Atomkeep - your profile everywhere. (Please, review my startup) | Hacker News Reader

Atomkeep - your profile everywhere. (Please, review my startup)

atomkeep.com

30 pointswhite53 comments

I've been looking for this type of service for a very, very long time. I went changing at least 20 profiles with new information and pictures, and that's simply annoying.

Immediate notes

- I love the interface and design. Register and login are prominent, things are explained well, everything is clean.

- I love that I can merge my profile info from other networks to build my AtomKeep Profile. It makes it REALLY easy to use the service at the start.

- Freaking amazing how much information (and images) it imports into the system.

- Obviously a big challenge of AtomKeep is adding new profiles. It has some similar veins to FriendFeed. You've hit the most important services, though. Are Google Profiles, StumbleUpon, Digg, Last.fm or YouTube possibilities?

I am rarely impressed with new services, but a tip of my hat to you, I am impressed with what I have seen so far. After I finish moving to my new apartment, I am going to be sure to write a post about this service. I'll update this comment later with future impressions about the service.

The design of the front page is clean. I didn't get further, the site's service/features are not explained very well. The 'sync' feature means I can change my street address and you'll update all my accounts? Great, but that happens once every 5 years. So my comment is that you need to clearly explain what the point is. Screenshots maybe? Some sites use an embedded Flash demo.

The street address is just one of the simplest parts of modern profiles nowadays. But, yes, this is one of the features of Atomkeep.

In addition to street address, you also have your education and work experience blocks for example.

Originally, we planned to have screenshots or flash demo, however, we never came up with a good scenario for that. Once you are registered, all our screens are pretty simple. However, I'll raise this problem again and discuss with the team, thanks for pointing this out.

Education and work experience also change very rarely.

We are not an Instant Messenger service. We are not about making people change everything daily.

There is no idea to force people "stick" to the Atomkeep site and keep syncing and syncing. I believe people who will be doing that will be crazy! ;-) Just when you need to update something, with Atomkeep you always sure it will reflect everywhere you need it. Use it when you need it.

Great idea. I have some feedback.

When I land on the page, there's no clear place to look. I should have a clear, linear path that explains what the site does and then invites me to register. Instead, the first thing I see is the invite-a-friend button, and then some useless information about a new release, then the feedback button, a beta button, and finally, sign in.

Then, when I'm wondering "what is this place?", I see some marketing speak.

Rather than "no matter how many accounts, it's one place to keep them synced," with random bolded letters, it might be better to say "tell us what social applications you use, and we'll import your information. when you change your atomkeep profile, and all of your other profiles will be automatically updated, too."

The site is filled with lots of marketing speak. For example, "Atomkeep is here to solve the problem of information redundancy." is itself redundant when you explain the function of the site-- it's very obvious what it solves.

A great idea, though. But simplify and explain functionality and benefit.

Also, your incredibly refined help section seems kind of silly when the site is so simple. If you explain everything cleanly in the beginning, why would anyone need to click help (also, they never click help; they just close the page)?

--edit--

I also want to mention that the register form, while clever, made me not sign up. I am sure that after I enter my email address, you'll send me some email and I'll eventually have to pick a password somewhere. The uncertainty of where I would be choosing that password made me not sign up. One aspect of being polite to your users is making sure they know what will happen when they do something.

--edit--edit--

Curious, I signed up, and was prompted to enter a password in a javascript modal box, the one thing I hadn't even thought of as a possibility. After entering a password, I was presented with this, which reminded me so much of average UI on the web today that I felt I should critique it:

"We've sent a confirmation letter to your e-mail address me@dustincurtis.com. Please, click the link from the confirmation letter to activate your account. If you would not activate your account within 48 hours from the date of registration, your account would be permanently removed. Thank you.If you didn't receive the confirmation letter, please, check your SPAM filters and folders. If you still experience problems activating your account, don't hesitate to contact us."

This is not a polite thing to say to your users. It uses negative, commanding tone, issues a time limit, and then says that if I refuse to do X, my Y will be "PERMANENTLY REMOVED." For this application, I would assume that 90% of your users are used to how the web works. In that case, I suggest you change this huge paragraph to something like:

"Thanks for signing up. We've sent you a confirmation email you can use to login."

You don't need to mention the part about the spam folder, because people who would use this service will probably know about that already. Also, "If you still experience problems activating your account, don't hesitate to contact us," adds no value; if I have problems, of course I'll contact you. Most likely, though, anyone would just leave.

Thanks for taking time and delivering to us your feedback, you've got covered pretty much important things here.

Thank you very much for your feedback. However, our original idea is pretty much different from Friendfeed does. We are more about saving time and doing sometime valuable.

What do you mean saying Google Profiles? Are you talking about the ones from Google Groups? These are planned. I can make them higher priority, if you wish ;) Digg and YouTube are also planned. No StumbleUpon and Last.fm in plans, however the demand will set the direction for that.

Thanks again!

Same sentiments as parent poster. A quibble, however: I saw google talk listed thrice in the profile editor.

