points users to a link to share the page.
    - blhack 16y ago
      Well, you could write your own, but you'd have to have users authenticate the application. In my opinion, this isn't much different than twitter, since both actions would require two clicks: facebook: click your custom widget -> facebook prompt -> perform action twitter: click your custom widget -> twitter prompt -> perform action (Or just do like I do, and change the size of the iframe to 450x20)
sheriff 16y ago
Currently you're in a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, where new visitors probably need to see more fresh content to get interested, but your content only comes from having lots of visitors. If you can bootstrap the content, you may find that user acquisition gets easier. It seems a little bit like you're trying to create a more structured version of what people are already doing on Twitter with many of the trending hashtags. (e.g. today's #failedmcdonaldsproducts[1] or #100factsaboutme[2]) Rather than fight the momentum Twitter already has there, perhaps you could take advantage of the Twitter API to automatically pull these trending topics in as Thingist Lists. When a new list is auto-created from a trending topic, you can automatically tweet out a link to the Thingist list with the same hashtag, which will get you exposure among people following that term. The hard part then is making sure Thingist provides a more compelling experience than Twitter for browsing these sets of things. I'm not sure if you're there yet, but there is definitely an opportunity to do something better than search-by-hashtag. If you do pull this off, you'll have plenty of fresh content to keep new users engaged until they start creating lists right on Thingist. [1] http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23failedmcdonaldsproducts http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23failedmcdonaldsproducts [2] http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23100factsaboutme http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23100factsaboutme

by blhack 16y ago

notyourwork 16y ago

Care to provide a bit more on thingist? I clicked through and at first glance have a few ideas of what it is but not totally sure what I would use it for. Without an about page or any precursor I would not sign up for something on a whim. Interested in checking it out though! Also side note: The bottom pagination links do not work for me. I can click next page and get next page but if I select a number be it 2, 3, or 75 I get an empty page?

blhack 16y ago
Sure :) Thingist is kindof like status updates, but with more context (and more available space [You can include a description of why you're posting it). Instead of a big bucket called "status", you separate things into different lists. For instance, I have a list called "Good Bars in Phoenix" (http://thingist.com/t/list/65/ http://thingist.com/t/list/65/) or a list called "Adventures in Nerdery", which is mostly projects I'm working on (http://thingist.com/t/list/139/ http://thingist.com/t/list/139/) There are some global lists like "songs I like" (which get added to people by default when they register) (http://thingist.com/t/global/38/ http://thingist.com/t/global/38/) The example for a use case I always use is finding music that you've posted into the internet. I've been posing songs I like into facebook for 5 years, but as far as I know there isn't a simple way of pulling them back out. Thingist [tries to] solve that. But it's more than just status, at least it's a new approach to it. Somebody joined a few days ago, and started posting "things on the menu at a nerd themed restaurant". This resulted in neat sort-of back and forth between us: ( http://thingist.com/t/global/2944/ http://thingist.com/t/global/2944/) (also: fixed the pagination buttons, oops)

l0c0b0x 16y ago

How about telling us (and everyone) what thingist helps us with. That'd help!

blhack 16y ago
This is an excellent point. "Create an about page" is at the top of my list of things to do as soon as I get off of work. I made this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1rOJJWyU2s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1rOJJWyU2s but it was wayyyy too long.
- iamcalledrob 16y ago
  No – don't make an about page. Well sure, make one, but it probably won't help a great deal. You need to be showing people what it's about, the instant they visit your site. I saw your page, thought "hmm, not quite sure what this is" and left. I'm not going to stick around to read an about page.
  - uxp 16y ago
    How about a list of reasons why thingist is awesome, or a list of what it can do that will solve or fill some need, promoted to the front page?

makeee 16y ago

If I were you I'd add a facebook like button to each thing and allow people to create lists of things they love just by clicking the facebook like button (no registration required, just save their list to a cookie). Then if they signup they can save their list. This makes it easy for users to jump right it in, and may bring in a lot of traffic from facebook. Of course, some users may not want to share each thing they like on facebook, so you'd probably want a normal "love this" button as well for logged in users.

blhack 16y ago
There are like buttons on the item pages... (like here: http://thingist.com/t/item/4720/ http://thingist.com/t/item/4720/) I tried putting them in the feed, but they looked really out of place (it made things look really really cluttered) I really like the idea of [optionally] importing facebook likes... Hmm (As a sidenote: can I just point out that facebook's API is freaking awesome?)
- saranagati 16y ago
  > (As a sidenote: can I just point out that facebook's API is freaking awesome?) No you may not. Facebooks API is horrible. I was just implementing the like buttons on my site and realized that they have to be iframes (even the FBXML or whatever its called creates iframes). This turns out a bit ridiculous on pages such as yours (if you put them on the feed page) and mine where you Twitter on the other hand allows you to just gives you a URL which points users to a link to share the page.
  - blhack 16y ago
    Well, you could write your own, but you'd have to have users authenticate the application. In my opinion, this isn't much different than twitter, since both actions would require two clicks: facebook: click your custom widget -> facebook prompt -> perform action twitter: click your custom widget -> twitter prompt -> perform action (Or just do like I do, and change the size of the iframe to 450x20)

sheriff 16y ago

Currently you're in a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, where new visitors probably need to see more fresh content to get interested, but your content only comes from having lots of visitors. If you can bootstrap the content, you may find that user acquisition gets easier. It seems a little bit like you're trying to create a more structured version of what people are already doing on Twitter with many of the trending hashtags. (e.g. today's #failedmcdonaldsproducts[1] or #100factsaboutme[2]) Rather than fight the momentum Twitter already has there, perhaps you could take advantage of the Twitter API to automatically pull these trending topics in as Thingist Lists. When a new list is auto-created from a trending topic, you can automatically tweet out a link to the Thingist list with the same hashtag, which will get you exposure among people following that term. The hard part then is making sure Thingist provides a more compelling experience than Twitter for browsing these sets of things. I'm not sure if you're there yet, but there is definitely an opportunity to do something better than search-by-hashtag. If you do pull this off, you'll have plenty of fresh content to keep new users engaged until they start creating lists right on Thingist. [1] http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23failedmcdonaldsproducts http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23failedmcdonaldsproducts [2] http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23100factsaboutme http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23100factsaboutme