Need your feedback on my startup: tubri.com | Hacker News Reader

Need your feedback on my startup: tubri.com

9 pointstubri16 comments

How do we live in our real life? Do we behave same with everyone we know? Do my co-workers get to know what I’m talking with my family or friends? Never.

We live in groups. Different groups and different relations. All current social networks on the web allow you to keep only one group of all the people you know. Thats how they are designed. So any update/photos you share, gets visible to ALL. This is where many people stop socializing online.

We have developed a new kind of social network: tubri.com which is based on real-life groups. It allows you to create separate groups of people and interact with them differently, send them different updates or photos.

For example: No one in group “friends” can see what you are talking about in “family” group or other groups unless they are a member of that group too.

1. Groups are personal and no one gets to know which groups you have created or which group you have kept them in. 2. No need to send any group join invitations to anyone, just arrange your people.

Here is a short video explaining Tubri: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVg3lN8UHcA

I think it would have been easier to give you feedback if you hadn't tried to explain it to us first - that way, we could have a look at your site and give you feedback from the perspective of a new user, rather than someone who is already educated about the product.

That said, I really like the idea of being able to separate friends and family from colleagues and clients. Unfortunately, it's not compelling enough to make me and my 200 or so "friends" (and their friends, and their friends friends) on Facebook all jump ship to a new service.

Perhaps it would be better released as an app for Facebook that handles friends groups and post privacy settings for you in an easier to manage way.

(you did know, that this pretty much already exists in Facebook didn't you?)

A few things:

1) The intro video is amateurish and uncompelling -- nobody wants to see a deck poorly animated with black bars on the side.

2) The web design needs some work. I'd recommend hiring someone with more modern sensibilities/tastes to redesign the front page. There are little things: the first signup button isn't centered, the bottom one is way too small and laid out wrong.

3) "Wait, does Facebook do that?" Answer this question, clearly.

4) Show your product. I should be able to see it, get a taste of it without signing up for it (this matters more in the beginning/without network effects which is where you're at).

5) What are your USPs? What is Facebook not doing? The major two problems are context collapse, which you're addressing, and privacy. Think about addressing that as well. That was the major reason for the fundraising success of Diaspora. Their home page is closer to how a landing page should look in 2010 as well: http://www.joindiaspora.com/

Thanks AmitinLA, your suggestions are quite helpful.

Three things will help you immensely:

1) Screenshots of the features you describe below

2) A section that shows all the members you already have (show their profile pictures)

3) A new video. Make it shorter, more punchy, put in some sound, and some better animation. I suggest that you look at Wistia's video: http://wistia.com. I took inspiration from their video, because it seemed like anyone with no background in video editing/design can come up with a Wistia-like introductory video. But it's simple, short, and tells people what they need to know, which is what I like about it.

Thanks for your suggestions fezzl. Would surely try these.

We have made some changes to the homepage, explaining privacy protection and some common QA.

Would like to know your thoughts on the changes.

While I agree with social groups being interesting, how is this different than making a 'list' on Facebook?

Hi by_harry, the difference is in focus. We are focusing on 'Social' with 'Relationships' in mind. Whereas Facebook lists were added later on to address grouping needs. Its not the main design point of Facebook.

With tubri.com, we are trying to make it easier and tightly integrated into the network right from the first step.

how do you say that my next wall post should be only viewable to list "Family"? Or the album I posted can only be viewed by a certain list?

Hi sandipagr, user is not restricted to post to one group at a time only. If you like your photo to be viewable by your Friends, Family and Best Friends groups.. you can do so easily by selecting multiple groups while posting. Its that simple.

My comment was in response to _harry and was asking how you do that with "list" on Facebook. My comment had nothing to do with how your system works. Just clarifying

For status updates, to the left of the share button there's a dropdown menu where you can customize who can see it.

If you're trying to write on someone else's wall, but only want certain people to view it, you're better off sending a message instead. You can send a message to a list by just typing in the name of the list in the 'to' field.

You can customize who can see any album in the edit album info tab, and selecting the privacy dropdown and clicking customize.

Hi _harr, there are only these options available while posting a status update: everyone, friends of friends, friends. And an option to customize further with lots of steps involved. The lists you create don't get visible there. Though this can be changed in just one night by FB, but that would still be an addon. The difference is in focus.

In tubri, we are focusing completely on human relations (groups) and its visible everywhere in the network.

For the wall case, we don't have any wall/scrapbook in Tubri, because we believe a user should use Private Messages for that purpose.

With groups thing as the foundation of the network, there will be more redesigns of the existing approaches to make it look more like real life network.

Here is short presentation on how tubri protects user's social privacy: http://www.slideshare.net/jeet232/how-tubri-protects-your-so...

Clickable: http://www.tubri.com/

Groups is a social network feature that I definitely think is valuable. But, is it enough to get anyone to move to a new social network? Are you at all afraid that Facebook might just release this feature one night?

Hi vyrotek. This group concept is not a feature which can be integrated in any social network so easily. For this, a social network would have to make heavy changes (not technical) which gets difficult because users are used to of their old design.

In tubri.com, we have designed the whole network based on this groups concept. But we are trying to make a network which is like real life, which people find complementary to real socialization. This groups concept is a start.

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