Show HN: I made this: ShoutFast
shoutfast.com
This is our entry in the "spontaneous event creation" ring. I'd love to hear what HN readers think!
shoutfast.com
In the interest of reducing sign up friction:
1. There's no need for a "Repeat Password" field. If a user types the wrong password, they can always use a "Change Password" link later.
2. Asking for an "Email Address" would be better than asking for a "Username". You kill two birds with one stone. Most people can remember their email address(es) but I know I don't remember the different usernames I use. Allow users to add multiple email addresses and sign in with any of these.
3. Ideally, you could make it that a user only needs to give you their email address to sign up.
4. Is "Sign Up" really the best copy to use on the first button you want a prospective user to click? What's the information scent there? What's the promise of value? What's the end result of signing up? Be more creative.
5. Things like COPPA, privacy policy etc. can go somewhere else.
Finally, what's your intention with ShoutFast? What's your motivation? Why are you doing this? Get your motivation right and the methods will follow. Don't worry about getting the methods right or cargo-culting. Just worry that you have the right motivation. Spend your time thinking about motivation and everything else will fall into place.
Well done on launching!
As a counterpoint, I regularly use different Sneakemail addresses on different sites to be able to categorize my mail by origin and provide for limited sending capabilities. These are random-like (in order, among other things, to not be trivial to link to each other) and perfectly machine-readable, but they're difficult to use as usernames. So the trend of “email address as the only acceptable identifier for login” makes things more awkward for me. (This obviously doesn't apply if you allow associating a short name as well.)
The social-network chicken-egg problem (SNCEP?) is even harder when it's location-based... not only do you need to convince people to sign up, but they have to be clustered location-wise to give them any functionality at all.
Without major marketing/promotional campaign and a really good hook, a new social network will never get off the ground.
"See who wants to... do.. stuff..." is not a suffiently compelling value proposition.
2. If he succeeds the space is easy to defend, since it was hard to succeed in the first place.
3. Since, when as a community HN shy away from hard problems?
Right now, you are suppose to be giving advice on how to make this work. He came here for clever hacks and minds, don't disappoint.
Do they? I know a lot of startups want to tackle this space, but I haven't seen much in the way of demand from anyone besides startup people.
For OP to succeed he needs a more compelling hook (e.g. foursquare had the gaming aspect) and a solid PR strategy for solving SNCEP.
Some questions that might suggest strategies:
* What is going to make me open the app right now? And again and again?
* What will make me think that I'll actually see any offers near me right now?
* How can I convince folks around me to sign up and use the app? What usecase might we have in common? (and how does your app make that easier/solve that problem?)
* How do I know the person making the offer isn't creepy?
* How can I make sure the offers I see are relevant to me?
Would be great to let users know what each field is for in the signup form. They're all blank in Firefox.
Other than that I think it's a cool idea. Good luck!
Good work though!
It might be useful to indicate on a map where the locations are listed when you do a quick browse.
tried to sign in twitter, changed username, all others default (empty), chosen default picture, submitted form. http 500 #fail.