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Comment by bhb | Hacker News Reader

We just launched seekler.com on January 7th. Seekler is a collection of community-built lists that make it really fast and easy to find new stuff like movies, music, etc.

We had some good early traffic (from a few great links to one of our lists), but unfortunately things have slowed down a lot in the past few weeks. We think the basic concept is great, but we're wondering if the UI is keeping people from really digging into our content. We're going to probably release a slightly tweaked interface on Monday. And, as always, we're always looking for feedback on how we could make Seekler better.

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I took a look at Seekler again, and I'm a little confused on who your audience is.

The home page appears to be a generic destination, as in, "if you want lists of stuff, we've got 'em" But, I don't think people just want lists of "stuff", they want lists of a few things that are relevant to them.

For example, I may be a movie buff who's very excited about the 2008 anticipated movie list, but charities, books, and comic books are of no use to me. It seems that it'd be better to offer the data on your site targeted to the respective niche audiences that they serve in an easily consumable way (FB App, Blog widget, etc), rather than expecting that there are people who just crave information because it's in a list format.

I'm generally a design snob, but I think your UI is fine for the stage you're at (though it sort of reminds me of a domain landing page). My advice is to refine what the value you're actually adding is, and then find ways to appropriately serve those people looking for your utility.

Good question regarding our audience. We don't really intend to make Seekler a place you would visit every day (as you noticed, we have quite a few gaps in our content, so for any niche, you'll probably only find a few lists that interest you right now) - instead, we're trying to make it resource, more like Wikipedia, but for opinions. The idea is that if you're looking for something in particular niche, you'll start your search on Seekler. Our goal is save you time - instead of spending 20-30 minutes finding your next movie, book, whatever, we can make that 5 minutes or so.

Of course, until we get a lot more data, people won't really start their search at Seekler. But we're starting to show up pretty high on Google results for a number of our lists, so we are trying to get our initial traffic that way.

Your point about the widget and FB is interesting. We have a widget that is being tested and we're strongly considering building a FB app to play up the social angle. For instance, right now the 'Best Movies' list merges the lists of all users - would it be interesting to see a list created from just the lists of your FB friends?

Thanks for the questions and feedback. We're learning something new every day...

I get that you're becoming a warehouse of categorical "opinion-based" data, but the trick seems like it's going to be how that data can be accessed once it's stored. Lists of things my friends like, seems it'd be more useful than getting a list of what random strangers like.

I think there's a lot more you can do in that direction, and I encourage you to look into it :]

Awesome, thanks for the advice. This is pretty much our biggest question right now (whether or not to go for the social angle and implement a facebook app), so I appreciate the feedback.

Good work on the app. The ui is really good, I don't know if that's an issue. Do you have a business model?

Yes, basically it'll be supported via advertising and affiliate partnerships once we can get traffic going. The issue we've heard from users (including the news.yc community - thanks everyone for the feedback!) is that the site looks a little "spammy." The redesign will keep most things the same, just show a bit more about each item (including a description and some reviews).

Check out onmylist.com....they seem to be doing the same thing as u guys

Yeah, they are definitely similar. The main difference I see is that all the lists look individualize - that is, you can't merge lists across all users to get a comprehensive lists that includes all items.

Thanks for the heads up.

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