Would you send me a screenshot to alex at atomkeep.com ? I'd like to find out what's wrong with that. Thanks.

If I give you my Facebook credentials do you log in to my account? That's actually a good way to get my account banned.

So, right from the start, there's a trust issue. I suspect the trust issue will be bigger than you think because of your target audience.

It's clear from your home page that you're targeting professionals and not, say, teenagers. That's the aesthetic, at least. But these people are going to be the most particular about what you do with their data.

That is, you're targeting the data-conscious and then asking them to give you access to their data.

Unlikely, there is no way to help you, if you're unwilling to give us at least minimum. We have a workaround for import currently in development, however, we can't do much with sync feature without being able to login.

Maybe you're not understanding what I'm saying. If I give you my Facebook credentials and you log on and do stuff on my behalf, that's more than enough grounds for Facebook to delete my account.

This is what happened to Robert Scoble, for example.

There's seems to be an asymmetry, here. All I get out of it is convenience (or am I wrong?). You, on the other hand, get to sniff around my data. On top of all that I'm the one taking all the risk.

Doesn't seem like a very good value proposition to me.

This section in your "privacy policy" doesn't really me eager to jump on board, either: "Atomkeep.com may use personally identifiable information collected through our website to contact Users regarding products and services offered by Atomkeep.com and its trusted affiliates. We may also use information collected through our website for research regarding the effectiveness of the website and the marketing, advertising and sales efforts of Atomkeep.com, and its trusted affiliates."

Oh, ok, so you're going to get me to give you all my data and then you're going to target ads at me. Super-duper.

The convenience is the first step, we've got more in development. Robert Scoble, as far as I recall, was trying to download all his contacts and all their information out of Facebook. And this is a little bit different to what we're doing. From the other side, I can't disagree with you on some of your points.

However, Facebook is not the only one network that we target to.

Thanks.

"Robert Scoble, as far as I recall, was trying to download all his contacts and all their information out of Facebook. And this is a little bit different to what we're doing."

Trust me, Facebook doesn't care. Having me giving your credentials and then logging in on my behalf will get me banned.

"However, Facebook is not the only one network that we target to."

No, but here's a question: of your target audience what percentage have a Facebook account?

Not that it matters. Most social sites (or the smart ones, at least) have a policy against automation. LinkedIn stopped NotchUp using the same rationale, for example.

Can you be forthright? Let's say I sign up to your site and give you my Facebook and LinkedIn credentials. What, exactly, are you going to do with that information?

If I delete my account will all of my information on your servers be deleted? Will you ever send me notifications -- whether via email, IM, InMail, Facebook message, or whatever else -- that contain advertisements targeted based on the data I handed over to you?

If you delete account, it will get purged completely out of servers.

No, we are not sending any kind notifications at this point of time, and we don't plan to include advertisement anyway.

What we actually planning, are new services that you can benefit from, basing on ability to manipulate the data.

In fact, you don't have to give us any credentials to other networks to use our site.

Thanks!

I agree with jfarmer, this is a no-go situation. Imagine I give you all my accounts like FB and G, and then you store it in some unsecure manner and it gets hacked... Or, what if you decide to send spam on my behalf using my accounts. These accounts are too important to take "some" startups word for it.

We do not store anything, but your login. You password is asked only when we do something.

If there is a policy against automation, then every "Autofill" tool available in the browser as plug-in or embedded functionality will violate this policy as well.

It's very imporant to note, that when using Atomkeep - it just gives the same functionality as browser-based "Autofill", but on the Web. There is no any fetching of friends data, photos, e-mails, messages, whatever else. Just the data you have with Atomkeep, and the data you want to change/update.

Also, I take that as a, "Yes, we do in fact log into your account directly and perform automated actions on your behalf."

Or am I mistaken?

You are right, we log into your account and performing updating of your profile, so Facebook (for example) will always reflect the most actual data.

Your account can be banned if we would data fetch friends, photos or whatever else what belongs to the network. Other than that - one can hardly agree that personal data is what belongs to PERSON.

Atomkeep is here to solve the problem of information redundancy. Atomkeep will keep your accounts in sync on all social networks, job boards and other sites.

Atomkeep http://www.atomkeep.com

Please, give me your feedback about my startup company, Atomkeep. You can be bad ;) or you can be good, any opinion counts for me. Constructive ones are better, however, I'd appreciate any help. Thank you!

1) Will "Facebook Connect" kill this? Though we don't exactly know what FB connect is, I always assumed it allowed other sites to grab profile data from FB. Think of it like a virtual "home", allowing you to travel to other sites but you always have to go back to your home - unless you move your profile somewhere else.

2) The major social networks are fighting over who will store your personal profile information because it is the most valued data they have. Their authentication schemes (though in their infancy) usually only allow temporary access to profile data whereas you are copying it. Does this break the terms of service on Facebook, MySpace etc..?

