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Thank you HN: BreakkUp.com Story
Just under 4 months ago I posted a link to BreakkUp.com and requested feedback from the Hacker News community. We got so much helpful advice that I thought I’d come back and give you guys a big thank you and post a little update about our progress. You can read the old post at the link below. As you may notice, most of the comments left by HN members were put into action.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=285895
Long story short, the site actually got put on the backburner for a few months while we focused on our mobile app company – http://saltlicklabs.com. I don’t remember which night it was but it was a couple hours past midnight when we had the crazy idea of integrating BreakkUp into our first premium application. Through the premium app - Little Black Book - members are given anonymous access to BreakkUp. We were a little concerned about the quality of submissions but it hasn’t been a significant problem thus far.
BreakkUp gave us the ability to hedge against Black Book competitors (2 of 'em) if we ever needed to price the app for free, but right now the price barrier is great because it keeps out the nonsense. In addition, we repurposed the templates used on the mobile version (m.breakkup.com) to make a free iPhone app strictly for BreakkUp.com. Huge cost savings in terms of marketing, awareness, etc. since it's free to publish free apps to iTunes.
The good news is BreakkUp is now growing by ~50-100 new members a day and the free iPhone app is downloaded over 100 times a day. However, the way people use the site is a lot different than we had initially planned so we’ve got a lot of changes and new features planned for 2009.
During the holiday break, we’re experimenting with Google AdManager so we can start advertising our own applications to our community. It’s a walled-garden approach that gives us a higher return while the site is still relatively small. Our audience is primarily iPhone users (emotional / retail therapy), so it makes more sense at this junction to advertise our own products rather than use Google AdSense. That's the theory we're testing at least... if BreakkUp grows significantly in 2009, then our mobile company has a lot more weight against the VC and big-budget guys.
So if you have any new feedback (re: BreakkUp or Saltlick Labs), please send it our way.
Thanks HN! Hope everyone has a safe holiday vacation. Hot cocoa and coding, what could be better?
- pxlpshr 18y agoLinks http://breakkup.com http://breakkup.com http://saltlicklabs.com http://saltlicklabs.com http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=285895 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=285895
- mixmax 18y agoThanks for the feedback. IT would be great if other people that got feedback here posted their results.
- jgilliam 18y ago"Hot cocoa and coding" -- such a great idea
- t0pj 18y agoLove that logo. Good luck!
- Mystalic 18y agoI'm curious: How are your users using it differently than intended?
- pxlpshr 18y agoWell, when we originally built the site it was "suppose" to be a fun way to put your relationship on the internet chopping block. As of late, people use it for all sorts of relationship advice, and many times it has nothing to do with breaking up. I love that it's being used this way and not going to try anything to reshape or stop it. It's helping us re-prioritize features, and giving the site a direction for the future.
- epall 18y agoThe snow on saltlicklabs.com makes both of my cores hit 50%. Kinda impolite.
- pxlpshr 18y agoCould also have something to do with the combination fade fx. I use the Schiller snow if you're interested... http://www.schillmania.com/projects/snowstorm http://www.schillmania.com/projects/snowstorm
- vaksel 18y agodid anyone actually buy the breakup assistant thing?
- pxlpshr 18y agoYes. Mostly they are used as pranks against people, but a few serious ones here and there. You can monetize anything if you have a brand. My gf manages this service, and it's mostly for the press.
- rokhayakebe 18y agoYou guys are putting Dr Phill out of business :) Great job.
- waleedka 18y agoGreat work. Did you build the it from scratch or did you use an open source code like Pligg?
- pxlpshr 18y agothnx! we're discussing a complete rewrite for 2009 but that's still on the table. our team is small and a lot of focus is on building the mobile app company right now. BreakkUp happened to... happen, and so we're going to use this holiday downtime to prioritize our goals the next few months. We also want to see what happens if traffic slows down. There are reports that free iphone app usage is akin to the digg effect. We are indeed using the latest version of pligg, but it's been modified (a lot) to plug holes, remove old code, performance tweaks, etc. The pligg guys have been very helpful nevertheless... but the community is small and the pligg project moves very slow, it's not very viable as a long term solution IMO. But, that's not to say we're going to abandon it quite yet either.
- mattmaroon 18y agoWow, I'm reading some of the entries there, and wow. All I got for you is wow.
- pxlpshr 18y agoYou'll thoroughly enjoy this one... :) http://breakkup.com/with-her/is-she-my-girlfriend/ http://breakkup.com/with-her/is-she-my-girlfriend/
- mattmaroon 18y agoHilarious. I'm reading that and wondering "so, what's the problem here?"
- rrhyne 18y agoBump for supporting surfrider! Oh, and some nice apps!
- symptic 18y agoYour products are shipping out to be great man. I really appreciate the follow on Twitter @stevenkovar. The company's site looks really sharp as well. Simple and to-the-point. Keep it up!