Ask HN: Help beta test my startup and possibly win $50 | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Help beta test my startup and possibly win $50

unbig.me

13 pointstyohn25 comments

If anyone is at all interested: Almost all the traffic from HN skips the ads via the "Click to close and continue" link at the top right - while the majority of Twitter users let the ad run for a full 12 seconds.

We're an impatient group. :)

Seeing that you require an email address, the first thing I looked for was your privacy policy. Unfortunately, the lightbox screen doesn't scroll in my browser (Opera 10.10) so I couldn't skim through all of it.

I'll have to look into that. Thanks for the input. edit: added Here's the link to our privacy statement http://unbig.me/privacy.php

Use a disposable email address!! I'm a developer on one (whyspam.me)!

You're service has some nice features, I happen to have also created a disposable email service :) dispostable.com

seems like disposable email is the new web-programmer's "hello world". Just wish someone told me that before i started mine ^_^

I like your interface, very clean. How do you plan to monetize/keep-it-going?

Yeah there are quite a few out there ;), most of them use some kind of template php script though (they all look alike).

For now it will run like this, no ads, we mainly use it to test new stuff that we might use in the future for other projects.

For example the smtp server is custom to make sure it can handle huge amounts of mail (to learn some more about writing high performance servers). Also the realtime "new message" notification system is written in node.js which we are now using for different projects because it works so well.

Cool, keep up the good work and viva privacy!

There are also very specific legal requirements for running contests of any type. I would suggest contacting an attorney!!

Thanks!

This isn't a startup.

I don't think you'll find many people willing to annoy their followers/friends with advertisements, even in exchange for some pocket change.

I think your vision is a little short sighted. I think business could use this on their own social media sites and alike.

I don't quite understand what you're saying. Do you mean businesses that are on Twitter and Facebook would use this to make extra money?

I'm not sure if that's what you meant but if so: Businesses are on Twitter/facebook to try to connect the current/prospective customers in order to encourage repeat business. Adding advertisements to short links would detract from that mission.

The site also lets you connect/link your own ads to display with the short links you create. For instance say I ran a retail business... I could "target' my own links to display my own ads. So when a user clicks on an one of my unbig.me link in the retailers Twitter stream - one of the retailers own ads could display.

I run Chrome with an ad blocker - the test link gave me a blank screen with a non-obvious loading meter in the top left (which said click to cancel on hover).

Seeing as a large number of people use ad blockers that's not a great UI experience - quite a few people could even click back/close because they think it is the page their visiting loading.

That is a very good point. I've been thinking about that issue for awhile now. Thanks for the input.

Am I the only person that really hoped "unbig.me" was a weight-loss related app? And the banner at the top reads "Use unbig.me to to shorten your link and earn $". Obviously you should remove the "to to" and overall that just feels like someone talking in txt to me, which I hate.

You're not the first person to tell me that. If the concept isn't successful I'll change direction to a weight-loss app :)

Can anyone explain me the value of URL shorteners? I never understood this "cool" trend... OK, they're useful for SMS (that's why it's so popular on Twitter), but what else ?

Hmm...i got a casino advertisement...to a news website doesn't seem too targeted.

Yeah it's by no means perfect but I am working on it. And I need more advertisers to match more effectively :)

I’d appreciate any thoughts about the giveaway and or the concept. Thanks!

'possibly'

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