Show HN: My Zappos/Twilio hackathon entry

Great idea. It gives me that "duh" moment that I hadn't thought of it before!

While I think the visuals are beautiful, I did notice that your current call to action on the page appears to be the description itself. The actual form action has the least weight to me visually, as the button hovering above the example draws the eye.

If your intention is on conversions of the form, perhaps you might consider shifting the focus with some very small re-work.

You should figure out websites that have affiliate programs, force the requester to choose a website, and when you end the text message, include the website to add some validity. Including the well-known brand will seem like it comes from a more legitimate website than you (no offense).

For example:

"Hey Andy!Someone shopping on Zappos.com for you and wants to know your shoe size. Reply with your size (ex '9', '10.5')

Also, when you send back the sizes to the requester, you could include an affiliate link for the site they requested to help monetize.

I just tried this with my gf. She was seating across to me and When she received the text message, she was confused and told me "OMG how do they know my name?". Then I explained to her what it was, she obviously told me she wouldn't have answered it. Maybe it'd be cool to find a way to validate the sender to the receiver without losing the anonymosity. Really digging this though! I always hate having to ask people their sizes, what they like, etc...

This is awesome. Now if only Zappos had an affiliate program so you could make some money off of these clicks too.... Oh wait! We do!

Wow this is a great hackathon project. It's simple, but something that people will actually want to use after the hackathon. I do agree that the message may need some tuning up though. Maybe say "John is using anonysize.me to ask you for your size" etc. It adds some credibility even though no one has heard of you, and it leads to brand awareness, advertising, and hopefully more users (this is just based on the text message on your homepage, however).

This is a really neat concept and the design is gorgeous!

How effective has this been? Personally if I got an anonymous text like that I wouldn't reply haha

the only downside i see to this is that anybody i might use this service on would immediately know it was me, because i'd be the only one nerdy enough to use it.

worded another way: the only way i see to make this service better is to make it more popular.

Love the idea (and the pun). But I can't think of many of my non-tech savvy female friends (speaking from NYC) who would not be totally freaked out by this.

Those of us more familiar with data (both males and females) know that if we were to get a message like this, it most likely came from a friend or former friend since it requires knowing your phone #. But in a world of constant social media privacy scares, the average person is going to be hyper paranoid about sending off any kind of personal data to an anonymous requester.

and of course I'm not implying that females are less likely to be tech savvy. I'm implying that in my own set of female friends, there is a higher fear of stalkers than among my male friends)

Zappos will love this. Great idea and I love the name. As a critique, I'd recommend rearranging the form/descp/iphone image on the launch page. I think you rather have users read what this is before the "SIGN UP" on the left!

Apart from the comments seen here, just a small bit of advice from me: Fix the color of your ordered list. I noticed that it's gray for "li" in general, and white for "#splash ol li", but its still gray in Chrome for Ubuntu.

From the comments below, it seems that only the "non-nerds", "non-tech savy" guys would be naive enough to be suspicious when they get an anonymous SMS notification to divulge personal details.Maybe in a perfect world, that is true, but we are not there yet. I know that the next big viral, customer-facing app/service would probably be pushing the boundary of privacy and build new business-models around it. I find this a tad depressing.

neat idea, did you conceive it at the hackathon or bring it in?

Love the idea, very simple and quite fresh. Though I agree with others that the service will require awareness. I doubt people will want to provide personal information without knowing the source. Still I can't help but think that an idea like this will quickly spread. Good job!

You could expand this and have it work on clothes and ring sizes.

Cool. But I think most people would be able to guess who sent the text based on who is likely to be buying shoes for them.

Super simple and neat idea, awesome job!

Cool! Does this work outside of the US?

Wow, awesome. Do agree with the arguments about some of the freakiness, ut could so this being huge.

I really like this, nice job.

Very sharp- great job!

So I tried this on my friends while we were all waiting in line for a movie.

I tried it on one friend first and she glaced at it and immediately thought it was spam. Then I sent it to her BF who thought it was weird but also assumed it was spam. Both were annoyed when I told them I had sent it for giving a service their phone #. The couple is young and fairly tech savvy.

Also, the message-success screen was too wide for the iPhone and would not zoom out properly.

Perhaps this should be done by email? The big problem with the phone is that you provide them with no context at all about the site.

Ok, this is awesome!

Ok, so they sent them a text.. then what? Does it pick out the gift for me as well? Does it send the gift to that person for me? Or it just gets the shoe size, ring size, or whatever?