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Apparently HN gives you great advice and then 1536 users in 4 hours.
Last Monday, I was just finishing up work on Wolfpacktales – an app that lets you break your social network into groups and have instant interactions, share files and bookmark things you find. The idea is simple, you have all these people you are friends with or connected to, you don’t discuss the same things with all of them, so by grouping them, you can say what you want to say to each group. I firmly believe that in the next year or two, rather than paying $0.25 (or whatever you pay) for a text message over phones, you’ll be texting over this app across your social network using people’s usernames.
Anyway, I wrote a post on here and it somehow found its way to the front-page. It only stayed there for 2 hours but it spent another 2 hrs on the 2nd and 3rd pages. I tracked the signups that came in on that day, and in 4 hours, there were 1536 new sign-ups from HN (directly and indirectly). Directly in the sense that they clicked on from here and signed up, and indirectly if the person signed up having been invited by someone who signed up from HN in that time. Of that number, 61% are active have have returned to the site more than 3 times and have created groups and 80% have invited people to their groups.
To any new apps/startups launching, HN is a great place to get that initial traction and the best part about it – for me atleast – is the number of criticisms, advise and feedback I got. That was much more important to me than signups.
App url: http://wolfpacktal.es
- suarezkop 15y agoclickable link: http://wolfpacktal.es http://wolfpacktal.es
- hacknut13 15y agoInteresting. Is this also a mobile app?
- genystartup 15y agoThat's the next thing I plan to do. Presently it's only a web app.
- suarezkop 15y agoI once got 231 subscribers to my newsletter from HN. But over 3 days. I agree though, HN is a great place to announce and critique your app
- messel 15y agoI tried it out. Ran into some problems that hopefully you'll shake out. Surprised by the choice of web stack (.net and asp). I didn't see an option to delete accounts, did I miss it?
- genystartup 15y agowould appreciate if you could tell me any other problems your ran into! I'm keen on any feedback. genystartup@gmail. cheers!
- highace 15y agoHonest question: what's surprising about .net and asp?
- evilduck 15y agoI usually see this view explained that due to the .Net stack's higher up front cost than free alternatives, and (debatably) higher long term cost, it's an uncommon choice for startups. Basically, deploying a .Net site requires at minimum 1 personal license of Windows and 1 server license of Windows. Sometimes a non-free copy of Visual Studio, and usually a license for SQL Server (since many MS people use the whole stack for integration reasons). Without buying hardware, Windows hosting is also always more expensive. Compared to a LAMP/Rails/Django style app which you could theoretically get off the ground for the hardware cost of a local PC and cheap VPS hosting. Of course developer familiarity, your local hiring pool, initial launch scale, business partners, vendor integration, etc, etc, etc, all influence the tech choice and its impact on cost.
- Jacob4u2 15y agoRegarding costs and licensing, have you heard of AppHarbor (http://appharbor.com http://appharbor.com). It's like Heroku but for .Net, free (at least right now) for small web apps and has SQL Server and MySQL database options. Also, I've heard mention of BizSpark which kind of defers your costs but I haven't got any hard evidence that it is still a good option for startups.
- 15y ago
- xnerdr 15y agoI'd suggest a rebranding. Get a better domain name. The core product is very good though, well done and i'll be using this again!
- imns 15y agoGreat app, thanks for sharing and good luck with it. One thing I noticed, is your about page says "It's less intrusive intrusive ...".
- vannevar 15y agoKudos on taking the initiative and implementing this idea. I've often wondered how Facebook became so successful given that the one thing it's supposed to do well---manage your social network---is probably the least functional aspect of the site. For the most part Facebook is a personal homepage with photos and a forum and that's about it.
- genystartup 15y agoThanks...I figured someone has to do it right? :)
- guynamedloren 15y agoPlease explain in more detail how this works. I signed up, but did not connect facebook/twitter because I'd rather not spam my friends with something I'm not 100% sure on. Do my friends have to sign up for Wolfpack to be able to use this service? Does the messaging only happen on your platform, or does it duplicate messages across other platforms as well (fb messages, emails, etc)?
- genystartup 15y agoThe messaging only happens on wolfpacktales...and we don't spam anyone. Basically you create a group, invite your friends to join, the get a notification and following the link takes them to the group you created, where u can begin interacting and sharing.
- guynamedloren 15y agoSo why connect to social networks at all? Not to knock your idea, but it seems like this is just a modernized private chatroom with built in social network spamming.