[Show HN] Crowdspottr
crowdspottr.com
crowdspottr.com
The Facebook login page looks like an error page. Coming from the beautifully designed homepage, it looks like a completely different site. Why don't you just add the facebook connect button on the homepage? Saves me a click and keeps it beautiful.
Once connected, it lists events by default by Popular. The problem is that some of the most popular events in my Facebook feed are in the past. Since your focus is on getting people out, I'd not even list past events. Just sort future events by popularity and filter by location, friends and time.
I just noticed the buttons at the bottom of the screen. I don't know how they look on a phone but on my computer screen, they are almost invisible. You might want to change the colour a bit.
On a particular event's page, the text is almost unreadable, as you'd expect from grey text on a grey background. This seems to be the most common annoyance I spot on well-designed websites. Maybe designers can perceive tiny differences in shades of colours, but most normals like me can't.
I'm not sure what the search function is for. It doesn't return any results for my friends' names, even when I can see events listed by them.
[Edit: In the list of events, it doesn't show me which friend of mine has created the event. Putting a picture of my friends' faces next to each event will make me hugely more likely to click on them.]
[Edit: Your blog doesn't link back to your main site. If I launched an app every time I spotted this on a startup blog, I'd be the appiest man in the world.]
One social problem with this kind of listing of events is that while it's cool to see what events my wider circle of friends are attending, it's not very useful unless I've been invited. (edit: and if I've been invited, umm your app is not very useful.) If I can see Sally is going to the music festival next Sunday in the park near my house, that's cool but I won't join her unless she invites me or she's a really good friend who won't mind me turning up.
Which brings me to the main problem with the concept of this app. Your taglines are:
Don’t know where to go and whom with? Discover what your friends are up to!
The first one (where to go) is often a question I have. Whom with? Never. I mostly go out with the same set of friends and their friends. Discovering what my friends are up to is not hard with Twitter, Facebook, SMS, email or a phone call.
I haven't yet seen or used an app which recommends me things to do based on my interests and the events I've been to. Maybe Foursquare does this. I should try it out, but its focus (check-ins to get free beers) is something I'm not too interested in.
If you made something which actually tells me really fun stuff to do (my kind of fun), I'd use it, even if the design was fugly. Like Google.
EDIT: Scratch that, found it... "Mobile web app"
VERY cool idea. Dig it.
Your closest 10 friends? Sure, it applies. But who doesn't have hundreds of friends on Facebook these days? Taking that angle it's easy to see how you'll find out cool events (not private parties to crash, but concerts, conferences, art exhibits, etc) that you can go to, that someone you know is also attending (even if you're not close friends, you'll probably give them a call to go together, meet there, or whatever).
Having quite a busy social life, yet still some days when there's nothing interesting to do, I've found my app (see my other reply), and by extension, also Crowdspotting, to be useful. Also they make for good conversation when you happen to meet those friends from time to time ("Oh, I saw you went to X or Y, how was it?").
By the way, fiestastic looks great. I signed in with my Facebook but then was told I can't use it because you're in private beta! I think you should make that clear on the homepage itself. Any chance you can let me try it now?
I like that you show a map of events. That's another problem with Crowdspottr. A lot of the events it shows me are in another continent.
I think this is why beautiful looking apps are often not as useful as ugly ones. Instead of making the app useful, more time is spent on making it look shiny.
Here's mine: http://www.fiestastic.com
NOTE: It's now in private beta, but if you (this goes both to the Crowdspottr team as well as anyone reading this :P) would like to give it a try, just sent me an email to manuel@fiestastic.com with a link to your Facebook profile and I'll add it to the list of "allowed users".
I've taken more of a regular website approach while you guys are doing first a mobile app/site, which makes more sense, but I'm not very skilled in native iPhone/Android development.
I'm not sure if I should be depressed (someone else is doing what I'm doing, and so far, looks better!) or happy (someone else is doing what I'm doing, so must be something worth doing!), but anyway, good luck with Crowdspottr! I'll be keeping an eye on you ;-)
and ask them for a job!
really impressed by this app by the way - my only issue with most new apps like this is that they usually don't work so well in europe, due to low rate of adoption, and lack of focus by entrepreneurs on non-US markets ...
Of course, being widely used (at least in a specific area) would bring extra benefits and more possible features, but I like that it's useful even to the very first user.
and the people behind it are from 7 countries like Russia, Estonia ... check out http://blog.campus.carnationgroup.com/ for the complete story
First I wanted to see if it was a good idea, and what people liked and didn't like before putting a lot more effort into it (like learning to develop native apps). Also, while native apps really are the best option, it wouldn't be difficult for me to create a mobile version of the site optimized for smartphones, so people can access the service on the go, even if not having the best experience.
I guess you will soon add events other than just for today. It would also be nice to see the names of my friends who are going (right now you only show a thumbnail of their profile pic).
Getting traction for this app (and for Crowdspottr) might be nearly impossible though. Facebook already shows me what you're showing (on the left side menu, under Events, there's Friends' events). Plus the chances of me remembering to come back to your site when I want to go out next time are pretty low.
The only way you could do better than Facebook is if you aggregated events from other sites and made your own recommendations based on my past events. I think that's one thing which most sites seem to miss. If you know the bands, festivals, parties I've been to you should be able to tell me about other similar ones. Hook into other APIs like Foursquare, Songkick, Timeout etc and you will always have an edge over any single big player.
As of "Facebook already does it", it may be true, but they don't show you all your friends events. For today I see only two, for example. I guess they show me only the most relevant.
The thing is, once you get some traction (and that's a big IF), you can do things like showing the most popular events in your city, even if none of your friends (nor you) has been invited. And with more volume of events, you can also create better recommendation algorithms.
Another use, which Crowdspottr already has and Fiestastic doesn't (nor Facebook, at least not "easily"), is seeing what events someone else has RSVPd to, which is cool to see where you friends are gonna go or what are they interested in. Someone could say this is great for stalkers, but I digress :P
Even if Facebook does some things with events, the good news (for Crowdspottr and me) is that for them events is just a part of their graph, and I don't see them putting a lot more effort or functionality on top of what they already have, when SO much can be done with all that data.
And yes, using other APIs as well like Foursquare is a good idea (Crowdspottr does it AFAIK) but I know personally I'd be kind of lazy to put in log in details for more than one service. That, and also Foursquare is way less ubiquitous than Facebook.
I think it might work better the other way around. You might need to show events outside my friends' knowledge to get any traction, because if my friends are already going to those events then I probably already know about them.
I agree that Facebook won't put as much effort into one feature as you could, but the fact is that people's time is limited and they are all on Facebook. So, you need to use FB to get traction. As a simple example, I don't even see a Like button on Fiestastic or Crowdspottr!! The first rule of social is sharing.
Am I the only one that realizes that all this does is reorganize information on FB? It's pretty and works (slowly), but that's it.