1. Nobody knows, but according to the current trends on sharing data, FB (and others) are more likely to stick on "sneak preview" of the data. Everyone want to be the central data storage, but not us. This is not our primary goal to store profile. Our primary goal is to make sure that all your networks stay in sync and always have the recent info.

2. We don't make data import feature as the primary value. It's good one to have, however, we don't do anything that the data owner (user) do not allow us to.

As I understand, your friends and your networks is most valuable for them. Definitely, though, nobody knows the right answer. ;-)

At the end, it is important that profile filled out with Atomkeep just gets "pushed" to any system you need (well, which is supported by Atomkeep). Even without importing.

And it's really important that it's _user_ who owns his data. It's not that he is trying to "fetch" his friends. He just works with his data, like "Autofill" function in your browser inserts your fields. And "autofill" is something what has been here for ages and has been implemented in numerous third-party tool bars for IE/Mozilla and nobody had problems with them.

What does "keep accounts in sync" mean? (Give an example of the "pain" we face doing such and add this to your homepage. Remember, it needs to "click" in 3 seconds.)

The pain: several accounts (LinkedIn, facebook, MySpace) and keeping their profiles updated.

One more "pain" - looking for job and having your resume and info the same on all those job boards.

JobScore.com

As the most of such systems, JobScore wants to own your profile. From the opposite, Atomkeep wants other networks to own your profile and it'll do the "dirty" job for you on syncing it. JobScore will never be as much effective, as just keeping your resume in Monster, Dice and Jobster simultaneously. JobScore looks like a good partner for Atomkeep, though.

Cannot see how can I even register my profile with them, then find job on JOBCentral or Monster and apply to this job with my "JobScore" profile... Really - I am not sure this is what can do the job...

Good idea, good execution. But I think you should focus on benefits on the frontpage. If you tell me I can keep my photo albums in sync accross all my accounts, that is more interesting and more of a benefit than the somewhat abstract 'sync your profile'

Thanks, good point. Actually, I am looking for a professional marketing person and copy-writer, who can develop good copy for the site. Any references?

I flat out can't get it to work. I can't login to two of my accounts (slide and wordpress) and of the other six I did long into, only 2 would acutally sync. I was given different reasons: image too large in twitter, some code error in Facebook; not integrated with my space; and another I can't remember. So less than 18% synced. The feature I REALLY want to see is the ablility to actually post to all of these for those of us with small businesses who need to be on all of the social networks in order to reach all of our target audience. That's the product I'm looking for.

Assuming you're located in Pasadena, it's nice to see another startup nearby.

I really love the design and execution. Keep up the good work.

Thanks. Drop me an email and we may arrange a meeting with a beer or coffee if you're close by ;) However, we're about to move to SF area in the mean time.

Great idea. What is your business model?

Hopefully, I've answered it here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=231570

Feel free to drop me an email to alex at atomkeep.com and I can tell you more. Thanks.

I'd personally cut back on all of the "tabs" in your layout. Really confusing and there's probably a better stylistic solution to what you're trying to accomplish.

I don't think there is something in design that everyone would be happy about. We've tried several things on UI, before we came up with the tabbed layout. I'd be very thankful for your practical suggestions, though. Thanks.

Good idea... but, how do you intend to make money with it?

Thanks for asking.

Currently, we target three different sources of revenue: 1. Subscriptions 2. Advertisement 3. Strategic partnership

There are few more, less straight-forwarded ways, but those three should be enough for the first days.

I've been playing around with this idea for a while now.

Excellent you guys are far enough along to have a beta!

As jfarmer points out, there are some tricky issues around terms of service -- most sites do not want bots coming to harvest this data.

Our goal is not harvest data, but to export it. That's the point. I agree that it's easier to see the intentions to "steal" data from other networks, but this is not our point.

Given your privacy policy (http://atomkeep.com/member/privacy) that's a little hard to swallow.

These two sections stick out:

"Atomkeep.com may use personally identifiable information collected through our website to contact Users regarding products and services offered by Atomkeep.com and its trusted affiliates. We may also use information collected through our website for research regarding the effectiveness of the website and the marketing, advertising and sales efforts of Atomkeep.com, and its trusted affiliates."

"Atomkeep.com will not disclose information about customers or users without express permission unless the release of said information is required by a trusted affiliate to facilitate action requested by the client, or is required by government subpoena. However, we may transfer information collected from Users in connection with a sale of our business."

We'll need to take time and write it in a more proper way. Thanks for pointing this.

OpenID is the first step. OpenProfile is the next in line.

They might not be very similar, but you are exactly right. OpenProfile was the first thing how I described Atomkeep to others. ;)

Atomkeep is not OpenProfile. Idea is to do manual job for the user, just facilitate the usual boring process. Like "Autofill" in your browser did it many years ago :-) Doing just same what user will do, but just filling the fields for him.

what does the name mean?

the text at the top, especially the bold stuff, is too prominent and takes too much vertical space. you don't want new users to read that.

The name is stands mostly for "keeping the bits of your personal information".

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