Tell HN: Our iPhone app, Broadersheet, is now on sale [50% off] | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: Our iPhone app, Broadersheet, is now on sale [50% off]

iphone.broadersheet.com

17 pointspclark18 comments

I'll be unpopular for saying this, but I really hate this web 2.0 marketing speak.

Starting sentences with "Hi" or "Hey", sentences like "Drop me an email", using unneccessary hyper words like "love", "excited", "we can't wait", "sneak peak".

Then this fake chuminess like "I'm nursing a hangover", "my cat typed this", "love to hear from you", smileys.

And then this self-deprecation: "it's really tough to know if we are on track", "our little app".

Guys, get this : this type of language no longer has the effect it had when it was used for the first time. This has become business speak - and real people don't talk that way.

I'm not a guy that likes referencing other people on this site, but take a look at the language that patio11 uses on his website. This is a normal way to talk to people.

Stop talking to people like they are a bit stupider than you, but to get to their level, you need to self-deprecate. It's not effective. That would be the gripe I have about your website. And apologies for being harsh, but my asthma is acting up.

In the context of a blog, I frankly think you are wrong. I think it's important to remember that the language in their blog doesn't match their marketing message at all - if their front page emulated the same tone, I would be with you 100%. But it doesn't.

I don't think broad claims of "effective" really make much sense either. It seems silly to view someone's blog message from an outsiders perspective and make claims to it's effect on sales. Did it turn you off to purchasing their product? Do you know how many people it turned off? Were those people even in the market to buy it in the first place?

Patrick also uses vastly different tones in his marketing messages and his blog. His blog is about programming & business topics + the occasional silly thing. His marketing is a rock-solid battle-worn message tested over hundreds of iterations. Do you think that's ineffective?

There is plenty of place in the world for companies that act like humans are running it. A blog is an appropriate channel for this to happen. Zappos has shown that a human-sounding company approach can work. You are welcome to your opinions - they very well may be right - but I would rather see the stimulation of discussion instead of brash opinions. Saying "this sucks, don't do it" doesn't get these guys any closer to a better business.

You're right in that I should not say it sucks. What I should say is that I dislike it. I don't speak this way in real life, and none of my friends do, so when I see this cheery chirpy LA girl tone, it annoys me to no end. It does not feel real.

I've read material that is humanized, but it sounds real. It sounds like someone really means what they are saying. Like what you wrote. Or what I am writing back to you. We are clearly human beings talking to each other. I would not reply to your statement with a collection of over-hyper adjectives : you would think I was strange.

I did not look at the frontpage, and my gripe is with the blog. It reads to me like a trend language. I see a lot of designers doing this on their blog - likely because other designers are doing it also. To me, it comes across as fake.

Maybe there are people who love being spoken to in that manner. I just don't know such people.

I sit next to the Broadersheet guys.

The language is certainly not fake; the exuberance is definitely real.

it's just how we speak.

I think it applies both in real life (yes, we say stuff like roflcopter, awesome, leet, rad, man in usual sentences) and our online identities. You should email our support and chat to Donovan, our enthusiastic support robot to appreciate our terminology. Yeah.

But, I'm really sorry if we sound too crazed or enthusiastic. We'll try to tone our lingo down in the future (to a certain extent.)

good points, btw I suspect that a lot of people wouldn't use this type of marketing-speak naturally (as a marketing tactic). I think they see this marketing-speak as the prevailing trend and just follow it (I'm speaking of the generic case and don't know anything about the specific case that maxklein is referring to)

I believe you are absolutely right. People are using this kind of language and other people are doing it because everyone else is, but without any clear strategy why they should.

We'd love feedback on the app or website. Here are some promo codes (US only): 7TA7TR33LNRL XXKT3P9JMAEM HAKMJHK6EF74

Just grabbed the last code. Syncing it over now, some impressions in a bit.

EDIT: My main complaint so far: No mobilized version of the article? I'm used to Byline and Instapaper, which both cache text-only versions of the page. If it went to the mobile version of the site, I'd be fine with that, or if it ran it through something like Instapaper's Mobileizer[1] that would be nice - with an option to view the original of course.

It also crashed on me once while reading a rather meaty article from Engadget[2], and didn't appear to save any of my read/favorite status.

I'm not sure there really needs to be the different ways of sorting the news that up-front (Date/Source/Topic), but it does mirror the iPod app and it'll take some using before I'm really sure - maybe I'll like it more than I think.

The article selection seems decent, although that'll really take a few days to learn my preferences I assume.

Overall I'd say a decent idea that's executed well - a few tweaks and bug fixes would seal the deal for me, I think.

[1] http://www.instapaper.com/extras [2] http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/12/engadgets-gear-of-ces-201...

thank you.

we'll look into mobilizing content via instapaper. we really don't want to strip adverts out - wish more providers offered mobile versions of content. We've had lots of feedback about how slow articles are to load, so we might be forced to optimize the content via instapaper or such.

thanks for the engadget link, we can totally fix that.

must be popular. 15 minutes after you posted the codes, and all three are already used.

what the heck, it's only two bucks, so i just bought it. i am always looking for interesting stuff to read on my iphone, so i'll see if this helps. i'll have to use it awhile before having any useful feedback.

can you ping me an email if you have any feedback over next few days or such? peter@broadersheet.com

Last time I saw this at FOWA 2009, you stripped all the ads out the sites your app soruced content from, which didn't impress a lot of the crowd. Has this changed?

we don't do this by default, we have a readability esque script that optimizes content for readability.

We brought it from the web to iPhone - but only if user taps a button after the article has loaded. :)

http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

I'm not quite sure if this is a problem with only my computer - I assume that iPhone graphic on the right is supposed to play some sort of animation as when I scroll over it, it takes me through the frames, but at no time did it actually play on its own.

Safari 4.04 on Leopard

It's a QuickTime movie, so if you scroll over it, it actually scrubs through the file in Pause mode. To play it, you can click on it and press Space.

I think that if you let it load completely, it will start by itself. (which you can't know because the toolbar is absent)

I agree that it's a weird UX.

Yeah, that should change.

weird. should stream using the default quicktime thing (eg: asap)

will fix - thanks for the heads up.

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