5 ms·

Ask HN: Review our startup, PubliciTweet

9 points by jmathai 17y ago

jmathai 17y ago
I had asked once before but we've added a handful of features and didn't get a lot of response last time.
chrischen 17y ago
Maybe you could add support for other social networks? I mean when a company thinks about going social, they'd probably want to establish a presence on multiple networks. Maybe they want to target the facebook demographic instead of the twitter demographic?
- jmathai 17y ago
  Adding in Facebook is probably next. Though, I think it will take a little while for us to really iron out the kinks with campaigns on Twitter. Thanks for the feedback!
adrianwaj 17y ago
I'd prefer a tweet message than a DM from a corporate that wants my money.
- jmathai 17y ago
  One issue with the public timeline is that you can't really get metrics for which follower did what. When sending a DM campaign you can see which follower referred the most clicks. That being said, you can send it to your public timeline or to a group of followers. It's up to the company to decide which one works better and that's part of what the analytics are for. The target company is one who has special promotions and giveaways and has followers who value their offers.
  - amr 17y ago
    So in order for you to track your metrics, you willing to annoy your client's followers. I am not sure that's a good idea.
    - jmathai 17y ago
      This isn't intended to be scapegoating the situation but it's really up to our client how they decide to communicate with their followers. Depends on if they want to track metrics per follower.
  - adrianwaj 17y ago
    Can't you just provide a unique shortened URL within each tweet sent (or a hashtag) and track if it was RT'ed (when and by who) or the individual link clicked? You can have an opt-in/opt-out on the linked page too.
    - jmathai 17y ago
      We do provide a unique shortened url per tweet/dm. For the public timeline it's more difficult to track the "referal". We have thought about putting in a beacon of some sort. An issue with that is that a beacon (like #zs8) is one of the first things to be removed from a RT if it's not a valid hashtag. A url, however, is rarely removed from a RT since it's pertinent to the message. We're still thinking about how to track RTs from the timeline. The new retweet API will most likely help and make timeline campaigns more valuable. An "opt out" page on our site is a good idea. One issue is we don't do an interstitial on which to display that link. Have to figure out a good way to make that visible. Thanks.
      - Tichy 17y ago
        Perhaps interesting in that context is that Twitter seems to have started to track clicks for users of the web site. (Clicks go through a referral page so Twitter can count them). I don't recall them announcing anything about what they want to do with it, but it seems like it could become part of a commercial offering. Unfortunately it only works for users on the web site.
        jmathai 17y ago
        Yea, if the majority of traffic was from the website then we could possibly track clicks based on the referer.
dc2k08 17y ago
First off, great design and layout, very clean and pretty too. It compliments twitter well. However, it's not clear to me what the service does. The first feature listed on the 'what you get page' says: PubliciTweet is a social media marketing tool that helps you leverage those followers with unique campaigns and tools to track your success. This works more as an opening tagline and might be better suited to the homepage. From the homepage, I get the idea that PubliciTweet is a service where I can queue a series of tweets at various intervals . PubliciTweet then tracks and graphs which tweets by measuring clickthroughs perhaps. When I click 'learn more' - I don't learn actually learn any more. Maybe an in depth description could go here explaining the guts of it or a video demo.
- movix 17y ago
  I agree with this poster - it looks great, like something I'd want to use, but I read the whole landing page and still didn't know what I could use it for.
  - jmathai 17y ago
    Wow, that's bad! Thanks for the feedback. I was pretty focused on making the home page short and to the point. Guess it could use a bit of rework though. Good comments. :)
- jmathai 17y ago
  Thanks! I've been wanting to do a video demo. That's probably one of the upcoming changes to the site. I agree that the 'learn more' page is probably too wordy as well. Hoped that the bullet points would help clearly define what the service does..but will add more clarity on the home page.
  - dc2k08 17y ago
    Just to be clear, I think the 'learn more' page is not wordy enough. I think you should elaborate more on what the service does. There is more info on the home page than the 'learn more' page.
workhorse 17y ago
Setup OAuth, ClickPass, Google Friendconnect, OpenID, or some other registration method. http://apiwiki.twitter.com/OAuth-FAQ http://apiwiki.twitter.com/OAuth-FAQ I run a Twitter tool that started out using Direct Messages, but found that CTR in DM's are horrible. I had to switch to public status updates with @username.
- jmathai 17y ago
  We use OAuth to link Twitter accounts. Our OAuth implementation was done before Twitter added "login with Twitter". OpenID isn't yet widely adopted (not enough for us to really support it --- chicken and egg anyone?). I do like the simplicity of 'login with Twitter' but haven't seen any evidence yet that our sign up page has many bounces. We have 96% of users that link at least one Twitter account to their PubliciTweet account. Which was quite a surprise to us.
joshsharp 17y ago
http://www.howtousetwitterformarketingandpr.com/ http://www.howtousetwitterformarketingandpr.com/
- jmathai 17y ago
  Long domain, short content. Any reasons why not to use Twitter for marketing?
Tichy 17y ago
"Direct message all Twitter followers" I already hate you for that. Don't advise your clients to do that.
- jmathai 17y ago
  What's the deal with so many people hating DMs on Twitter? We provide the option to send DMs to groups of followers. Our hope is that Twitter will end up being a place where companies that provide valuable content (via DM or otherwise) have lots of followers and ones which don't...do not. No harm done if a spammer with few followers sends mass DMs. It really comes back to inflating follower #s which needs to go away if Twitter is to become a true tool for communication. The bottom line is that you have the option of not following people you feel send you unwanted messages. Let me know if I'm way off base or missing something here. Thanks for the feedback though.
  - Tichy 17y ago
    I think in most cases I would consider it an abuse of my trust if a company I followed would send me marketing related DMs. Following on Twitter is NOT an invitation to send me DMs. It means - "ok, I am reasonably interested to let your blurts flickr across my screen, and perhaps by chance I'll catch something interesting now or then". If I want more, I can subscribe to a newlsetter or something. DMs are extremely intrusive, as they also trigger a notification email. They should be reserved for stuff that needs to be private, or is urgent. Both doesn't apply to marketing blurps. Why the hate - because DMs multiply the cost of following somebody by a lot. Whereas initially it is just one click "oh heck, why not", it ends up being a hassle of a LOT more clicks and wasted brain cycles. Edit: why I said "don't advise your clients to do that" - my most likely reaction would be to unfollow that user, and I think many feel the same. Of course perhaps marketing will find that it is still worth it (just as newsletters work, even though everybody hates them).
    - jmathai 17y ago
      Valid points. One of our main goals is to curb spam usage. Just to let you know some of the ways we plan on doing that. 1) We'll be introducing a pay model which should weed out the majority of spammers (CTR won't be high enough). 2) A free version will be limiting enough that it won't be worthwhile for spammers. 3) We have an artificial limit placed on "groups" so you can only DM N (500 atm) followers at a time. If you have other ideas we'd love to hear them. We wouldn't post a site intended for spam on HN :). In addition to that, I think Twitter should employ more robust emails (or just buy out Topify) that let's you easily block or unfollow users directly from the DM email. Thanks for clarifying your original post.
aw3c2 17y ago
You can save traffic if you compress your images better. You could probably optimize them for better results, but even a plain "optipng -o7 *.png" for the frontpage stripped away about 180 Kilobytes. Also comsider using JPEG for some images, it might be much smaller. Using a small palette and no transparency is the key for small PNG.
- jmathai 17y ago
  Site optimization took a back seat so we could launch it early. I'm generally a stickler about sprites and whatnot - none of which are used on the site. JS and css is combo'ed and minified but that's all. optipng would be an easy fix though and will try to do that for the next release. Thanks for the feedback.

