Please review my weekend project: face-me-not
face-me-not.com
face-me-not.com
I personally know you to be a trustworthy guy, but people outside of Hacker News probably won't (and you aren't even associated with this project on the site, regardless). So to the average passerby this website looks mad-sketchy, like it is a thinly disguised attempt at stealing personal information.
So I'd work on the design a bit, to avoid that perception.
That said, I'm about to boot to Windows for the first time in ages and try this out. :)
Why the email hook, and not simply a download link?
Nothing nefarious.
There's an interesting trust/marketing issue here. People seem to not want to download free software. I can understand that. I wonder if it's particular to this market niche (tech people and people interested in stopping annoying social site behavior) or if it's more of a general problem with all downloaded software. Needs more research.
I could have went the download link. Think that would have been significantly better?
Yes!
That way the barrier is '0', now there is a barrier.
No barrier is always better.
You could have asked them outright to add their address to a list because this is 'beta' software and you'd like to warn them when there are updates, better still have your software check for updates and warn the user instead.
EDIT: Anybody know of a good article or book on how to remove obstacles for web users to download software?
You can't. Welcome to publishing software :)
Most people fix this by requesting you register (usually optionally) after install. Not perfect; but the extra downloads from having no entry barrier probably mean ultimately you have more metrics.
(also; emailing in for a copy doesn't implicitly imply an agreement to receive update notices :) especially if it's not noted!)
> Then how do I tell them I've improved the product?
Update check.
It doesn't have to be malicious. And plenty of software contains update checks and so on.
A bit of client server communication is fine as long as you don't abuse it.
1) the email us gambit, I think it comes off as a little scamy. My guess is it's just there for simplicity right now, but I could be missing something (happens often) A way you could think of doing it that may be more palatable to your customers is to have a download button and make the user register with you before the download. Even if the result is the same, I think the psychological impact of the email request being 1 more step in would increase conversion. All just my opinion.
2) is pretty silly. Just site aesthetic. I wouldn't currently order from that page if I randomly happened upon it. Just trying to review it in the form o saw it. I'm sure you already have that worked out.
REALLY great idea.
I'm outbin DC. And the facebook privacy implications are HUGE buzz right now. Lots of non tech savy people in politics and it's ancilary industries are simply deleting (or trying to delete) their profile. Your app could get a great response if you can get it in front of them. I see it getting passed along in professional circles.
What is your plan for marketing it? Any plan for monetization?
Thanks for letting us review.
- The lack of any styling whatsoever. It doesn't even have a stylesheet. I don't think I've ever seen a scammer/spammer put less effort into their fake sites. And I've definitely never seen a legitimate site do this. Congrats, you're the first ;-)
- Not only does the site have no info about what it actually does, but there is no meta title or description to tell me either. At this point, no explanation could convince me this is a serious project.
- No contact information at all, except for the free@face-me-not.com email address. Even a trip to WHOIS returns zero contact info (that's right zero!). Other interesting facts from WHOIS include a) domain was registered only yesterday, b) domain was registered for only a year, and c) domain was registered through a registrar who's tagline is "No bullshit" (this last fact I just think is funny and interesting, and doesn't affect my judgement of credibility).
- The domain name (face-me-not.com) isn't very good. I typically try to steer clear of hyphenated domain names if at all possible. For your own projects, it's difficult to tell people about it in conversation. "Yeah it's face-hyphen-me-hyphen-not-dot-com." For that reason, I usually assume sites with hyphens are not serious projects.
I do believe you took the MVP methodology to the extreme. I'm guessing you spent about 10 minutes on this, including time to register the domain and setup the email. That being said, if you get serious about this, definitley let me know, because it's a cool idea.
My approach is this: I assume the default position of all companies is to swipe personal information and use it in whatever way they see fit (e.g. FB, but also Netflix, et al.) Since this is the case, I trust huge companies, like FB or Google more, since they stand to lose a lot more if they get sued. Not very soothing, I believe this is the best algorithm under these conditions.
I like the idea of thinking of social network spying as malware.
At least that's what I assume that's about. It's really annoying.