Rate my weekend project, Thursday Flowers: a thoughtfulness service | Hacker News Reader

Rate my weekend project, Thursday Flowers: a thoughtfulness service

thursdayflowers.com

38 pointsadamfblahblah34 comments

It's probably too early but, when you have the users, you should put up a dashboard with how many people are using the service. You could have something like "2436 People Are More Romantic," that would 'prove' legitimacy and verify the your premise of the site.

"Sign up and we'll send you ideas every few weeks at random intervals," sounds like "when we come up with an idea we'll send it out," it doesn't make me believe that you're committing to the site which makes me skeptical of entering my email.

Just my .02. Otherwise, I'm a fan of the idea.

The counter is in the plan but is currently an embarrassingly low number (79 and counting!).

Re: random intervals, we'll try to find a better way to express what happens, and as someone else suggested will show an example of what the email will look like.

I think we'll also add a random suggestion to the front page.

Instead of:

Sign up and we'll send you ideas every few weeks at random intervals.

---------

How about:

This is just an opinion, but if you need reminding to be thoughtful, you've already lost a lot of the essence of what thoughtfulness is all about.

Being given suggestions about how to be thoughtful further removes the 'thought' from the so called 'thoughtful' act. Though I haven't signed up, in technical terms I'm sure its a fair achievement for a weekend project, however I really think it misses the mark in an area where there could be much larger scale opportunity.

For example: you're limiting this service to romantic thoughtfulness, completely ignoring being thoughtful to people with whom your intended users might have a non-romantic relationship.

There are quite a few reminder / notification type projects popping up lately and I have to wonder how long-lived they will be even for avid users. I can't help but think its eventually going to feel like spam (even if your email content is fantastically insightful and useful).

With that said kudos for an interesting idea that you've made a reality.

Isn't it a thoughtful act to sign up for this service? :)

We're not ignoring non-romantic thoughtfulness in the sense that we don't know about them and the potential in those users, but rather ignore them in order to get something out the door and gauge interest.

We too worry about showing up like spam. Our current algorithm is to send a mail no sooner than 7 days but no later than 21 days after the last notification, which hopefully isn't too often. We're looking at adding user accounts to let people customize this timeframe and the suggestions.

Thanks for the feedback!

You are what you repeatedly do. Practice makes perfect.

If you're not thoughtful on your own I can't really think of a better way to train yourself to be. Practicing thoughtfulness when you know you're not great at it seems quite thoughtful to me.

I also think anyone who is frequently trying to do romantic things can fall into a rut. New ideas are welcome and fun.

I like the idea. Congrats on shipping.

Finally, I think providing a way to purchase/deliver the ideas in the email is a good way to make some affiliate cash.

> For example: you're limiting this service to romantic thoughtfulness, completely ignoring being thoughtful to people with whom your intended users might have a non-romantic relationship.

I disagree completely. Being too scattershot is much worse than limiting your market.

Clear focused shipping tool is much better than a disorganized mess. Besides, there's time to expand/pivot as well if the inital idea is a success.

Are you really making enough from the ads on the bottom of the page to let it clutter up your design?

If you continued to develop this so your special offers would allow me to do whatever it is (send flowers, etc.) with one click or one reply e-mail, that'd be great.

I'm so on the fence with the ads. I agree they clutter up the design. We've made the big $0.04 on the ads so far... I'd much rather send well formed and target recommendations with the suggestions.

tl;dr - we'll probably kill them, but thought it would be cool to buy a beer with the proceeds.

I'd have thought you could make more from affiliate links on your recommendations.

I bet we can... that's a great idea, thanks. It'll help us get rid of the ugly.

http://affiliateprogram.1800flowers.com/

Definitely kill the AdWords. Those ads, at least for me, are not relevant at all (diabetic socks, huh?).

As others have suggested, you can monetize with the affiliate ads in the emails that relate to what you're suggesting ("Need flowers? Try FTD.com"). Those ads will bring in higher revenues because they are relevant. AdWords feel really cheap here.

DEAD. I hated them as well.

Yes, please kill them. You're trading long term value for a (very) small amount of short term value.

Go long term, all the way.

I like the idea. Would definitely sign up, though would want to see an explicit statement that my email will be safe with you!

Cool, we'll add a privacy statement.

You should add a random, monthly-ish gift autodelivery service and call it 'Flowers and Forget'.

A bit of a blackbox from a user's perspective about what it will be they would be receiving beyond "it will be an email" and "it will have an idea".

From the stance of someone who may have just entered their email, before doing so it would be helpful to see an example of what it is we're getting ourselves into.

The pitch is too easily misconstrued to "every few weeks we'll ask you to buy something from one of our advertisers, so please sign up".

Perhaps a friendly use case/sample would be helpful here.

That's a great idea, and easy to show on an example page. Added it to the TODO - thanks!

Please, by god, kill the ads at the bottom of your sign up page. It makes me highly skeptical of your service, since you seem to be interested in making a quick buck.

Okay, killed the ads. I hated them as well.

It seems like a decent idea if that's what you really intend to do with it.

I'd get rid of the ads at the bottom though, kind of cheapen the look of the site.

Fwiw, I didn't even know there were ads on the site with adblock on.

Actually had a similar idea a few years back and did a bunch of research. Two big things came up: 1) The tension is making guys look good without "taking the thought out of thoughtfulness." 2) How many new and unique suggestions are you really going to be able to give? After ten or so, they start to get stale or obvious.

Btw, re the counter you can fake the number just to see if it works/test something.

Not sure of the implentation details, but hopefully you're sending out different ideas to some degree per week/user. Depending on the ultimate success of the site, some might notice the use of some external force in 'suddenly thoughtful significant other'

"Bob gave you flowers last wednesday? and a card on Monday? Frank did the EXACT same thing!" (etc.)

Every user gets a random idea from a a database of ideas; there's maybe 40 ideas in the DB for each combination of genders. We have some logic that prevents you from getting the same suggestion twice in a row, and in a branch we've yet to merge we've added a link to the emails that lets the user get a new suggestion.

We've got Big Plans(tm) to add user accounts that will let users than customize their own suggestion list.

You're missing an option:

I'm a [person] who wants to create thoughtful moments for my [Significant Other].

Not hard to add, and there are lots of good reasons to include non-gendered options.

I wonder if I'd get in trouble if my girlfriend caught me using this...

It passes the jwz test...

What is the JWZ test?

http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html

"How will this software get my users laid"

Wonderful idea. I signed up.

Nth-ing the suggestion on tweaking the ads. They're definitely jarring. Perhaps try to pick up some sponsorships? 1800Flowers, etc.

The ads are dead. We'll probably look for sponsorship if running the sites ends up costing anything. It is on google app engine, so everything is free right now.

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