9 points by jmathai 17y ago

I had asked once before but we've added a handful of features and didn't get a lot of response last time.

Maybe you could add support for other social networks? I mean when a company thinks about going social, they'd probably want to establish a presence on multiple networks. Maybe they want to target the facebook demographic instead of the twitter demographic?

jmathai 17y ago
Adding in Facebook is probably next. Though, I think it will take a little while for us to really iron out the kinks with campaigns on Twitter. Thanks for the feedback!

adrianwaj 17y ago

I'd prefer a tweet message than a DM from a corporate that wants my money.

jmathai 17y ago
One issue with the public timeline is that you can't really get metrics for which follower did what. When sending a DM campaign you can see which follower referred the most clicks. That being said, you can send it to your public timeline or to a group of followers. It's up to the company to decide which one works better and that's part of what the analytics are for. The target company is one who has special promotions and giveaways and has followers who value their offers.
- amr 17y ago
  So in order for you to track your metrics, you willing to annoy your client's followers. I am not sure that's a good idea.
  - jmathai 17y ago
    This isn't intended to be scapegoating the situation but it's really up to our client how they decide to communicate with their followers. Depends on if they want to track metrics per follower.
- adrianwaj 17y ago
  Can't you just provide a unique shortened URL within each tweet sent (or a hashtag) and track if it was RT'ed (when and by who) or the individual link clicked? You can have an opt-in/opt-out on the linked page too.
  - jmathai 17y ago
    We do provide a unique shortened url per tweet/dm. For the public timeline it's more difficult to track the "referal". We have thought about putting in a beacon of some sort. An issue with that is that a beacon (like #zs8) is one of the first things to be removed from a RT if it's not a valid hashtag. A url, however, is rarely removed from a RT since it's pertinent to the message. We're still thinking about how to track RTs from the timeline. The new retweet API will most likely help and make timeline campaigns more valuable. An "opt out" page on our site is a good idea. One issue is we don't do an interstitial on which to display that link. Have to figure out a good way to make that visible. Thanks.
    - Tichy 17y ago
      Perhaps interesting in that context is that Twitter seems to have started to track clicks for users of the web site. (Clicks go through a referral page so Twitter can count them). I don't recall them announcing anything about what they want to do with it, but it seems like it could become part of a commercial offering. Unfortunately it only works for users on the web site.
      - jmathai 17y ago
        Yea, if the majority of traffic was from the website then we could possibly track clicks based on the referer.

