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Show HN: OwlEars – Raw feedback, straight from your customers' minds
Hello everyone
Years ago, I built a personal feedback platform called Sarahah that got famous but was eventually removed from stores. One unique aspect of Sarahah was its simple, plain message box.
Now, I'm using this concept to help businesses gather raw feedback (yes, just plain free text) from their customers. This approach contrasts with guided surveys that can often frame and limit responses. On the business side, we use AI to analyze this feedback and provide valuable insights and recommendations.
I would really appreciate hearing your thoughts
Additionally, if you're interested in using this in your startup where we hear your feedback and tailor it to your needs, please let me know
- DidYaWipe 2y agoThe homepage doesn't tell us or show us what it is, so... can't really give feedback on it.
- zainalabdin878 2y agoI've shared a comment with links to a sample, there is clearly a problem with the homepage. Thank you so much for your feedback
- DidYaWipe 2y agoYou're welcome!
- throwaway-blaze 2y agoThis is super cool, but I think your landing page could really benefit from a screenshot of the tool in use...I honestly couldn't tell you what it did just from reading the page. Also, to build a great landing page, communicate the "Why" as in why I want it as a customer, and less of "what" I'm getting ("AI Insights!", "Hassle Free!"). Tell me why this product will make my business or project better.
- throwaway-blaze 2y agoAlso, typo on Settings -> Support: "We are hear to support you" -> here
- austinjp 2y agoPossibly a deliberate pun. Owl ears, hear...?
- zainalabdin878 2y agolol, it's actually a typo, but your reply inspired a change to something like: We're all ears, tells how we can help you
- zainalabdin878 2y agothis is great, thanks for the deliberate thoughts, I definitely need to change the homepage as suggested
- nerdile 2y ago"Unfortunately, it was later removed from the app stores." Sure sign of a trustworthy middleware author
- ahofmann 2y agoI also have no idea what sarahah was. But I used a search engine and read about it. It took about 30 seconds to understand why the author is using his app as a reference. It was wildly popular for a while but was used in a way that the mighty duopoly of Google and Apple disliked, so it got removed.
- sonofhans 2y agoNo platform should facilitate targeted anonymous messages; that’s one thing we’ve for sure learned about social media, in part thanks to Sarahah. It should be noted that the reason Google and Apple “disliked” it is that hundreds of thousands of their customers petitioned to have it removed. Those people were mostly parents whose kids were getting bullied anonymously.
- zainalabdin878 2y agoanonymity brings many challenges indeed. with regards to the petition and what's commonly shared in conventional media, we have proved to Apple that it's based on a falsified case that our filtration system doesn't allow, the removal's story is rather complicated and not justified and many other anonymous apps were allowed, what we were told after clarifying this to Apple was: "executives requested the removal". Anyhow, this is no history and we surely learned many lessons from sarahah an interesting fact is that sarahah's original idea was inspired by my boss's request for feedback, and the early version of owlears was just that (anonymous feedback in the workplace) Thank you
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago> No platform should facilitate targeted anonymous messages; Isn't this basically all social media? Or just the internet in general? It's pretty trivial to do on any platform I can think of.
- throwaway81523 2y agoTook me the longest time that this had nothing to do with EEG sensors or neural implants. It's just more AI. Meh.
- zainalabdin878 2y agooh, I actually feared this would be considered another AI tool AI is not the core of the platform but rather a feature, I definitely failed to clarify this, or perhaps I focused on it so much in the last few days Can you please share what led you to think it's an EEG thing? Thank you
- throwaway81523 2y agoIt says it gets data from people's minds. How else is something like that supposed to work? But in fact it gets it from keyboard input or whatever, rather than what it claims.
- zainalabdin878 2y agovery well, I already changed this and I'm working on more changes you can see the part you talked about already updated https://owlears.com https://owlears.com many thanks!
- AznHisoka 2y agoIts literally just an input box/form, and a summarizer. I was at expecting something that had hidden mics everywhere and recorded everything people said about your business. Or maybe a Slack bot that was in every single public Slack channel and listened to everything people convo that mentioned your business. Yes, privacy violating, but thats what i was expecting based on the tagline. I mean u gotta live up to your claims!
- sonofhans 2y agoIs this a feedback widget on the frontend and an AI summarizer on the backend? If not, then I have no idea what it is. If so, then consider being clearer about (a) what the tool specifically does, (b) what uses cases it specifically addresses.
- zainalabdin878 2y agoI'm so grateful for the feedback sonofhans, I added a comment with a link to sample feedback box and analysis. startups/companies can share the box as a link, widget or QR code, the backend is just raw feedback with a button that analyzes with A.I. and provides recommendations I surely need to cover the points you mentioned. Thanks a million
- zainalabdin878 2y agoThank you so much, I received super helpful feedback! Please see a sample box here: https://owlears.com/o/df8e1b0a https://owlears.com/o/df8e1b0a and a demo analysis: https://owlears.com/obdemo https://owlears.com/obdemo Many thanks
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- zainalabdin878 2y agothanks again everyone, your feedback was so valuable https://www.owlears.com https://www.owlears.com
- eterm 2y ago<form> <textarea /> </form> is a product now?
- gruez 2y agoa HTML form: :-\ a HTML form, with AI: :-o
- zainalabdin878 2y agolol, actually the AI part came later but probably backfired
- zainalabdin878 2y agowell, if we can get the job down with a simple form, why not? The goal here is to simplify giving feedback, and no to frame responses with surveys Thanks a lot
- asdev 2y agoAI generated landing pages are quite obvious
- zainalabdin878 2y agoit's not AI generated, I did get some help with the copy indeed can you please share what led you to think it's AI generated?
- ramon156 2y agoAI generated landing page and product name. I've seen "OwlEars" enough when trying to ask for a cool product name.
- zainalabdin878 2y agolol, it's actually not an AI generating landing page
- butz 2y agoWhy is close button on the left side? And it is not even aligned properly. Oh, and it's a <span> element. And "Send" button is a <div>. Please, take some time and improve accessibility. Your future users won't notice, but that is the point.
- zainalabdin878 2y agothanks for the feedback
- taylorius 2y agoAm I right to think that OwlEars is supposed to summarize a user's typed comment? Anyway, here's a datapoint - I added this user comment. "Spindeliver dropped my food on the road several times,as I watched the delivery cyclist ride wobbling down our street. I think he was drunk, and my food was pulled out of a puddle in front of my eyes, and handed to me. I declined to tip the rider and he became belligerent. I shall not use Spindeliver again." OwlEars gave it a 55% positive score, which seems a bit optimistic.
- shreddit 2y agoI think the 55% is the overall result, not the rating of a single submission.
- taylorius 2y agoAh, ok. I didn't realise that.
- staticautomatic 2y agoSentiment analysis is the worst
- zainalabdin878 2y agowhy is that?
- staticautomatic 2y agoIMO bc the accuracy isn’t good enough for the use cases.
- zainalabdin878 2y agoalright thanks a lot
- zainalabdin878 2y agoAlright everyone, Thanks again for the super helpful feedback. I've indeed updated the website to offer a free plan and have made major changes to the copy. Please feel free to share feedback anytime.