dc2k08 17y ago

First off, great design and layout, very clean and pretty too. It compliments twitter well. However, it's not clear to me what the service does. The first feature listed on the 'what you get page' says: PubliciTweet is a social media marketing tool that helps you leverage those followers with unique campaigns and tools to track your success. This works more as an opening tagline and might be better suited to the homepage. From the homepage, I get the idea that PubliciTweet is a service where I can queue a series of tweets at various intervals . PubliciTweet then tracks and graphs which tweets by measuring clickthroughs perhaps. When I click 'learn more' - I don't learn actually learn any more. Maybe an in depth description could go here explaining the guts of it or a video demo.

movix 17y ago
I agree with this poster - it looks great, like something I'd want to use, but I read the whole landing page and still didn't know what I could use it for.
- jmathai 17y ago
  Wow, that's bad! Thanks for the feedback. I was pretty focused on making the home page short and to the point. Guess it could use a bit of rework though. Good comments. :)
jmathai 17y ago
Thanks! I've been wanting to do a video demo. That's probably one of the upcoming changes to the site. I agree that the 'learn more' page is probably too wordy as well. Hoped that the bullet points would help clearly define what the service does..but will add more clarity on the home page.
- dc2k08 17y ago
  Just to be clear, I think the 'learn more' page is not wordy enough. I think you should elaborate more on what the service does. There is more info on the home page than the 'learn more' page.

workhorse 17y ago

Setup OAuth, ClickPass, Google Friendconnect, OpenID, or some other registration method. http://apiwiki.twitter.com/OAuth-FAQ http://apiwiki.twitter.com/OAuth-FAQ I run a Twitter tool that started out using Direct Messages, but found that CTR in DM's are horrible. I had to switch to public status updates with @username.

jmathai 17y ago
We use OAuth to link Twitter accounts. Our OAuth implementation was done before Twitter added "login with Twitter". OpenID isn't yet widely adopted (not enough for us to really support it --- chicken and egg anyone?). I do like the simplicity of 'login with Twitter' but haven't seen any evidence yet that our sign up page has many bounces. We have 96% of users that link at least one Twitter account to their PubliciTweet account. Which was quite a surprise to us.

joshsharp 17y ago

http://www.howtousetwitterformarketingandpr.com/ http://www.howtousetwitterformarketingandpr.com/

jmathai 17y ago
Long domain, short content. Any reasons why not to use Twitter for marketing?

Tichy 17y ago

"Direct message all Twitter followers" I already hate you for that. Don't advise your clients to do that.

jmathai 17y ago
What's the deal with so many people hating DMs on Twitter? We provide the option to send DMs to groups of followers. Our hope is that Twitter will end up being a place where companies that provide valuable content (via DM or otherwise) have lots of followers and ones which don't...do not. No harm done if a spammer with few followers sends mass DMs. It really comes back to inflating follower #s which needs to go away if Twitter is to become a true tool for communication. The bottom line is that you have the option of not following people you feel send you unwanted messages. Let me know if I'm way off base or missing something here. Thanks for the feedback though.
- Tichy 17y ago
  I think in most cases I would consider it an abuse of my trust if a company I followed would send me marketing related DMs. Following on Twitter is NOT an invitation to send me DMs. It means - "ok, I am reasonably interested to let your blurts flickr across my screen, and perhaps by chance I'll catch something interesting now or then". If I want more, I can subscribe to a newlsetter or something. DMs are extremely intrusive, as they also trigger a notification email. They should be reserved for stuff that needs to be private, or is urgent. Both doesn't apply to marketing blurps. Why the hate - because DMs multiply the cost of following somebody by a lot. Whereas initially it is just one click "oh heck, why not", it ends up being a hassle of a LOT more clicks and wasted brain cycles. Edit: why I said "don't advise your clients to do that" - my most likely reaction would be to unfollow that user, and I think many feel the same. Of course perhaps marketing will find that it is still worth it (just as newsletters work, even though everybody hates them).
  - jmathai 17y ago
    Valid points. One of our main goals is to curb spam usage. Just to let you know some of the ways we plan on doing that. 1) We'll be introducing a pay model which should weed out the majority of spammers (CTR won't be high enough). 2) A free version will be limiting enough that it won't be worthwhile for spammers. 3) We have an artificial limit placed on "groups" so you can only DM N (500 atm) followers at a time. If you have other ideas we'd love to hear them. We wouldn't post a site intended for spam on HN :). In addition to that, I think Twitter should employ more robust emails (or just buy out Topify) that let's you easily block or unfollow users directly from the DM email. Thanks for clarifying your original post.

aw3c2 17y ago

You can save traffic if you compress your images better. You could probably optimize them for better results, but even a plain "optipng -o7 *.png" for the frontpage stripped away about 180 Kilobytes. Also comsider using JPEG for some images, it might be much smaller. Using a small palette and no transparency is the key for small PNG.

jmathai 17y ago
Site optimization took a back seat so we could launch it early. I'm generally a stickler about sprites and whatnot - none of which are used on the site. JS and css is combo'ed and minified but that's all. optipng would be an easy fix though and will try to do that for the next release. Thanks for the feedback.